Author: James Sohre

How was Des Moines Metro Opera’s closing performance of The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess a landmark event? Let me count the ways. First, it marked the successful completion of DMMO’s…

With all the doom, gloom and dispiriting events dominating the news cycle, Des Moines Metro Opera served up a perfect antidote with a sassy yet classy staging of Benjamin Britten…

As a component of its Fiftieth Anniversary Season, Des Moines Metro Opera added to its already prestigious reputation with a compelling world premiere of Kristin Kuster and Mark Campbell’s A…

In a notable departure from the complete works presented in past festivals, Des Moines Metro Opera adventurously programmed a mere fragment of an intriguing “work in progress,” American Apollo. To…

Composer Tobias Picker and librettist Aryeh Lev Stollman have created an emotional rollercoaster of an operatic experience with Awakenings, yet another world premiere by the enterprising Opera Theatre of Saint…

It’s Pride Month, and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis can be justifiably “proud” of its absorbing new production of Harvey Milk, in its most recent iteration by composer Stewart Wallace…

Estimable Pacific Opera Project (POP) does not always take such bold, bald chances as it has with producing the West Coast staged premiere of Tchaikovsky’s long one act, Iolanta. Far…

Beginning in 1957, the venerable Santa Fe Opera festival embarked on an ambitious journey that included presenting world premieres, in which series this summer’s The Lord of Cries is the…

Like the barber in another famous piece, Santa Fe Opera’s The Marriage of Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro) is frequently all over the place. There may be a number of…

If ever there was a nigh perfect match of an opera with idyllic outdoor surroundings, Santa Fe Opera’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is surely the one. The opening thirty minutes…