30 Mar 2007
Let’s face it, Handel’s “Poro, Re dell’Indie” (in English “Porus, King of India”) isn’t exactly a household name in any but the most dedicated baroque opera circles. »
28 Mar 2007
UC Opera now have a half-century’s reputation to live up to; they were responsible for the UK premieres of such works as Das Liebesverbot, The Maid of Orleans, Alzira, Oberto and the 1847 version of Macbeth. »
25 Mar 2007
With the trials and tribulations of a multicultural society currently at the forefront of the British media, Gavin Quinn’s production placed a light-hearted focus on the bizarreness of a group of foreigners being thrown together in an unfamiliar situation. »
25 Mar 2007
London is fortunate to have played host to several productions of Tchaikovsky’s best-known opera in the last three years alone, most recently British Youth Opera’s heartbreakingly fresh account last September – so it was a risky decision on ETO’s part to stage yet another. »
20 Mar 2007
Nice Opera, on the French Cote d’Azur, seemed a most suitable place for this early work by
Handel. »
19 Mar 2007
A near-capacity audience, expectant and enthusiastic, streamed into the Dorothy Chandler for an old-fashioned evening of operatic glamour, as Angela Gheorghiu, with the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra in support, flew into town for a one night concert. »
19 Mar 2007
This year is Thomas Adés’ annus mirabilis. He’s the subject of a major, six-week retrospective at the Barbican, and, of course, will be a major presence at the Aldeburgh Festival. »
13 Mar 2007
Speaking to a trusted chorus-member friend after this performance, I was told that I had benefited from not having seen this production when new three months ago. »
13 Mar 2007
Just about halfway though his first season as music director of Los Angeles Opera, James Conlon has already made himself an endearing and appreciated figure. »
13 Mar 2007
Perhaps the gestation period for “Wakonda’s Dream,” premiered by Opera Omaha on March 7, was too long. »
08 Mar 2007
It was in the “Orwell year” 1984 that Götz Friedrich, general manager — Intendant — of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (DOB) from 1983 until his death in 2000, staged the first half of Wagner’s “Ring des Nibelungen” in the 1900-seat house on Berlin’s Bismarckstrasse. »
06 Mar 2007
It is well known that the Opera Orchestra of New York’s performances are required events for
opera aficionados to hear the the most exciting performances of the season. »
06 Mar 2007
Compared with Pamina and Tamino, Kumudha and her Prince, the central figures in “A Flowering Tree,” the John Adams and Peter Sellars collaboration given its American premiere on March 1 by the San Francisco Symphony, walk a rock-strewn road. »
28 Feb 2007
The death this month of director Stephen Pimlott could have cast a shadow over this revival of his 1993 production, but a hugely affectionate pre-show tribute by colleague Nicholas Hytner ensured that the performance only served to do great honour to the memory of a man who was clearly loved and cherished by many. »
28 Feb 2007
The Rosenblatt Recital Series, which presents concerts around London from artists ranging from the well-known to the brand-new, last week showcased Nicole Cabell, the glamorous 29-year-old winner of the 2005 Cardiff Singer of the World competition. »
27 Feb 2007
This wasn’t an “easy” program for dilettantes. »
22 Feb 2007
At the curtain call for the first night of WNO’s new production of the infrequently performed Khovanshchina director David Pountney wore a simple Russian shirt. »
18 Feb 2007
Friday night in Leeds, in the North of England, at the city’s marvellously restored Grand Theatre, with the pavements outside shining wet and a tidal wave of umbrellas surging past, was an
exciting place to be. »
16 Feb 2007
The Opera Lafayette of Washington DC has been engaged in a new project this season – the Armide Project, as the group dubbed its ambitious plan, in collaboration with the University of Maryland Opera Studio, to present two great operas set to the same celebrated Philippe Quinault libretto. »
13 Feb 2007
The great American opera? Ricky Ian Gordon’s “Grapes of Wrath” might be it. »
09 Feb 2007
An expressionist portrait of the Roman she-wolf was the first, striking image of this production, originally devised for Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, by the fashionable British director David McVicar. »
08 Feb 2007
A literary critic once recalled the day when a German could not clear his throat “without finding pithy precedent in Goethe.” »
08 Feb 2007
In opera, Rossini, born in 1892- the year after Mozart died, is the successor of the great master
and, when performed as perceptively as in the “Cenerentola” that debuted at the Houston Grand Opera on January 27, his rightful heir. »
06 Feb 2007
The Kirov Opera and Orchestra concluded their annual residency at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC last week with a Sunday matinee concert performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s 1932 Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District. »
28 Jan 2007
Rossini’s last Italian opera, staged in 1825 as a part of Charles X’s coronation festivities, is a bizarre creation — a sassy little farce capped with a coronation cantata in the best traditions of staged court entertainment, from 16th-century Italian intermedi through their Baroque and Classic operatic progeny. »
23 Jan 2007
There are three reasons often cited for the paucity of performances of Rossini’s Otello: the horrible hack job of the Shakespearean drama by librettist Francesco Maria Berio, the difficulties in casting an opera requiring at least three top-rate tenor voices, and comparisons with Verdi’s popular opera of the same title. »
17 Jan 2007
If the audience for new American art music seems small and is (supposedly) shrinking, then the
audience for new American operas is even more exclusive. »
12 Jan 2007
It is a mystery as complex as the Kirov’s Ring Cycle staging and equally inexplicable. »
28 Dec 2006
Rio de Janeiro, as the capital of the Empire and later the Republic of Brazil, had an extensive history of opera during the 19th century, well-documented by newspapers and magazines of the day, which included the conducting debut of Arturo Toscanini in a local performance of Aida in 1888, described in the memoirs of Brazilian composer and entrepreneur Artur Napoleão. »
06 Dec 2006
After the successful première of Monteverdi’s “L’Incoronazione di Poppea” (Saturday, November 25th) at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles, General Director Placido Domingo spoke warmly and cogently about this early Italian masterpiece, about its free-flowing music and the perfect relevance of the text to today’s world with all its greed, ambition and self-seeking. »
05 Dec 2006
HOUSTON — “Hansel and Gretel” has taken a beating in recent seasons, as over-zealous directors — aping the excesses of Eurotrash Regieoper — have made Humperdink’s largely innocent retelling of the Grimms’ tale the victim of hyper-active imaginations. »
15 Nov 2006
On a cold, wet and dark Glasgow evening in November, some 500 brave souls received what was possibly their first taste of baroque opera. »
11 Nov 2006
LONDON – the fledgling Independent Opera Company takes on Orlando. »
28 Oct 2006
SAN FRANCISCO — Christine Brewer took her time mastering Isolde before making her stage debut in the role with the San Francisco Opera in October. »
19 Oct 2006
The Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, Italy, had as many surprises on the stage inside as the weather had outside. »
19 Sep 2006
In his introduction to the Welsh National Opera’s celebratory 60th anniversary season programme Carlo Rizzi, their Music Director, declares that “we are bringing the best of Wales to the rest of the world — and the best of the world to Wales”. »
09 Aug 2006
Carmen and The Magic Flute have finally made it onto my calendar, a nice way to end the summer opera festival at Santa Fe. »
31 Jul 2006
The news from Santa Fe Opera last week-end is good, unexpectedly so. The British composer Thomas Ades’ new (2004) opera, a riff on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, has been rumored hard to perform and harder to hear. »
24 Jul 2006
Richard Strauss’ 1905 neurotic shocker Salome has long been a favorite Santa Fe Opera repertory piece, having enjoyed ten productions over the years. »
18 Jul 2006
JULES MASSENET'S 'BROADWAY HIT,' the 1899 Cendrillon, billed as Cinderella but sung in French, was given top notch treatment at its Santa Fe Opera debut Saturday night (July 15). »
24 Jun 2006
On June 9th in Sofia and 16th at the Varna Summer Festival, celebrated soprano Krassimira Stoyanova made her Richard Strauss debut in Vier letzte Lieder in her native Bulgaria. »
25 May 2006
Returning from Munich’s new production of Handel’s “Orlando” at thirty thousand feet above clouds which might have done service as props for that opera when first staged in 1733, it occurred that the great man himself could have had things to say about what might be director David Alden’s valedictory baroque piece for the Bayerische Staatsoper. »
24 May 2006
On May 22, the Kennedy Center's Fortas Chamber Music Series and the Chateauville Foundation co-presented a fully staged production of Benjamin Britten's haunting chamber opera The Turn of the Screw, conducted by Lorin Maazel. Here are three reviews: »
22 May 2006
Glyndebourne opened this year's festival with "a new production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, subtitled ‘The school for lovers’, will open the 2006 Festival. This masterpiece includes some of Mozart’s most exquisite music, and Così’s now established popularity, following comparative neglect in the 19th century, is partly due to Glyndebourne’s championing of the work since the opening of the Festival in 1934." Here are some initial reviews: »
09 May 2006
What happened to Italo Montemezzi’s L’amore dei tre re? After the opera’s triumphant premiere at La Scala in 1913, Montemezzi was vaulted into the international limelight, and his creation enjoyed regular performances throughout the world until his death in 1952. »
![Gareth Brynmor John - Baritone [Photo courtesy of the artist]](http://www.operatoday.com/Gareth_John.gif)