Photo: © Lloyd Winters Unlike ballet, which has “The Nutcracker” as a festive staple, there aren’t very many Christmas operas. “La bohème” opens on Christmas eve, and there is invariably snow, but yuletide is hardly the subject of the opera. ENO were scheduled to perform John Adams nativity oratorio “El Niño” during lockdown, but it sadly got canned. Along comes {…}
(Photo: Marek Olbrzymek) Would any opera house be bold enough to present a work about the horrors of life in a gulag in which the guilty and innocent are thrown together to be abused, debased and left to die? Undoubtedly, the answer is yes! What if it were to be presented in a Christian context, in which Christ walks among {…}
(Credit: Charles Duprat / Opéra national de Paris) (This review is for performances on November 25 and 27) Netia Jones’ staging proves how much an ill-conceived mis-en-scene can affect the music, even when it is Mozart. In Portuguese, we say that Mozart’s music must be as a perfect and smooth as a rare pearl. There is even an adjective “perolado” {…}
San Francisco Opera outdid itself with Christoph Willibald Gluck’s 18th century masterpiece, “Orpheo ed Euridice.” An absolute gem, the opera was the piece de resistance of the season. The cast, the set, the music, all in a new production by director Matthew Ozawa and conducted by acclaimed early music interpreter Peter Whelan in his American opera stage debut. Rena Butler made {…}
This review is based on performances on Nov. 15 & 18, 2022. In every opera house, there is always an informal smoker’s meeting outside in the entr’acte. It is the best place to “feel the mood” of how an opera performance is being received. Hence, I am there solely for journalistic reasons, and nothing more. On this occasion, I went {…}
(Photo: Festival Janacek Brno) Janacek’s song cycle “The Diary of One Who Disappeared” is a regular inclusion at the Janacek Brno Festival. Yet such have been the variety of performances, they can often appear as very different works. At the 2020 festival, the cycle was presented as a staged work using Janáček’s own staging instructions, with Pavol Breslik in the {…}
(Photo: Clive Barda) Of Dvorak’s 10 operas, only “Rusalka” receives regular stagings outside his Czech homeland. Listening to the recordings of his other operas, it is not clear as to why this should be the case. Certainly, the dramatic quality of the music is strong and contains plenty of engaging melodies, and they would certainly bear comparison with many operas {…}
On a cold and dark November 18th, Detroit Opera [DO] performed the penultimate opera of their 2021/2022 season: Charles Gounod’s celebrated opera Faust. An immortal tale of deception and redemption, this operatic classic promised audiences a night of heavy allegories. Using Director Lileana Blain-Cruz’s 2019 version, originally created for Opera Omaha’s production, with movement curated by dancer and choreographer Raja {…}
SPOILER & CONTENT WARNING: There will be a lot of spoilers for the plot details of this opera. There are also references to self-harm and suicide. In 2012, Kevin Puts’s “Silent Night” won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. And following that victory, the opera, which premiered in Minnesota in 2011, seemingly toured all over the country getting performances at Arizona {…}