For its second production of the current season Lyric Opera of Chicago has staged a modified revival of its Carmen under the direction of Harvey Silverstein.
Category: Reviews
Wexford Festival Opera 2010
After a rather lean 2009, the 59th Wexford Festival Opera season almost felt
like a return to generous days of old.
Cyrano de Bergerac in San Francisco
Franco Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac at the San Francisco Opera has little chance of measuring up to a Cyrano standard once set here in Fog City.
Haydn: L’isola disabitata, London
Haydn’s L’isola disabitata is ideally suited to the modern taste for chamber opera. This is Haydn for those who think they don’t like his operas or even baroque form.
Cervantino stages rare Graun opera — The Mexican national opera?
Clearly, there isn’t one. Yet, Carl Heinrich Graun’s 1755
rarely-performed Montezuma is of special importance in a country
celebrating 200 years of Independence from Spanish rule and 100 years since the
Revolution that ultimately toppled dictator Porfirio DÌaz.
Wagner: Wesendonck-Lieder, Preludes and Overtures
A great vintage Mercury album of Antal Dorati conducting Wagner overtures and preludes featured as a cover a close-up of a medieval chalice, undoubtedly meant to reference the Parsifal excerpt on the enclosed disc.
Kafka at the Opera: Bartlett Sher’s Production of Hoffmann at the Met
We all come to the opera for different things. To escape, to elevate, to laugh, to cry, or perhaps because someone else bought the tickets.
Piotr Beczala: RomÈo et Juliette, Royal Opera
Charles Gounod’s RomÈo et Juliette is almost more musical than opera. Everyone knows the story, and it would be hard to compete with Shakespeare. Gounod wisely focused on music, rather than drama.
Overture to London’s Handel Festival 2011
The small but perfectly formed Grosvenor Chapel in London’s exclusive Mayfair was the venue last Monday night for a programme of Handel vocal and instrumental music of considerable quality — if minimal quantity.