Author: James Sohre

For its landmark Fiftieth Anniversary Season, the Glimmerglass Festival is to be heartily commended for commissioning a bold new work, The House on Mango Street, by composer Derek Bermel, who also…

If you were expecting a Hogarth-pretty version of Igor Stravinsky, W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman’s The Rake’s Progress at the renowned Glimmerglass Festival, you were at the wrong address. For…

For its annual American musical presentation, Glimmerglass Festival lovingly staged a scintillating production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park with George. It is hard to believe…

To open its Fiftieth Anniversary Season, Glimmerglass Festival opted for a reliable potboiler, Puccini’s Tosca, but with a contemporary twist. Rather than setting it in its scripted time period of…

It proved to be smooth sailing as Des Moines Metro Opera thrillingly met the substantial challenges of Wagner’s seminal work, The Flying Dutchman. They started by assembling a nonpareil cast…

Given the miraculously spellbinding production of Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen at Des Moines Metro Opera, New Mexico just may have to cede its motto: Land of Enchantment. There is…

Des Moines Metro Opera has advanced its record for excellence with a musically resplendent, visually rich, wholly riveting production of Stravinsky’s multi-faceted piece, The Rake’s Progress. The glories in store…

Opera Theatre of Saint Louis is celebrating fifty fabulous years with this festival, and by returning to the first opera it ever presented, Don Pasquale, it has mined anniversary gold.…

With its stylish festival level performance of the fiercely original piece, This House, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis continues its almost unrivaled record for commissioning and staging World Premieres. This…

Unrelenting, raucous animation was the salient characteristic that pervaded Opera Theatre of Saint Louis’ lively version of that evergreen favorite, Die Fledermaus (The  Bat), and the capacity audience roared in…