Category: Performances

The most interesting opera on ETO’s Spring 2008 tour was Carlisle Floyd’s 1950s tale of religious hypocrisy in the rural Deep South, based on the Apocryphal tale of Susannah and the Elders.

The last of the three operas on ETO’s Spring 2008 tour was sung in English, and updated to a Spain of the mid-twentieth century under Franco.

Opera companies often tout new productions as a major attraction of their seasons.

UC Opera’s reputation for showcasing rare large-scale works has been boosted this year with the UK premiere of this 1846 opera by Edouard Lalo after a Schiller play.

As Anna Russell might say: “The three operas of Puccini’s ‘Il Trittico’ take place on a luxury cruise liner. . . . . On it.”

Let me say up front that I like Jake Heggie’s work. I feel he has a true gift for soaring and meaningful melody, a great ear for orchestral effects, a talent for picking good source material, and a knack for crafting affecting melodrama (in the best sense of that word) that can move an audience to tears.

Do dysfunctional families outnumber the ones that move through life untroubled, or is it — to paraphrase Tolstoy — that every dysfunctional family is dysfunctional in its own way and thus of greater interest to writers and composers?

I bet this doesn’t happen at the movies:

Let us, for one example among many, take the capstan song in Act I.

James Conlon has become the artistic heart and soul of Los Angeles Opera in his second season as music director.