(Credit: © 2022 ROH. Bill Cooper) Damiano Michieletto’s new production of Gaetano Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale” first hit the Royal Opera House stage in 2019, and now finds itself revived by Daniel Dooner. It’s a taut and challenging production of a work whose petty cruelties and incipient viciousness tend to be smoothed out by caricature, slapstick, and the desire to give {…}
Photographer Credit: Chris Lee Joyce DiDonato’s “Eden” is sparking insightful conversations about what it means for us to experience nature through the creative power of community collaboration. The mezzo-soprano’s global tour for her latest album, “Eden,” opens new pathways for classical music to ignite transformative possibilities for all, including children. On April 23, 2022, the spirit of collaboration was clear {…}
(Photo: Michele Crosera) Given that Venice is the city of Vivaldi’s birth and the scene of most of his musical successes, it is fitting that La Fenice has been one of the leading companies in the movement toward rehabilitating staged performances of his operas. This season’s production of the composer’s 1735 work “La Griselda” will mark the fifth consecutive year {…}
(Credit: Metropolitan Opera / Marty Sohl) I could commence this review by going into the political implications and problematic circumstances surrounding this production, but another writer has already done an excellent job spotlighting all that. Instead, I am going to jump into the performance itself, the second in this run of the famed Puccini work and Franco Zeffirelli’s iconic and, {…}
(Credit: Alain Hanel) On April 26th the Opéra de Monte-Carlo presented Sir Bryn Terfel in recital, marking the legendary bass-baritone’s first return to the Monaco stage since 2016, as his recital planned for February 2021 had been cancelled due to COVID travel restrictions. If one had to choose a single word to sum up Terfel’s recital, it would be generous. {…}
(Photo credit: Marty Sohl) This review was written in collaboration with David Salazar. On April 23, the Metropolitan Opera opened a new production of “Lucia di Lammermoor.” This marked the second production of Donizetti’s masterpiece during General Manager Peter Gelb’s term. In 2007, the company brought a production by Mary Zimmerman which set the piece in Victorian times and {…}
(Photo: Catherine Ashmore) Such has been the success of Margret Atwood’s novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” that, since its publication in 1985, it now finds itself positioned alongside other major 20th century dystopian novels, drawing comparisons with Orwell’s “1984” and Huxley’s “Brave New World.” Like them, it has entered the cultural mainstream, spawning plays, films, a ballet, a major television series, {…}
On Saturday, April 9, 2022, San Francisco Performances presented renowned German baritone Matthias Goerne and notable prize-winning young Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho in an extraordinary concert. The performance was like being at a mountain retreat on a distant planet, drinking distilled ambrosia while hearing rare melodies in an exotic language. Clapping nearly seemed irrelevant; how do we applaud such a {…}
(Photo: Clive Barda) David Alden’s 2018 production of “Lohengrin,” Wagner’s hokey fable of love, fidelity, and politics, is receiving its first revival from Peter Relton at the Royal Opera House. Alden’s setting is generic postwar Europe, all bombed out windows and bare brick, with buildings at precariously jaunty angles (sets by Paul Steinberg). In the ruins of this world Konig {…}