Category: Reviews

On June 6, 2014, Opera Las Vegas presented Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville with a cast drawn from the Metropolitan Opera and other major companies.

The geographical and chronological transportation of Rossini’s famous
factotum from 18^th-century Seville to 19^th-century London
is director Oliver Platt’s most radical notion in this satisfying, if
somewhat straightforward, new production of Il barbiere di Siviglia
for Opera Holland Park.

In its annual concert devoted to performances by current members of the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center, Lyric Opera of Chicago showcased a roster of talented singers who will doubtless add greatly to operatic and concert stages of the immediate future.

Having become so jaded with indifferent — or, sadly, far worse than merely indifferent — stagings of an opera I love more than words can tell, it proved a relief and indeed a joy for me to attend this first revival of Jonathan Kent’s 2010 Glyndebourne production, especially its first act.

First, a sigh of relief: in almost every respect, this new ENO staging of
Benvenuto Cellini marks a significant improvement

‘I like the atmosphere of the West’, Puccini wrote after seeing three of David Belasco’s plays performed on Broadway in 1907, ‘but in all the “piËces” I have seen, I have found only a few scenes here and there.

On May 23rd the Los Angeles Philharmonic premiered its production of
CosÏ fan tutte, the third and last of the Mozart/Daponte opera series
it inaugurated in 2012.

A month in which London, or indeed anywhere else, saw one performances of a Birtwistle drama would be something.