The ABAO 2022-23 season opened with an offering of the critical edition of Bellini’s “I Puritani” by Fabrizio della Seta. It featured Bel Canto expert Jessica Pratt and promising tenors Xavier Anduaga in the award-winning production by Emilio Sagi. Sagi’s “Puritani” has been already appeared in several theatres around the world, its last revival was at the Opera de Oviedo {…}
(Credit: Cory Weaver) San Francisco Opera’s production of “Eugene Onegin” took audiences back in time to the Russia of Alexander Pushkin’s classic poem. Robert Carsen’s scenic rendering gave us a cross-section of the world as it was, with peasants and privileged, the drama of duels, balls, and bedrooms. Spread before the audience, in blush pink and dark blue, peachy yellow {…}
James Marvel’s new production of “Tosca” successfully portrayed the classic murderous drama in a much milder and more delicate way than its traditional setting. While right off the bat being almost lighthearted, there was no holding back from the melodramatic themes. At the core of this was the depiction of some unexpected characters. Although sometimes an overlooked character, the Sacrastin {…}
(Photo: Michele Crosera) On May 13th 1767, the students of the Salzburg University Gymnasium premiered the three-act intermezzo “Apollo et Hyacinthus.” The significance of the event was that it was the first performance of an opera composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was 11 years old at the time. Although its music certainly has much to commend it, dramatically it {…}
(Credit: Teatro alla Scala / Brescia – Amisano) On Oct. 18, the Teatro alla Scala held the second performance of Giordano’s “Fedora.” The work first premiered in 1898 and has a history with the theater with Maria Callas and Mirella Freni among the most renowned performers of the work. It has also been a vehicle for Franco Corelli, Plácido Domingo, {…}
It is a very rare and no less fortunate occurrence for two of the leading sopranos in America to release, within months from each other, their respective take on one of the most dangerously underestimated roles in all of opera: Violetta Valéry for whom, so the saying goes, three voices are needed to match the transition from the melismatic first {…}
The final production of the Festival Verdi was “La Forza del Destino,” one of the most difficult of Verdi’s work to present. Aside from its massive cast, the work also requires multiple set changes and an epic landscape. How a director goes about approaching it can be a huge challenge. For the Festival Verdi, they found a great director in {…}
It is something of a paradox that the proverbial dearth of tenors coexists with the announcement, in regular intervals, of some new vocal phenomenon which, after a solo recital or two, the recording industry decides to “crown before they are king” – to loosely and no less cynically paraphrase a famous saying by Mascagni. Yet too many are the instances {…}
(Credit: Sunny Martini) From the second bar of Richard Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” in the hands of conductor Jordan De Souza, it was clear Seattle Opera’s production (which opened Saturday night and runs through Oct. 29) would be sonically something special. It turned out to be special in several ways, in fact. In that second bar, the famous “Tristan chord”—which {…}