Category: Performances

Music-masters, singing lessons and serenading bands all abound in
Rossini’s comic masterpiece, Il Barbiere di Sivilglia, but at
this performance it was the medical rather than the musical puns which drew the
loudest laughs.

This revival of Jonathan Kent’s 2006 production of Tosca brings to an end the ROH’s ‘Italian Season’ in fine style.

Absence of plot is by no means an impediment in opera.

Ravenna once served as the capital of the Roman Empire in the 5th and 6th centuries C.E.

For Americans of older generations Porgy and Bess is surely a primal experience, formed by the 1959 Otto Preminger film with Sammy Davis Jr. as Sportin’ Life, the audio recording derived from the 1952 London production with Leontyne Price as Bess, and a first encounter with Porgy and Bess as an opera in the artistically satisfying, and well traveled 1976 Houston production (was it twenty-five performances in the War Memorial Opera House?).

The success of Opera Theatre of St. Louis’ 2009 festival season reflects the intelligent leadership of both the previous triumvirate (Charles MacKay, Colin Graham, and Stephen Lord) and the new recruits Timothy O’Leary and James Robinson.

Bizet’s famed heroine Carmen returned this June to the place where it all began, in a critically-heralded new production by Adrian Noble. Frank Cadenhead was on hand to experience the staging held at the opulent newly-renovated OpÈra Comique.

It’s not often that the accompanist is given top billing in a vocal recital, even when he’s the venue’s musical director.

Glyndebourne is the epitome of British opera festivals. Seventy-five years ago, John Christie founded the tradition of “country house opera”, where opera can be enjoyed in beautiful settings.

On the whole, I’d prefer the conspirators to be sitting on toilets…