Category: Performances

On a stormy evening in Houston (both in and outside of the house), Houston Grand Opera’s opening night production of Verdi’s Rigoletto went off with a thunderous bang.

Schubert’s music ‘suggests a rippling movement and by the side of the rippling a flowering: it has the variety and unsurprising naturalness of moving water and springing herb’ (Capell) and this same naturalness and sense of flowing ease are the very qualities which make John Mark Ainsley such a special interpreter of this composer.

Rome’s opera house was built in 1880, in the explosion of building that followed the unification of Italy with Rome as its capital.

Rigoletto is the ideal first opera: a taut tale, comprehensible characters, terrific tunes, and not an ounce of fat anywhere.

Was Tony Kushner’s monumental play Angels in America in need of being musicalized?

The current revival of Cav and Pag at the Met went off like clockwork, with all the comfort and reliability that implies for a repertory house and all the success these tried and true verismo stalwarts merit.

I cursed myself for not having turned on the television sooner.

William Kentridge is a South African artist who works in charcoal and eraser (smudges) on paper, in small animated film and video segments (black and white), in theater, and now in opera. Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses was his first operatic project that took place in 1998 in collaboration with South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Theater.

In the current weak economy many an opera company has retrenched its programming to present primarily the most popular operas.