A Messy Little Christmas
Part vaudeville, part opera concert and part drag ball, Heartbeat Opera’s pageant was like a cup of eggnog spiked with a dash of LSD.
Review
After midnight
The Met’s Cinderella is a charming adaptation of Massenet’s opera. Frothy, fun, and enchanting, it is a magical holiday treat for the whole family to enjoy.
Every little thing she does is magic
A good time seemed to be had by all though I don’t recall seeing a single child in attendance.
Everything new is old again
I see in Kimberly Akimbo an audacious idea, once unthinkable territory for a musical, which is realized through a highly imaginative and often unpredictable use of song and especially open-ended ensemble writing.
Sorry/Ungrateful
Katrina Lenk’s Bobbie dutifully channels an assertive, contemporary, sexually confident female persona, but it doesn’t feel fully realized or convincing.
A certain theatrical precision
Sondra Radvanovsky was a force of nature as Tosca on Thursday night at the Met.
City of angels
In spite of the fact that Rossini and his librettist Jacopo Ferretti removed all the magical elements from the story, therefore making it far easier to produce, there was more than enough enchantment in the singing, and intermittently in the production to enjoy.
In my very own private hell
No, we don’t really need another “Orpheus” opera. Or, rather, we don’t need this one.
The river of dreams
The opera utilizes the idea of “magical realism,” telling a realistic story combined with elements of magic and fantasy.
The second time around
While the formulaic nature of some of Rossini’s other operas can undermine his ability to balance bravura singing and playing with legitimate drama, a concert Maometto II proves, with what it offers as much as what it lacks, that the formula still works.
Let’s twist again
In San Francisco Opera’s new Così fan tutte, the elements that most visibly read as “American” were a penchant for slapstick humor, overcooked blocking, and an abundance of cartoonish period costumes that hobbled the opera’s first act.
Not really about ‘La bohème’
What is there to say about the Franco Zeffirelli Bohème? What is left to say?
It ain’t easy being tween
The purview of so much gay theater still focuses squarely on trauma—consider the recent Tony sweep of The Inheritance—that the story of a queeny pre-teen who loves Diana Ross and lives out loud unapologetically seemed like a welcome tonic.
Tour de force
In their realization of Alcina, Harry Bicket and his ensemble recreated a dramatically vivid and musically nuanced character study out of the opera’s central figures.
Unequal tooning
There is sensory overload, and very little humanity.
Open and clothes case
From an exposure standpoint, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the best thing to happen to opera since Beverly Sills.
Witchy women
You’d think after nearly 40 years of opera going I’d have seen almost everything.. .twice. Yet I found myself at LA Opera Tuesday night for a special presentation of George Frideric Handel’s Alcina which was my first live experience with one of his operas.
‘Morning’ is broken
Morning Sun often feels as occluded and distancing as the austere, featureless set on which it’s performed.
The high and the mighty
Last Wednesday the 92nd Street Y presented the friendliest-ever episode of American Gladiators when Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres continued their bel canto bromance with a delirious (almost) all-Rossini recital accompanied by Myra Huang.
Sachs appeal
Last night’s cast of Die Meistersinger at the Met, dominated by the irascible, unbeatable duo of Michael Volle and Johannes Martin Kränzle as Sachs and Beckmesser, did much to enliven Otto Schenk’s creaky, nearly 30-year-old production.
A dream deferred
In an era when the Metropolitan Opera cannot cast an Aida, Trovatore or Forza consistently, New Amsterdam Opera managed to cast large, attractive and fully technically capable voices in all the cruelly demanding principal roles in I Vespri Siciliani!
Do you believe in magic?
Remember that time you went to the opera and the whole evening was like magic? Saturday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion probably ranks among my greatest nights in the theater and I’m finding the superlatives in my thesaurus inadequate to the task.
A seacoast of Bohemia
The people—I assume most of them were natives—seemed pretty happy at La Boheme at the San Carlo on Saturday night. For one thing, the theater was packed to the top tier, all of us masked (vigili di fuoco—firemen—made sure of that)
Lehman’s terms
The Lehman Trilogy had me in its thrall from the moment the lights went up. It’s absolutely spellbinding. That’s not to say I endorse it wholeheartedly, though.
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
