At the end of the final act, Otello has just killed Desdemona and he stands at the front of the stage, facing the audience. From the back of the stage Desdemona reappears and approaches Otello. Standing beside him, she simulates the taking of a knife from its sheath, raises it and plunges it into her belly, and Otello, taking a {…}
The world is divided into men and women. And only the unification of these two sides, through mutual understanding and respect can bridge the gap and bring about a new world full of equality. Sounds familiar right? It was what François Girard saw prior to 2013, and his vision remains ever true to this day. Perhaps even more prevalent. It {…}
Gioachino Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” has always been the gold standard for Italian opera buffa as it is based on the Figaro plays of 18th-century French playwright Pierre Beaumarchais. It seems that the buffa-style laughs and gags endemic to this masterpiece were not enough for Spanish director Joan Font, whose version is currently running at Houston Grand Opera. What {…}
The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey forced the Houston Grand Opera out of its regular space in the Wortham Theater Center and into a temporary one, dubbed HGO Resilience Theater inside the cavernous George Brown Convention Center in downtown. Experiencing a performance in such an unusual setting wasn’t a unique experience for me after seeing a production of “Tannhauser” inside a {…}
Mary Stuart was executed in 1587 after spending almost twenty years as Queen Elizabeth’s prisoner, bringing to end a turbulent relationship between the two Queens that stretched back over their entire lifetimes. It was a relationship that was to fire the imaginations of future generations and give rise to the productions of many works from plays and operas to numerous {…}
To begin, I’m not sure I can – in mere words – really convey the experience of seeing the New York City Opera’s production of “Cruzar la Cara de la Luna (To Cross the Face of the Moon).” I will, of course, attempt to do just that, but when a musical experience is both sui generis and yet – and {…}
Charles Gounod (1818-1893) is probably best known for his opera “Faust” or perennial arrangement of Bach’s “Ave Maria,” which countless choir boys have crooned with cherubic innocence if not perfect intonation. In fact the pious Parisian composer was extraordinarily prolific having written twelve and a half operas (“Maître Pierre” was not completed), six oratorios, three ballets and countless masses, motets and {…}
Many directors who dabble in the lyric theatre seem to think that they know better than the librettist or composer what an opera is about. “Improvements” can range from the introduction of a new character into the drama (eg. Mariusz Treliński’s ubiquitous “Mr. O” in “Yevgeny Onegin” for the Teatr Wielki in Warsaw) to scrawling a specific word onto the {…}
In recent years, Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” has slowly but surely established a potent foothold in the Metropolitan Opera’s standard repertory. The main reason? David McVicar’s striking and still awe-inspiring interpretation of Verdi’s middle-period masterwork. A Master At Work The inspiration of Francisco de Goya and his tableaus is obvious from the opening curtain and onwards. At the core of it {…}