An evening of strange-bedfellow one-acts in high-concept stagings, mindbogglingly delightful.
Category: Reviews
Carmen, Pacific Symphony
On February 19, 2015, Pacific Symphony presented its annual performance of a semi-staged opera. This year’s presentation at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California, featured Georges Bizet’s Carmen. Director Dean Anthony used the front of the stage and a few solid set pieces by Scenic Designer Matt Scarpino to depict the opera’s various scenes.
The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, ENO
Although the English National Opera has been decidedly sparing with its Wagner for quite some time now, its recent track record, leaving aside a disastrous Ring, has perhaps been better than that at Covent Garden.
San Diego Opera presents an excellent Don Giovanni
On Friday February 20, 2015, San Diego Opera presented Mozart’s Don Giovanni in a production by Nicholas Muni originally seen at Cincinnati Opera.
Tosca at Chicago Lyric
In a production first seen in Houston several years ago, and now revised by its director John Caird, Puccini’s Tosca has returned to Lyric Opera of Chicago with two casts, partially different, scheduled into March of the present season.
Henri Dutilleux: Correspondances
Henri Dutilleux’s music has its devotees. I am yet to join their ranks, but had no reason to think this was not an admirable performance of his song-cycle Correspondances.
LA Opera Revives The Ghosts of Versailles
In 1980, the Metropolitan Opera commissioned composer John Corigliano to write an opera celebrating the company’s one-hundredth anniversary. It was to be ready in 1983.
La Traviata, ENO
English National Opera’s revival of Peter Konwitschny’s production of Verdi’s La Traviata had many elements in common with the
production’s original outing in 2013 (The production was a co-production with Opera Graz, where it had debuted in 2011).
Idomeneo in Lyon
You might believe you could go to an opera and take in what you see at face value. But if you did that just now in Lyon you would have had no idea what was going on.
Der fliegende Holl‰nder, Royal Opera
I wonder whether we need a new way of thinking — and talking — about operatic ‘revivals’. Perhaps the term is more meaningful when it comes to works that have been dead and buried for years, before being rediscovered by subsequent generations.