Month: March 2013

My colleague Tom Rubbert had reviewed the first Los Angeles performance of this production earlier in the month [Wagner’s “Flying Dutchman” Sails into Los Angeles, Making a Terrific Splash – L. A. Opera, March 9, 2013] while I was reviewing operas on the opposite coast. I had seen the production nine years ago at the … Read more

Last December, I reported on a performance of the Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production of Rossini’s “La Cenerentola” in Paris, and the confluence of this influential production (which appeared in its first permutation at the San Francisco Opera in 1969) with a revival of interest in Rossini’s great body of operatic work. [See Ponnelle’s Historic “Cenerentola” at the … Read more

A fully dressed Mariachi stand-up orchestra in silver-studded black traditional Mariachi costumes with huge straw Sombrero hats in an Opera House performing an Opera, you ask in disbelief? [Below: the Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitan amidst representations of monarch butterflies; edited image, based an Edward Wilensky photograph, courtesy of the San Diego Opera.] Surely you jest, you say, but no … Read more

Soprano Angela Meade’s role debut as Norma in Bellini’s opera of that name occurred in a Washington National Opera performance at the Kennedy Center. [Below: Angela Meade as Norma; edited image, based on a Scott Suchman photograph, courtesy of the Washington National Opera.] Buttressed by the indulgent but effective conducting of Daniele Rustioni in his … Read more

Commemorating stellar super-composer Richard Wagner’s 200th Birth Date on May 22, 2013, Los Angeles Opera joins many other opera companies, worldwide, by presenting one of his most entrancing-dramatic works, Der Fliegende Hollaender — The Flying Dutchman. The cast features Tomas Thomasson as The Dutchman, making his Los Angeles Opera debut. Tomasson’s Dutchman brought down the house. He scored a home run at Los Angeles Opera as did this entire … Read more