Reviews

Since Francesca Zambello assumed the directorship of New York’s Glimmerglass Festival in 2011, an American musical, performed by operatic voices has been one of each festival’s four MainStage offerings. This year, Zambello’s well-traveled “Show Boat” production, arrived at the Glimmerglass Festival to take its place as 2019’s musical. “Show Boat” (1927) is an historically important … Read more

Francesca Zambello, General Director of the Glimmerglass Festival, brought her imaginative production of “La Traviata” to the Festival’s Alice Busch Theater. Zambello conceives the party at the opera’s beginning as Violetta reliving of her first meeting with Alfredo while she, on her death bed, awaits Alfredo’s promised arrival. [Below: the final quintet from Verdi’s “La … Read more

The Glimmerglass Festival presented the world premiere of an important new opera, with a libretto by Tazewell Thompson, by Broadway musical composer Jeanine Tesori (who won a 2015 Tony for Fun Home), . The opera is concerned with the impact on a Harlem policeman, his wife and their community when the policeman’s son is shot … Read more

The 2019 Glimmerglass Festival includes a new production of John Corigliano’s opera “The Ghosts of Versailles”. It is a sprawling work whose complexity has limited the venues that have performed it. The Glimmerglass Festival has taken on the challenge of presenting the work in a co-production with France’s Château de Versailles Spectacles. The Glimmerglass Festival’s … Read more

The Santa Fe Opera, for the second time in its history, presented Bizet’s “Pearl Fishers”, beautifully sung by its four principal artists. Corinne Winters’ Leila Maryland soprano Corinne Winters performed the role of the priestess Leila, skillfully negotiating the coloratura runs of O dieu Brahma! and enlisting her beautiful lyric voice for the luxuriously melodic … Read more

The Santa Fe Opera opened its 2019 season with a new production of Puccini’s “La Boheme”, directed by Mary Birnbaum. Vanessa Vasquez’ Mimi The evening proved to be a triumph for Arizona soprano Vanessa Vasquez as Mimi, leading an impressive young cast. [Photo: Mimi (Vanessa Vasquez, standing, center) joins (seated from left to right) Rodolfo … Read more

The San Francisco Opera’s final offering of its 2018-19 season was Sir David McVicar’s production of Dvorak’s “Rusalka”, the story of a human Prince and the water-sprite Rusalka, each an inhabitant of a separate world. Although Rusalka and the Prince both wish to love one another, the forces that weigh against that love ultimately dooms … Read more

For only the second time in its history, the San Francisco Opera mounted a production of Handel’s operatic masterpiece, “Orlando”. Its first series of performances took place 34 years ago, during a time when baroque opera was only beginning to be performed regularly after an absence from the operatic stage of two centuries. For 2019, … Read more

The San Francisco Opera typically mounts five operas every fall and mounts three more the following summer. Tonight the second part of the company’s 2018-19 season opened with New York director Francesca Zambello’s production of Bizet’s “Carmen”, based on Zambello’s 2006 production for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and the Norwegian Opera. J’Nai Bridges … Read more

The Spanish opera, “El Gato Montés”, composed by Manuel Penella in 1916, was mounted by the Los Angeles Opera for the second time in a quarter century. The opera is most famous for its immediately recognizable second act pasodoble, an orchestral interlude that has become the music most heard in association with bullfight ceremonies. Penella … Read more

The Dallas Opera mounted the late Lee Blakeley’s attractive production of Verdi’s final masterpiece, “Falstaff”, based on Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor”. The cast assembled for the ten principal roles was an extraordinary array of operatic talent, as fine a cast as one can imagine for the work. Mark Delavan’s Falstaff Much of Arizona … Read more

The Houston Grand Opera mounted Danish director Kasper Holten’s production of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”. Holten’s concept departs from traditional ways of presenting Mozart’s operatic masterpiece – where the Don is dragged to Hell by a ghostly stone statue. Kasper Holten’s Production, Es Devlin’s Sets and Luke Halls’ Video Design [Photo: the upper floor rooms (left … Read more

American baritone Thomas Hampson and his real life son-in-law Italian-born bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni melded their personas in a beautifully sung and impressively acted operatic biopic of Mozart’s illustrious librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte. The opera, whose music was by Irish-born American composer Tarik O’Regan, and its libretto, by British director John Caird, proved to be an … Read more

The Los Angeles Opera, which had never previously performed Mozart’s “La Clemenza di Tito [The Clemency of Titus]”, presented a sumptious new production of the work, created and staged by New York director Thaddeus Strassberger. Equally brilliant was the musical performance, conducted by Los Angeles Opera music director Maestro James Conlon, with world class performances … Read more

The San Diego Opera presented a physically attractive, dramatically effective, and beautifully sung performance of Verdi’s “middle period” masterpiece, “Rigoletto”. Stephen Powell’s Rigoletto Baritone Stephen Powell was Rigoletto. Powell has vocal power and strength in the upper part of the baritone range, both prerequisites to taking on this iconic role. Powell’s voice has a lyrical quality that … Read more

The Seattle Opera’s production of Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” casts two artists for the principal roles, each singing four of the eight scheduled performances, while other cast members perform their role eight times. This report is of Sunday matinee, which was the Seattle Opera debut for each of the opera’s four principal artists – Angela Meade, … Read more

The Seattle Opera mounted an adventurous production of Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” with two commanding casts. This review chronicles the production’s opening night, led by the Leonora of Leah Crocetto, the Manrico of Arnold Rawls, the Count di Luna of Lester Lynch and the Azucena of Elena Gabouri, scheduled to repeat January 16, 20 and 25, … Read more

The Los Angeles Opera observed the holiday season by mounting Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel”, reviving its 2006 production created and directed by Doug Fitch. Sasha Cooke’s Hansel and Liv Redpath’s Gretel [Photo: Gretel (Liv Redpath, left) and Hansel (Sasha Cooke, right) unexpectedly come across a gingerbread house in a forest; edited image, based on a … Read more

I attended the fourth of nine scheduled War Memorial Opera House performances of Jake Heggie’s opera “It’s a Wonderful Life”, an adaptation, by Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer, of Frank Capra’s 1946 postwar movie of the same name. Previously, I had reported on the opera’s world premiere [see World Premiere Review: Jake Heggie’s Celestial Transformation of … Read more

The Houston Grand Opera spent its entire 2017-18 season in a section of the George R. Brown Convention Center, while its opera house was being repaired from the destruction of Hurricane Harvey. While saving the company’s season, the convention center provisions for producing opera were understandably suboptimal. Puccini’s “La Bohème” was the second opera offered, since … Read more

Since 2016, Lyric Opera each season has premiered an opera a year of David Pountney’s new production of Wagner’s four opera “Ring of the Nibelungs”. Pountney’s new staging of “Siegfried” proved to be one of the most rewarding operatic evenings I have attended. Originally conceptualized by the late German designer Johan Engels, Pountney’s realization of … Read more

Lyric Opera reverentially mounted Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s 47-year old production of Mozart’s masterpiece “Idomeneo”. Originally conceived for the Cologne Opera (1971), Ponnelle’s beautiful production, that I regard as a “world treasure”, subsequently introduced audiences in San Francisco and New York City to Mozart’s masterpiece. [Below: The God Neptune has washed the living survivors of the storm … Read more

The San Diego Opera opened its 2018-19 season with Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” in an attractive production conceived by British director Stephen Lawless. [Below: Four principal characters of the opera, Marcellina (Susanne Mentzer, left), Don Bartolo (Ashraf Sewaillam, second from left), Figaro (Evan Hughes, second from right) and Susanna (Sarah Shafer, right) step through the … Read more

The San Francisco Opera mounted British director Tim Albery’s production of Richard Strauss’ “Arabella”, first presented at the Santa Fe Opera in 2012. My review of the Albery production’s 2012 debut in Santa Fe [Erin Wall, Mark Delavan Are Superb in Elegant New Production of “Arabella” – Santa Fe Opera, August 1, 2012] contains many … Read more

The San Francisco Opera unveiled its attractive new Shawna Lucey/Robert Innes Hopkins production of Puccini’s “Tosca”. [Below: the Robert Innes Hopkins sets for the first act of Puccini’s “Tosca”; edited image, based on a Cory Weaver photograph, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera.] Carmen Giannattasio as Tosca In her role debut and San Francisco Opera debut … Read more