Reviews

Sarasota Opera’s 2020 winter season opened in February with a production of Puccini’s “La Boheme”, the quintessential Italian opera. I reviewed the ninth of 13 scheduled performances. Sarasota Opera’s “Boheme” was well-sung and admirably staged. Regrettably, one week after the performance, the fast-moving spread of the Covid-19 virus led the Sarasota Opera to cancel the … Read more

Sarasota Opera’s 2020 winter season included Donizetti’s 1832 operatic comedy, “The Elixir of Love (L’Elisir d’Amore)”, presented in an attractive production with a strong cast.

The Sarasota Opera mounted an attractive and dramatically satisfying production of Charles Gounod’s melodious opera “Roméo et Juliette”, inspired by Shakespeare’s romantic play.

Sarasota Opera mounted Alfredo Catalani’s masterwork, “La Wally”, one of the core works created as part of the Italian verismo movement that began in the 1890s. Caitlin Crabill’s La Wally Like his Italian contemporaries Pietro Mascagni and Giacomo Puccini, Catalani was a disciple of the composer Richard Wagner, whose influence can be discerned in the … Read more

The Los Angeles Opera mounted Donizetti’s operatic masterpiece “Roberto Devereux” about the aging Queen Elizabeth I’s romantic entanglement with the dangerously impetuous Earl of Essex, Robert Devereux. A few days before the first performance, Canary Islands soprano Davinia Rodriguez, who was to sing the role of Elizabeth I, became ill and withdrew from the performance … Read more