Category: Performances

Opera North is one of the most innovative opera companies in Britain.

Perhaps the most beloved comic opera, Rossiniís Il barbiËre di Siviglia has never left the repertoire.

San Diego Opera apparently has raided the vaults of Lincoln Center opera companies, circa the 1970s.

The Royal Opera’s new Salome is set roughly in the 1930s, in surroundings which refer overtly to Pasolini’s SalÚ or the 120 Days of Sodom, populated by uniformed soldiers and naked whores.

Dread and disgruntle are the emotions natural to the fan of any special singer when he arrives at the opera house to learn she has withdrawn from the performance and been replaced by an unknown.

ENO doesnít really go in for bel canto opera. Other than a Maria Stuarda back in the mid 1990s, the only Donizetti opera in the companyís repertoire in the recent past has been the popular Líelisir díamore.

Director Jonathan Miller was there at the curtain call to greet the first night of this latest revival of a production which has now been in ENO’s repertoire for twenty years.

My Valentine’s Day gift came a bit early courtesy of Los Angeles Opera. Of course, it is to be hoped that your own celebration has a happier outcome than that of opera’s most famous Love Couple, “Tristan und Isolde.”

Valentine’s Day may not quite be in the same major holiday league with the Fourth of July or New Year’s Eve, but you wouldn’t have known it from the fireworks emanating from the stage of Portland Opera, in the form of some dazzling Valentine’s night vocalizing in quite a fine production of Handel’s “Rodelinda.”

A sound designer? Isnít that merely a euphemistic upgrade of ìsound engineer?î