Earlier this month, OPERA America’s McKay Studio was home to a compelling performance featuring the latest art songs by composer and pianist Felix Jarrar. Entitled “Liederabend with Felix Jarrar & Friends,” the event showcased the vocal talents of mezzo-soprano Jessica Trainor Tasucu, baritone Benjamin Howard, contralto Allison Gish, and tenor Ryan Morgan. Jarrar’s diverse repertoire of art songs ranged from {…}
Photo: Pablo Lorente Opéra Royal de Versailles’ “Dido and Aeneas” has, on paper, great musicians, a good stage director, good dancers, and even William Christie. But that was not enough to prevent leaving the theater frustrated. The principal point of frustration came from how poorly conceived the production itself was. This failure is exclusive to good and well-intentioned artists—those from {…}
There is no shortage of good and, sometimes, exceptional recordings of Puccini’s “Turandot,” with aficionados generally swaying between Molinari-Pradelli’s studio release (with Franco Corelli and Birgit Nilsson) and Mehta’s landmark take from 1972. Add to this Franco Ghione and, in excerpts, Barbirolli’s visceral “Turandots” from the pre-war period, and nearly all aspects of Puccini’s swan song – from the ritualistic {…}
Photo: Ruth Walz Josephine Baker was born into poverty in the early 1900s in St. Louis, Missouri, at a time when open discrimination against black people was enshrined in the Jim Crow laws. By the age of 12, she had dropped out of school and, within a year, was married. Fast forward to the mid-1920s, and she was the toast {…}
Photo: Ruth Walz Whatever one thinks about the efficacy of the measures introduced to combat the COVID crisis, the political processes by which they were introduced should be a serious cause for concern. Governments throughout the West rushed through measures, often by-passing parliamentary discussion and oversight and ruled by decree. Criticism and dissent were stifled. The media, which should have {…}
“Mélisande” by Florent Hubert and stage director Richard Brunel is a post-modern reading of Claude Debussy and Maurice Maeterlinck’s masterpiece “Pelléas et Mélisande.” The music was completely rearranged to be played by five instruments, and many characters and scenes were chopped off. Given the fact that Debussy’s opera is a theatrical and musical colossus, what does one gain by destroying {…}
By the end of Act one, things started to get boring. Nothing seemed to work: the idea behind the staging was not evident; the singers were neither extraordinarily funny nor musical; the choreography was senseless. However, at the beginning of Act two, mezzo-soprano Irina de Baghy enters the scene, and everything is transformed. Humor and music finally arrived in l’Athénée’s {…}
Photo: Seattle Opera What a treat to see a world premiere deliver a gripping operatic experience. Everyone involved in this endeavor earned kudos individually and cumulatively—the vision of what was possible was manifested collaboratively, each creative element building upon the others. “A Thousand Splendid Suns” is a new opera based on Khaled Hosseini’s best-selling 2007 novel about the resilience of {…}
Photo: Marc Brenner Having an unequivocal passion for Puccini, this reviewer must confess to being somewhat conflicted over his final work. These concerns, though, have always been assuaged with the knowledge that many others have also been plagued with such uncertainty, not least with the original work itself, for, of course, the maestro died before the completion of “Turandot.” After {…}
