Performances

05 Oct 2020

ETO Autumn 2020 Season Announcement: Lyric Solitude

English Touring Opera are delighted to announce a season of lyric monodramas to tour nationally from October to December. The season features music for solo singer and piano by Argento, Britten, Tippett and Shostakovich with a bold and inventive approach to making opera during social distancing. »

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28 May 2008

Revised Amistad makes its mark

Upon its premiere at Chicago’s Lyric Opera in 1997 Anthony Davis’ Amistad found little critical favor. Its undisciplined excesses led one writer to compare it to a high-school pageant. »

27 May 2008

Merry Widow at ENO

In these days of 'concept' productions, it is rare that the curtain goes up on the first act of an opera and it looks exactly as one might reasonably expect it to. »

27 May 2008

Masterpiece Masterfully Rendered in Toronto

I can still remember my first ever “Pelleas et Melisande” in my first ever outing at San Francisco Opera during my first ever visit to that beautiful town. »

25 May 2008

A Berlin Sampler

A recent visit to Berlin’s three opera houses yielded decidedly, nay wildly varying outcomes. »

15 May 2008

Gotham Chamber Opera: Ariadne Unhinged

The Gotham Chamber Opera has been delighting opera fans on the Lower East Side for seven years now, one small audience at a time. »

13 May 2008

Les Troyens in Boston

Thirty-six years after Sarah Caldwell and the Opera Company of Boston presented the first complete staged performances in the United States, Hector Berlioz’ Les Troyens returned to Boston in triumph in a series of concert performances presented by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the baton of James Levine to close the BSO’s 2007-2008 season. »

13 May 2008

Ponnelle Clemenza remains a masterpiece

Opera companies should practice historic preservation, keeping certain productions forever in the repertory because of their quality and aesthetic value. »

13 May 2008

Nono's Prometeo at Royal Festival Hall

Prometeo is so radically different that it’s almost incomprehensible heard from preconceived assumptions of what music “ought” to be. »

12 May 2008

John Brown lives again in Kansas City

John Brown might have been a’mouldering in his grave since he was hanged in 1859, but he was resurrected — in body and spirit — on May 3, when the Lyric Opera of Kansas City staged the world premiere of Kirke Mechem’s John Brown. »

09 May 2008

Canada’s Brueggergosman makes the most of Mozart

When Toronto’s Opera Atelier asked her to sing Elettra in Mozart’s Idomeneo Measha Brueggergosman hesitated. »

09 May 2008

Fort Worth Opera Festival features “Angels in America”

In 2007 it was an experiment; now it’s a new summer festival firmly rooted in fertile Texas turf with a bright view of its second season and of the more distant future as well. »

07 May 2008

Die Entführung aus dem Serail

Die Entführung aus dem Serail is too light to be a grand opera, but it makes rather grander demands of its singers than operetta could possibly bear. »

06 May 2008

Punch & Judy at ENO

English National Opera’s production of Harrison Birtwistle’s ‘Punch and Judy’ is the company’s second collaboration with the Young Vic Theatre — following the premiere of Neuwirth’s ‘Lost Highway’ a few weeks earlier — and remarkably, also the second London production of this early Birtwistle work within a month, the previous one having been at the Linbury Studio Theatre, a collaboration between Music Theatre Wales and the Royal Opera. »

06 May 2008

The Collegiate Chorale: Jupiter in Argos

Over the years, one tried and true method of packing audiences in to the concerts of Robert Bass’s Collegiate Chorale has been to present concert opera with impressive soloists. »

04 May 2008

Ned Rorem's Our Town

Martha Graham used to say, “In order for there to be dance, there must be something that needs to be danced.” »

04 May 2008

La Fille du Régiment at the Met

When the Met presented La Fille du Régiment for Lily Pons during World War II, she sought permission to wave the Cross of Lorraine, symbol of Charles de Gaulle’s Free French, during the Salut à la France in Act II. »

04 May 2008

Minnesota Opera makes strong case for Rusalka’s greatness

Why does one so seldom encounter Dvořák’s Rusalka on stage? »

25 Apr 2008

Satyagraha at the MET

Satyagraha is an odd duck to encounter if you are seeking a traditional opera-going experience or anything like it. »

23 Apr 2008

Sarasota rises above the regional

Victor DeRenzi is a man of convictions — and of courage. Given his commitment to tradition, you might call DeRenzi, artistic director of Sarasota Opera since 1982, conservative. »

22 Apr 2008

A Cut Too Far…..the new Giulio Cesare in Lausanne

With what might (if one were risking facetiousness) be termed a “false-set” of four countertenors in the cast, this was always going to be an intriguing production of Handel’s Giulio Cesare for aficionados of a voice type which has revolutionised the perception (and popularity) of baroque opera over the past 15 years. »

21 Apr 2008

The Minotaur — Royal Opera, Covent Garden

Harrison Birtwistle’s new full-scale opera, commissioned by the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, is a study of isolation and imprisonment. »

21 Apr 2008

OONY Performs Puccini's Edgar

It was one of Queler’s good nights. »

21 Apr 2008

Berlin’s “other” opera often stellar

It is, you might say, the little opera that can. True, if it’s size of the budget, the price of tickets and the number of seats that concerns you, the Komische Oper is clearly the third of Berlin’s opera houses. »

21 Apr 2008

(Mostly) Pretty Poison

What to make of "Lucrezia Borgia"? I have always felt that, some lovely arias notwithstanding, this Donizetti work never really gets going until the slam-bang soprano-baritone duet in Act II. »

09 Apr 2008

Prokofiev's The Gambler at the MET

That Fed Dostoevsky – sure plays a mean pinball! »

08 Apr 2008

Frankurt Opera — The Rape of Lucretia

Plainly put, Frankfurt Opera’s “The Rape of Lucretia” could be offered as a textbook example of just how great a performance can be when everything goes right. »

07 Apr 2008

Barenboim and Berlin — beauty and brilliance

BERLIN — Which car-rental agency was it that was once No. 2 and “trying harder?” »

06 Apr 2008

ANNA BOLENA – English Touring Opera

In a climate in which bel canto opera seems to be enjoying a steady and welcome revival, ETO opened their current season with a welcome production of Donizetti's historically dubious account of the latter days of Anne Boleyn. The company's... »

06 Apr 2008

SUSANNAH – English Touring Opera

The most interesting opera on ETO's Spring 2008 tour was Carlisle Floyd's 1950s tale of religious hypocrisy in the rural Deep South, based on the Apocryphal tale of Susannah and the Elders. »

06 Apr 2008

DON GIOVANNI – English Touring Opera

The last of the three operas on ETO's Spring 2008 tour was sung in English, and updated to a Spain of the mid-twentieth century under Franco. »

06 Apr 2008

San Diego Opera: Cavalleria Rusticana & Pagliacci

Opera companies often tout new productions as a major attraction of their seasons. »

23 Mar 2008

Lalo's Fiesque — University College Opera

UC Opera's reputation for showcasing rare large-scale works has been boosted this year with the UK premiere of this 1846 opera by Edouard Lalo after a Schiller play. »

17 Mar 2008

Frankfurt's Ship of Fools

As Anna Russell might say: "The three operas of Puccini's 'Il Trittico' take place on a luxury cruise liner. . . . . On it." »

17 Mar 2008

Heggie's "Last Acts"

Let me say up front that I like Jake Heggie's work. I feel he has a true gift for soaring and meaningful melody, a great ear for orchestral effects, a talent for picking good source material, and a knack for crafting affecting melodrama (in the best sense of that word) that can move an audience to tears. »

17 Mar 2008

Heggie faces family dilemma in new work

Do dysfunctional families outnumber the ones that move through life untroubled, or is it — to paraphrase Tolstoy — that every dysfunctional family is dysfunctional in its own way and thus of greater interest to writers and composers? »

16 Mar 2008

Tristan und Isolde — The Metropolitan Opera

I bet this doesn't happen at the movies: »

16 Mar 2008

Peter Grimes at the MET

Let us, for one example among many, take the capstan song in Act I. »

03 Mar 2008

Los Angeles Opera: March 1 & 2, 2008

James Conlon has become the artistic heart and soul of Los Angeles Opera in his second season as music director. »

02 Mar 2008

Cyrano at The Opera Company of Philadelphia

The Opera Company of Philadelphia’s February production is the second staging of David DiChiera’s new opera Cyrano, a co-production with Michigan Opera Theater and Florida Grand Opera. »

02 Mar 2008

Peter Grimes by Opera North

Opera North is one of the most innovative opera companies in Britain. »

02 Mar 2008

Short on the sides and Full On Top

Perhaps the most beloved comic opera, Rossini’s Il barbière di Siviglia has never left the repertoire. »

02 Mar 2008

Mary, Queen of Scots (Maria Stuarda)

San Diego Opera apparently has raided the vaults of Lincoln Center opera companies, circa the 1970s. »

25 Feb 2008

Salome at Covent Garden

The Royal Opera's new Salome is set roughly in the 1930s, in surroundings which refer overtly to Pasolini's Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom, populated by uniformed soldiers and naked whores. »

22 Feb 2008

Carmen, The Metopolitan Opera

Dread and disgruntle are the emotions natural to the fan of any special singer when he arrives at the opera house to learn she has withdrawn from the performance and been replaced by an unknown. »

20 Feb 2008

Anna Christy Triumphs in Lucia di Lammermoor at ENO

ENO doesn’t really go in for bel canto opera. Other than a Maria Stuarda back in the mid 1990s, the only Donizetti opera in the company’s repertoire in the recent past has been the popular L’elisir d’amore. »

17 Feb 2008

ENO's The Mikado

Director Jonathan Miller was there at the curtain call to greet the first night of this latest revival of a production which has now been in ENO's repertoire for twenty years. »

17 Feb 2008

LA Opera: Tristan und Isolde

My Valentine’s Day gift came a bit early courtesy of Los Angeles Opera. Of course, it is to be hoped that your own celebration has a happier outcome than that of opera’s most famous Love Couple, “Tristan und Isolde.” »

17 Feb 2008

Rodelinda at Portland

Valentine’s Day may not quite be in the same major holiday league with the Fourth of July or New Year’s Eve, but you wouldn’t have known it from the fireworks emanating from the stage of Portland Opera, in the form of some dazzling Valentine’s night vocalizing in quite a fine production of Handel’s “Rodelinda.” »

17 Feb 2008

Navajo oratorio a triumph in Phoenix

A sound designer? Isn’t that merely a euphemistic upgrade of “sound engineer?” »

17 Feb 2008

Tosca at COC

An air of anticipation filled the Four Seasons Centre as the announcer walked across the stage to say that soprano Ester Sümegi was ill and would not be performing. »

17 Feb 2008

Tannhäuser at San Diego Opera

To open its 2008 season, San Diego Opera restored the production of Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser that Günther Schneider-Siemsson created for the Metropolitan Opera three decades ago. »

10 Feb 2008

Madam Butterfly at ENO

Anthony Minghella's visually-arresting staging, a co-production with New York's Metropolitan Opera and the Lithuanian National Opera, returned this month to its original home at the London Coliseum after a gap of two years. »