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are the emotions natural to the fan of any special singer when he arrives at the opera house to learn she has withdrawn from the performance and been replaced by an unknown.
Category: Performances
Anna Christy Triumphs in Lucia di Lammermoor at ENO
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.
ENO’s The Mikado
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.
LA Opera: Tristan und Isolde
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.”
Rodelinda at Portland
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.”
Navajo oratorio a triumph in Phoenix
A sound designer? Isnít that merely a euphemistic upgrade of ìsound engineer?î
Tosca at COC
An air of anticipation filled the Four Seasons Centre as the announcer walked across the stage to say that soprano Ester S¸megi was ill and would not be performing.
Tannh‰user at San Diego Opera
To open its 2008 season, San Diego Opera restored the production of Richard Wagner’s Tannh‰user that G¸nther Schneider-Siemsson created for the Metropolitan Opera three decades ago.
Madam Butterfly at ENO
Anthony Minghella’s visually-arresting staging, a co-production with New York’s Metropolitan Opera and the Lithuanian National Opera, returned this month to its original home at the London Coliseum after a gap of two years.
Awesome Angelika Again
While I eagerly seized upon an opportunity to hear Angelika Kirschlager live for the first time, having written in very recent weeks about not one but two of the star mezzo’s current CD releases, I ventured to Frankfurt’s Alte Oper feeling a little bit like her stalker.