Month: July 2013

The Santa Fe Opera revived Laurent Pelly’s 2009 production of Verdi’s “La Traviata”, which I have previously described in considerable detail [see Dessay’s Scintillating Role Debut as Violetta in Pelly’s Imaginative Santa Fe “Traviata” – July 3, 2009]. The revival includes most of Pelly’s concepts from the original production, although the second act sets are changed. … Read more

American oratorio composer Theodore Morrison and British stage director John Cox have collaborated on the creation of a new operatic work for counter-tenor David Daniels. The opera’s subject is the impact of a humiliating trial and brutal imprisonment of Irish author Oscar Wilde. A collaboration between the Santa Fe Opera and Opera Company of Philadelphia, … Read more

In an extraordinary revival of a once popular early 19th century work, the Santa Fe Opera presented its new production of Rossini’s “La Donna Del Lago (The Lady of the Lake)” to a sold out audience. The opera is based on Walter Scott’s famous poem The Lady of the Lake (not the same character as is associated … Read more

The 2013 Glimmerglass Festival celebrated the bicentennial of Richard Wagner’s birth with a new production of “The Flying Dutchman”. It also chose Giuseppe Verdi’s early comedy “Un Giorno di Regno” in a new American English translation as “King for a Day” as the bicentennial present for the Italian composer. The opera is comprised of scene … Read more

The 2013 Glimmerglass Festival alternates in rotation four musical evenings, of which one is a double bill whose two parts are entitled “Passions”. I have strongly recommended the first half of the double bill, the “Stabat Mater” [See Superlative: Anthony Roth Costanzo, Nadine Sierra, Ensemble Dancers Superb in Jessica Lang’s Visualization of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater – … Read more