William Burnett

The 2011 Glimmerglass Opera festival presented a double bill of 21st century one act operas, designed to illuminate the lives or art of early 20th century artists. The first half of the double bill was a 75 minute opera entitled “Later the Same Evening”. [Below: Sheldon Segal (Neal Ferreira) and Rose Segal (Andrea Carroll); edited … Read more

Bizet’s “Carmen”, the most often performed of all French operas, is one whose inherent drama presages success in a variety of settings. A strong cast of actor-singers, conducted by Festival Music Director David Angus, and intelligent stage direction by Anne Bogart assured that audiences at the Glimmerglass Opera Festival’s 914 seat Alice Busch Hall would … Read more

Discussions of Francesca Zambello’s insightful mountings of the masterpieces of opera as diverse as Wagner’s “Ring of the Nibelungs” and Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” have often appeared on this website. For the past quarter century, her ideas have impacted American opera performance. Her influence is now even greater as she assays her first season as … Read more

In the Europe of days of old, comic and serious opera had their own theaters. The tradition in the United States has been to employ both the masks of comedy and tragedy in any opera company’s repertory. But the comic genre itself has two masks – the standards such as Donizetti’s “L’Elisir d’Amore” and Johann … Read more

Concept director Peter Sellars is noted for his often brilliant, and almost always controversial, staging of classical and baroque operas, reworked to make some point about contemporary society. For Santa Fe Opera, he was commissioned to mount a production of Vivaldi’s 1735 opera “Griselda”, whose plot is derived from one of Boccaccio’s tales from his … Read more

Santa Fe Opera presented the first revival of its 2001 production of Berg’s “Wozzeck”, conceived by Daniel Slater with sets by Robert Innes Hopkins, although with a completely new cast. The lead role of Wozzeck proved to be an effective vehicle for showing off the vocal and histrionic talents of American baritone Richard Paul Fink. … Read more

Sufficient time has elapsed to permit a longer view of the operatic creations of the first half of the 20th century. George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” is one such work – one that at its premiere seemed to be among the most problematical and, perhaps, least operatic of the operatic fare of the 1930s. Much … Read more

Perhaps there are other long-time opera goers besides myself that have a special opera, for which every performance they have ever attended has been a world class, memorable event with a cast that within a few years becomes to be thought of as legendary. Mine is Puccini’s “La Boheme”. I have never seen the opera … Read more

No Gounod opera (and a disproportionately low number of French works in general) was performed in the first 54 seasons of the Santa Fe Opera’s acclaimed Summer Festivals. The 2011 festival (the 55th) opened with a new production of “Faust”, which restored virtually all of the cuts made to the world’s second most popular (after Bizet’s … Read more

This is the fourth report on the first complete performance of the tetralogy of operas that comprise Wagner’s “Ring of the Nibelung”. Although most of concept director Francesca Zambello’s ideas for staging the work have surfaced over the past five years, as the first three of the four operas debuted with Washington National Opera at … Read more

San Francisco Opera’s first complete performances of “Der Ring des Nibelungens” in a dozen years, continued with “Siegfried” in Francesca Zambello’s reconceptualization of Wagner’s tetralogy of operas, based on American images. In reflecting on Zambello’s concept, one of its striking features is portraying  the tetralogy’s major characters as “downwardly mobile” – exemplified in “Das Rheingold” … Read more

This is the fourth time I have reviewed Francesca Zambello’s reconceptualization of Wagner’s “Die Walküre”, the second installment of the four opera “Ring of the Nibelungs”. The Wotan and Brünnhilde for three of the reviewed performances, respectively, were Mark Delavan and Nina Stemme. The Sieglinde for two of the performances was Anja Kampe, and I … Read more

When the ideas for Francesca Zambello’s American Ring, a 21st century relocation of Wagner’s four opera “Der Ring des Nibelungen” to North American shores, was first announced in mid-decade by the Washington National Opera and San Francisco Opera, a number of broad themes were envisioned that incorporated features of American history, environmentalism, and the role of … Read more

For the past half decade Francesca Zambello’s vision of  an American Ring – that would present Richard Wagner’s four opera “The Ring of the Nibelung” utilizing images and situations evocative of the history and culture of the United States – has been unfolding. Conceived as a joint project of the Washington National Opera and San Francisco … Read more

eight

A bravura Samson in the French heroic style sung by German tenor Endrik Wottrich (who replaced an ailing Jose Cura for the remainder of Cura’s scheduled performances); a credible vocal performance by Vesselina Kasarova as Dalila, whose role debut occurred just two weeks earlier; a rousing delivery as the Grand Priest by Laurent Naouri; and … Read more

In 2010, a new production of Offenbach’s operetta “La Périchole” at the Komische Oper’s 1270 seat opera house in Berlin proved controversial, with negative reviews and reports of claque booing. It was revived in 2011. Undaunted by the previous year’s critical scoldings, I decided I would see for myself as to whether the revival of a production … Read more