Quests and Anticipations

This feature highlights selected performances of the Puccini operas at the Glimmerglass Festival and the San Francisco and San Diego Operas I am scheduled to review. This list is supplementary to previous lists in this “Quests and Anticipations” series of selected operas being performed from July, 2014 through February, 2015. These are Bizet’s “Carmen” in Santa Fe … Read more

This feature highlights selected performances of operas at the 2014 Glimmerglass Festival, and in San Francisco and Los Angeles that I am scheduled to review. This list is supplementary to previous lists in this “Quests and Anticipations” series of selected operas being performed from July, 2014 through February, 2015: These are Bizet’s “Carmen” in Santa Fe [See Popular … Read more

This feature highlights selected performances of operas in Paris, Marseille, Saint Louis and Los Angeles that I am scheduled to review. This list is supplementary to previous lists in this “Quests and Anticipations” series of selected operas being performed beginning April 2014. These are Verdi’s “La Traviata” and Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” in San Francisco in June, … Read more

This feature highlights selected performances of operas in the Alpine cities of Geneva, Zurich and Torino. This list is supplementary to previous lists in this “Quests and Anticipations” series of selected operas being performed beginning April 2014. These are Verdi’s “La Traviata” and Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” in San Francisco in June, 1014 [See In Quest of Italian Opera … Read more

This feature highlights selected performances of operas by the three early 19th century Italian composers collectively associated with the term “bel canto” opera. These performances are scheduled between April and November 2014, in Toronto, Santa Fe and San Francisco. This list is supplementary to previous lists in this “Quests and Anticipations” series of selected operas … Read more

This feature highlights selected performances of two French and two German operas being performed between April and August 2014, in San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Fe and Glimmerglass, New York. This list is supplementary to previous lists in this “Quests and Anticipations” series of selected operas being performed between April and August, 2014: These are Verdi’s … Read more

This feature highlights selected performances of three popular operas and a musical being performed between March and September 2014, each in a popular vacation area of the Southwestern United States. This supplements my other lists of highlighted performances in California during this period: These include performances of Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” in Los Angeles in … Read more

This feature highlights selected performances of Italian Operas in Texas and California during January and June 2014, each of which I am scheduled to attend and review. This supplements other lists of highlighted performances in these states during early 2014, including Italian Opera masterpieces of Donizetti at San Diego Opera and Los Angeles Opera [See … Read more

Several months ago, I posted a new title in my Quest and Anticipations series, relating to what I term as “high concept” production designers and stage directors of whose operatic innoavations I have approved. I reported on three new productions by Laurent Pelly, Lee Blakeley and Francesca Zambello, and a important revival of the Robert … Read more

In previous posts in the Quests and Anticipations series, I have separated the operas of Donizetti from those of two composers often associated with him, Rossini and Bellini, arguing, mostly recently at Coast to Coast Selections of Donizetti and Early Verdi Opera Performances that he more logically should be considered with the early works of Verdi, a close friend … Read more

In an earlier post in the Quests and Anticipations series, I gave my arguments for considering the Italian opera composers Rossini and Bellini together, and in the posts In Quest of Rossini and Bellini – April to October 2012 and In Quest of Rossini and Bellini – January to August 2013 highlighted performances of their operas in various parts of … Read more

Previous postings in my “Quests and Anticipations” series highlight September, 2013 performances of Boito’s “Mefistofele” in San Francisco [In Quest of “High Concept Direction” in Opera Performance – June-September 2013]. Also highlighted are productions of Bizet’s “Carmen” in Los Angeles and Delibes’ “Lakme” in Montreal [Best Bet Revivals of Live Opera Productions May-September, 2013] and of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” … Read more

These Wagnerian performances are my suggestions for consideration of opera goers in Washington, DC, San Francisco, Chicago and Phoenix. One is on my schedule for upcoming reviews:   Tristan und Isolde (Wagner), Washington National Opera, September 15(m), 18, 21, 24 and 27, 2013. As her first offering in her first season as Artistic Director of … Read more

The East Coast’s major summer operatic experience is the 44-year Glimmerglass Festival, located on Lake Otsego in the scenic rural Finger Lakes region of central New York state. Beginning in Summer 2011, Francesca Zambello assumed the job of Artistic and General Director of the festival, that has has lured opera goers to the Cooperstown, New … Read more

Grand Opera, whose most popular works offer poignant drama, theatrical situations and spectacle, is a favorite of the modern stage directors and production designers. Classic operas from the core repertory are rethought, often shifted in time and place, and presented in unfamiliar contexts. Sometimes their adventures in regietheater, as the Germans call it, are absurb (see The … Read more

An ongoing feature of this website is the “Best Bet Revivals” series. When one opera company mounts a physical production of an opera that has been favorably praised by this website, and offers it with a cast of singers who are comparable (at least) to those seen previously, then we alert potential opera goers to … Read more

In a previous post in the Quests and Anticipations series, I gave my arguments for considering the Italian opera composers Rossini and Bellini together, and highlighted United States performances of  their operas in various parts of the United States. See the highlighted operas for 2012, which included some exotic fare, and the subsequent performance reviews at In … Read more

An ongoing feature of this website is the “Best Bet Revivals” series. When one opera company mounts a physical production of an opera that has been favorably praised by this website, and offers it with a cast of singers who are comparable (at least) to those seen previously, then we alert potential opera goers to … Read more

Below is a selection of French operas, by Bizet, Massenet and Saint-Saens, with performances scheduled in California, New Mexico, Illinois and Washington, D.C., of productions that I have previously reviewed, or expect to see in their upcoming runs (or both).   Werther (Massenet), Washington National Opera, May 12, 14, 17, 19, 22, 25 and 27(m), … Read more

As noted in other postings in this “Quests and Anticipations” series, I prefer to segment the operas of the most famous 19th century Italian composers in a non-traditional way: (1) those of Rossini and Bellini, (2) those of Donizetti and early Verdi (i.e, those of the tw0 decades of Donizetti’s “Anna Bolena” and Verdi’s “Stiffelio”), … Read more

As we approach the Verdi and Wagner 2013 bicentennial observances, it is useful to consider not only the innovations that each made to opera, but the operatic environment that each composer, in his own way, transformed. In the case of Verdi, I have argued on these pages and elsewhere that we divide his body of … Read more

The year 2013 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi (as well as the bicentennial of the great German opera composer Richard Wagner). Opera companies throughout the world are creating new productions or brushing off their older productions of Verdi and Wagner operas. I have argued for … Read more

A half century ago, the only opera written earlier than Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro” that was occasionally performed by American opera companies was Gluck’s “Orfeo ed Euridice”. But since then the operas of Handel and Gluck have become much more familiar fare than anyone would have ever expected, and Monteverdi’s and sometimes even Vivaldi’s operas … Read more

An ongoing feature of this website is the “Best Bet Revivals” series. When one opera company mounts a physical production of an opera that has been favorably praised by this website, and offers it with a cast of singers who are comparable (at least) to those seen previously, then we alert potential opera goers to … Read more

I suppose it is still taught in “opera appreciation” classes, that in the early 19th century Italy there were three composers (Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti), who constituted a bel canto “school” of opera. Later in the century, it is taught, Giuseppe Verdi and after him Giacomo Puccini replaced them in the Italian public’s and The … Read more