Musically Ravishing Roméo et Juliette in Idaho

Opera Idaho has gifted their public with a thrillingly sung and played performance of Charles Gounod’s tuneful and compelling take on Shakespeare’s evergreen classic tale of star-crossed love: Romeo and…

Zoraida in Wexford: Forgotten But Not Gone

It was a big leap today from the effervescent afternoon performance of Gaetano Donizetti’s acclaimed comic delight, The Daughter of the Regiment, to the somber evening show of the same…

Afternoon Laughs in Wexford

If the Wexford Festival’s evening fare in their Women & War themed season is deadly serious, the afternoon offerings were chockful of amusing confections that are more fun than a…

Wexford Festival’s Stunning Two Women

When you enter the auditorium for the performance of Mark Tutino, Fabio Ceresa and Luca Rossi’s La ciociara (Two Women), the darkened stage is fronted on the far left apron…

Red Dawn Rises Again in Wexford

The venerable Wexford Festival’s M.O. is rehabilitating forgotten operas from the past, and few are further beyond recollection than Camille Erlanger’s competent potboiler, L’Aube rouge (The Red Dawn). The libretto…

Santa Fe Rusalka: Freudian Slip-up

Santa Fe Opera staged another local premiere this summer with the welcome company addition of Antonín Dvořák and Jaroslav Kvapil’s splendid opera, Rusalka, directed by the acclaimed Sir David Pountney.…

Enigmatic Debussy Riches in New Mexico

Santa Fe Opera is to be applauded for including Debussy’s inscrutable masterpiece, Pelléas and Mélisande in this summer’s festival season. This important work is more admired than loved, and a…

Santa Fe Orfeo: Jumbled Journey to Meow Wolf

In Santa Fe Opera’s first ever production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo, a funny thing happened on the way to Hades. Our hero seems to have wandered into an imaginative but perplexing…

The Falling and the Rising at Camp Dodge, Iowa

For several seasons now, Des Moines Metro Opera has nurtured a fruitful collaboration with the Headquarters of the Iowa National Guard at Camp Dodge in a northwest part of the…

DMMO’s dwb: Tackling Social Injustice

“Every time you leave, I’ll try to let go a little more. But every time, I’ll be waiting to hear your key in our front door.” – The Mother in…