William Burnett

Santa Fe Opera Festival atmosphere is usually most felicitous, the New Mexico weather almost always well-behaved. Yet, if one attends enough Santa Fe performances, there will be times when the term “atmosphere” has more than metaphorical significance. Distant lightning can supplement the lighting director’s design, as it did two nights earlier at a performance of … Read more

The Santa Fe Opera’s new production of “Arabella” marked the return of Richard Strauss to the Summer Festival repertory after an absence of four seasons –  the first time in Santa Fe Opera history that the Viennese composer’s compositions had been absent for that length of time. Erin Wall’s Arabella The Festival’s last performed Strauss … Read more

The Santa Fe Opera, over the past three festival seasons, has added three important 19th century French operas that it had never before produced in its 55 year history to its performance repertory. 2010 saw the company premiere of Offenbach’s “Tales of Hoffman”, 2011 of Gounod’s “Faust” and 2012 of Bizet’s “Les Pecheurs de Perles … Read more

Upon Francesca Zambello’s appointment as General and Artistic Director of the Glimmerglass Festival, she announced that each year’s festival season would include a classic Broadway musical. In 2011 she presented “Annie Get Your Gun” [see my review at Deborah Voigt, Rod Gilfry Romp in Irving Berlin’s “Annie Get Your Gun” – Glimmerglass Festival, August 12, 2011]. … Read more

Cincinnati Opera mounted its 113th performance in history of Verdi’s most often performed opera, “La Traviata”, as part of its 92nd season of grand opera.  To perform the roles of the lovers, Violetta and Alfredo, Cincinnati Opera enlisted the husband and wife team of Ailyn Pérez and Stephen Costello – two of opera’s new generation of handsome, skilled … Read more

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A feature of Francesca Zambello’s stewardship of New York’s Glimmerglass Festival, which began in 2011, is her Artist-in-Residence program. The opera singer so designated for 2012 is bass-baritone Eric Owens, who opened the season in the role of Amonasro in a new Zambello production of  Verdi’s “Aida”. Although he was a memorable presence in Zambello’s … Read more

Glimmerglass Opera Festival audiences have proven responsive to the theatrical judgment of their new general and artistic director, Francesca Zambello, Now in her second season of guiding this premiere Upstate New York operatic festival, she has forged alliances with other theatrical companies with brilliant results. Emblematic of the attempts to expand the operatic repertory enjoyed … Read more

In Fall 2005, in the last year of the controversial San Francisco Opera general directorship of Pamela Rosenberg, a 43 year old Italian conductor, Nicola Luisotti, made his debut at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House. It had been only three year’s prior that Luisotti’s international debut had taken place, at Germany’s Stuttgart Opera (Rosenberg’s … Read more

Having reported on the premiere of the Jun Kaneko production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” [see Perfect Game: Gunn, Shagimuratova Shine in New Kaneko-Designed “Magic Flute” – June 13, 2012], I attended the fifth of the nine scheduled performances. Each of the observations made in my first review were reconfirmed by the later performance. The cast, … Read more

South African soprano Amanda Echalaz, who has had a string of recent triumphs in the Italian dramatic soprano repertory in Great Britain, led a young cast in a new Stephen Barlow production of Puccini’s “Tosca” for opening night of 2012’s Santa Fe Opera Summer Festival. The evening was the occasion for a rousing role debut … Read more

The Further Thoughts of William on Michael Cavanagh’s production of “Nixon in China” Having reported on the San Francisco Opera premiere of Adams’ quarter-century old opera “Nixon in China” that occurred nine days earlier [see 25 Years Old, “Nixon in China” Arrives at San Francisco Opera – June 8, 2012], I attended the third performance in … Read more

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San Francisco Opera’s current General Director, David Gockley, who has been a champion of integrating new works into a repertory that balances operatic tradition with innovation, has long been associated with Adams’ “Nixon in China”. In fact, the premiere of this work occurred in 1987 at Houston Grand Opera, under Gockley’s leadership, in the season … Read more

On my most recent previous visit (2010) to the Kennedy Center for a Washington National Opera performance, I witnessed the revival of a Thaddeus Strassberger production of Thomas’ “Hamlet”, borrowed from another company and conducted by Placido Domingo. In that performance, South Korean baritone Leo An sang a comprimario role [see my review at  Michael … Read more

Two Italian artists – lyric tenor Francesco Meli and mezzo-soprano Sonia Ganassi – are respectively Werther and Charlotte in their Washington National Opera debut roles. The production of Massenet’s “Werther” in which they appeared was originally created for Opera Australia (1989) and is presently owned by Opera de Montreal with new costumes by Barila. “Werther” … Read more

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“Orphée et Eurydice”, the augmented French version of Gluck’s “Orfeo”, redesigned for Marie Antoinette’s Paris, has much to offer a 21st century audience, particularly the abundance of melody. It also is a practical offering for budget-challenged opera companies. Layna Chianakas’ Orphée and Marnie Breckenridge’s Eurydice Opera Santa Barbara was able to  mount the production, which requires … Read more