Month: October 2012

In addition to reviewing the first performance of San Francisco Opera’s 2012 production of Bellini’s “I Capuleti e i Montecchi” [See Joyce DiDonato, Nicole Cabell Sing Beautifully in Bellini’s Bel Canto “Capulets and Montagues” – San Francisco Opera, September 29, 2012], I attended the fourth performance. [Below: Romeo (Joyce Di Donato, left) embraces a concerned Giulietta … Read more

Two weeks prior to this performance, I attended a pre-performance lecture at the Los Angeles Opera, presented by the evening’s conductor, Music Director James Conlon. His thesis is that Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”, the opera he was to conduct, is impossible to know completely. Whatever one’s interpretation of the events occurring the last day on earth … Read more

I suspect that readers of this website will not be surprised by a positive review from me of San Francisco Opera’s premiere of a production of Heggie’s now two-year old opera “Moby Dick”. In my comments on the production debuts in Dallas and San Diego  [see World Premiere: Heggie’s Theatrically Brilliant, Melodic “Moby Dick” at … Read more

Washington National Opera imported Stephen Lawless’ production of Donizetti’s “Anna Bolena” from the Dallas Opera. Conceived by Lawless as the first part of the so-called “Tudor Trilogy”, followed by Donizetti’s “Maria Stuarda” and “Roberto Devereux”, it was the last of the three productions (with set designs by his frequent collaborator, the Belgian Benoit Dugardyn) to … Read more