It was all going so well for him. He was already a celebrated opera composer, having made opera buffa something of a calling card, and in just 23 years had…
Category: Performances
In from the cold: Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri at Hamburg State Opera
Fashions come and go. What might be hailed by one generation is often ridiculed by the next one. That was the fate of Schumann’s secular oratorio Das Paradies und die…
Dead Man Walking in San Francisco
Though one may chafe at the dramatic and musical naïveté of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, you will admit that it packs a wallop. A man is summarily murdered in…
Rigoletto in San Francisco
San Francisco’s 1932 War Memorial Opera House (honoring the city’s WWI dead soldiers) is among the world’s more lavish examples of theater architecture, surpassed, in my experience, only by the…
Sunday in the Park with Lyric, 2025
On 7 September 2025, Lyric Opera of Chicago presented its annual concert in Millennium Park, during which a preview of the 2025/2026 season was combined with additional highlights from traditional…
He Who Laughs Last, Lasts Longest: Salieri’s La locandiera
For those familiar with Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus film, it was Salieri who had the last laugh. He outlived Mozart by 34 years, not dying until 1825, so this year marks…
The Royal Opera House Takes a Critical Look at Tosca’s Roman Setting in Oliver Mears’s Stimulating New Production
After the ‘shabby little shocker’ that was Oliver Mears’s production of Semele, seen at the Royal Opera House just two months ago, he now turns his attention to the opera that…
Proms 2025: Golda Schultz, A Study in Gold
You always remember exceptional voices when you hear them for the first time. I heard and reviewed Golda Schultz back in 2018 when she made her debut at the Proms.…
Proms 2025 – Riveting performance of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District
A wailing clarinet, a forlorn cor anglais and a post-coital trombone could hardly have been more ear-catching in this arresting performance of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk given at the Royal…
At the Intersection of Circus and Opera: Campra’s Le Carnaval de Venise at La Vache Baroque
First performed on January 20, 1699, André Campra’s comic opera/ballet to a libretto by Jean-François Regnard finally arrives at its UK premiere in late Summer 2025 at the Vache Baroque…