Reviews, appreciation and analysis of all things opera
Santa Fe Opera’s new production of “La Finta Giardiniera” proved to be an effectively mounted and beautifully sung presentation of the 18-year old Mozart’s foray into romantic comic opera. Each aria is a masterpiece. Santa Fe Opera audiences were treated to a performance in which the seven principals were carefully chosen to excel in an opera of which the company intends … Read more
My final mainstage experience at the 2015 Glimmerglass Festival was attending a second performance of Anne Bogart’s staging of Verdi’s “Macbeth” [See my first review at Review: Gripping Portraits by Eric Owens, Melody Moore in Anne Bogart’s Staging of Verdi’s “Macbeth” – Glimmerglass Festival, July 17, 2015]. Even with so much to admire in the three … Read more
This post continues a series of conversations that I have had with British opera director John Pascoe. Wm: Last week, your long-time colleague, Maestro Alan Curtis, so important to the movement to prepare scholarly and performable editions of baroque opera works, died in Florence. I learned of his death from you as I was on my way … Read more
cMadeline Sayet’s new production of Mozart’s “Magic Flute” sets in the Woodlands of Central New York State will receive 12 performances at the 2015 Glimmerglass Festival. Her production has become the vehicle for displaying the vocal talents of Pennsylvania lyric tenor Sean Panikkar and Korean coloratura soprano So Young Park, admirably supported by strong cast of co-principals. Sean … Read more
Francesca Zambello, long an advocate for presenting classics of American theater in opera houses, chose Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide” to stage for the 2015 Glimmerglass Festival. When compared with Bernstein’s blockbuster hit “West Side Story”, whose composition was contemporaneous, “Candide” has been considered unsuccessful. [Below: David Garrison as the poet-dramatist Voltaire; edited image, based on a Dory … Read more