The Isle is full of noises
Dell’ Arte Opera Ensemble theme this summer is women composers, which is timely, and the more to be applauded as likely to turn up unusual works.
Review
A grandeur night for singing
“Die Zauberflöte is an opera!” “No, it’s the first musical comedy!”
The need for speed
Beauteous Trinidadian soprano Jeanine De Bique appeared Sunday afternoon with the visiting Budapest Festival Orchestra under Ivan Fischer.
Dream a little dream of me
“Who are you? Who do you want to be?” The search for one’s identity is explored in American composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer’s brand new opera If I Were You.
We’ve been through the mill
We’re two gay men, with 30-plus years between us, who went together to see the Broadway adaptation of Buz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge!
Maid in America
The second summer session of the Russian Opera Workshop concludes this week with concert performances of Tchaikovsky’s Maid of Orleans.
Winterstorms that go bump in the night
A hefty thunderclap shook Tanglewood’s Koussevitzky Shed just as Andris Nelsons raised his baton for the third act of the weekend’s concert Die Walküre.
Strangers when we meet
The aphorisms projected before each act of Das Wunder der Heliane suggested the work concerns the transformative power of love—but does it really?
Songs of innocence
Blind Injustice is a masterpiece, brilliant theater.
Crimes of a ragged century
The Mac-Haydn Theatre are giving Ragtime, a musical about turn-of-the-century race relations, unwelcome immigrants, labor revolts against brute force and the collapse of the traditional family.
Sweeping down the plains
Within minutes, something wonderful happened. None of my reservations mattered.
She’s a stranger here herself
The four leading roles in La Straniera were all attractively cast by Teatro Nuovo with fresh, promising young voices that did not seem quite ready for the big time.
Berlin wall
Why did I mostly want to close my eyes and just listen?
There is no spoon
Can a work with indisputably great music fail to add up to a successful opera? I puzzled over that Sunday during Teatro Nuovo’s essential concert staging of Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra at SUNY Purchase.
Moody “Blue”
The Glimmerglass Festival premiered a searing examination of race, identity, and the fraught relationship between communities of color and law enforcement. Blue, with a score by Jeanine Tesori and libretto by Tazewell Thompson.
Drama is real
Teatro Nuovo put on a perfectly delightful show on Thursday night.
Defying gravitas
Benjamin Yarmolinsky’s The Constitution: A Secular Oratorio, performed by Vertical Player Repertory on Thursday evening, was an awful lot of legal speak for one evening.
From Russia with love
Under any circumstances, the Russian Opera Workshop’s radiant concert performance of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta would have been an event to celebrate.
Nixon in Jersey: The Renixoning
The singers and the orchestra carry the show, but where do they carry it?
A little ‘Nixon’ goes a long way
The Princeton Festival has long been a “Little Engine that Could,” but the current operatic offering, John Adams’ Nixon in China, is a good deal more than that.
Toys in the attic
One of the main problems with My Undying Love was that it did not appear to know what audience it was pitching to.
Ringing in my queers
Stonewall threads some difficult needles with great success overall in this last installment of New York City Opera’s Pride Month Programming.
Lenny thing goes
With the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Candide, they saved the best (of all possible worlds) for last.
Bolder sister
Brigitte Fassbaender‘s sound is piquant and, I’d hazard to guess, instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with her work.
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).