BWW Review: Radvanovsky's TOSCA a Winner for the Met
by Richard Sasanow - December 18, 2021
What is there to say about Puccini’s TOSCA that hasn’t been said in the last hundred-plus years since its premiere in Rome (to echo the locations in the opera)? It is a marvel of brevity, with librettists Illica and Giacosa shaving locations, characters and action from the original play, written by ...
BWW Review: SAN DIEGO OPERA PRESENTS ARTURO CHACÓN-CRUZ at California Center For The Arts, Escondido
by Ron Bierman - December 09, 2021
It seems variety is the spice of classical music and opera in San Diego. The city’s symphony orchestra plans to appear in a dozen or more venues next year, and the opera company has used a different venue for each of its three recent recital concerts. The latest of these featured Mexican-born tenor ...
BWW Review: At the Met, EURYDICE Edges Out Orpheus for the Center of Attention in Premiere
by Richard Sasanow - November 24, 2021
Talk about ‘spoiler alerts,’ there was a big one for me early in the opera, EURYDICE, by Matthew Aucoin to a libretto that he and Sarah Ruhl fashioned from her play of the same name, which had its Met premiere last night. Eurydice tells Orpheus “Don’t look at me,” which to me mirrored the scene at t...
BWW Review: THE VALKYRIE, London Coliseum
by Gary Naylor - November 20, 2021
Some curious directorial choices fail to blunt the force of Wagner's musical donner und blitzen as the gods bicker and bully and the mortals bleed ...
BWW Review: 'L'ORFEO' May Be the Title Role in Rossi's Opera but Euridice is the Star at Juilliard
by Richard Sasanow - November 18, 2021
In Rossi's L'ORFEO at Juilliard, but director Birnbaum explores the idea that “destiny happens to you whether you like it or not, and no matter how much humans try to have control over their environment and future.” Or, as the popular expression goes, “Man makes plans and God laughs.”...
BWW Review: Met's First BOHEME of the Season Had the Audience Where It Wanted It
by Richard Sasanow - November 12, 2021
Every time I head to a performance of Puccini’s LA BOHEME, I can’t help but think of Bette Davis’s famous line from “All About Eve”: “I detest cheap sentiment.” But then I actually get there and, more likely than not, I feel genuinely moved, swept away by the mood that the composer and his librettis...
BWW Review: Gershwin's PORGY & BESS Returns to the Met with a Grand Bess in Angel Blue
by Richard Sasanow - November 06, 2021
There are so many things to like about the season’s revival of Gershwin’s PORGY & BESS, which was new in the 2019-2020 season, before Covid became the “song” that no one wanted to hear. PORGY on the other hand, is the music that everybody can take a liking to, with its fluid combination of opera, ...
BWW Review: DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG at the Metropolitan Opera
by George Weinhouse - November 01, 2021
For the first time in almost seven years, the Metropolitan Opera has revived Wagner's DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NURNBERG. Considered by many to be Wagner's masterpiece, today's matinee performance gave credence to that opinion. The production is that of Otto Schenk with scenery by Gunther Schneider-Si...
BWW Review: My Desert Island (and 92nd St. Y) All-Time Dream Team – Brownlee, Spyres and Rossini
by Richard Sasanow - October 30, 2021
Oh, sure, give us Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, Laura Kaminsky, Kevin Puts, Terence Blanchard, Paul Moravec, Huang Ruo and all the other fabulous composers at work today. But let’s talk about Rossini--and it’s hard for anyone who attended the concert the other night at New York’s 92nd Street Y not to. ...
BWW Review: The San Diego Opera Presents STEPHANIE BLYTHE IN RECITAL at the Balboa Theatre
by Ron Bierman - October 26, 2021
The imposing mezzo soprano Stephanie Blythe is known for her roles in Wagner, Verdi and Stravinsky. Why would she begin a Balboa Theatre recital for the San Diego Opera with Johnny Mercer’s 'Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive?” Here’s what she said in a recent interview, “I’ve been a great fan of Johnny ...
BWW Review: DER FREISCHÜTZ at Opera Wroclaw
by Natalia Jarczynska - October 25, 2021
What a romantic night! Well, this show is considered the first German Romantic opera after all. This piece at the Wroclaw Opera House is easy to watch, even for people not used to the (German) opera. In my opinion it's more of a musical and I'm a huge fan of from this approach!...
BWW Review: Season's First TURANDOT Adds a Fourth Question - Is It Time to Retire Zeffirelli's Popular Production?
by Richard Sasanow - October 15, 2021
Nobody goes to see the Met’s TURANDOT for subtlety and, from that standpoint, the audience got what it paid for at the opera’s first performance of the season. That is, except, perhaps from soprano Christine Goerke in the title role, who gave a finely nuanced performance when the production didn’t g...
BWW Review: Well, Hello, Jonas, It's So Nice to Have You Back Where You Belong (New York, That Is)
by Richard Sasanow - October 11, 2021
The opening lines of Jonas Kaufmann’s lieder concert at Carnegie Hall Saturday night, weren’t exactly ones that fill the heart with joy: “My songs are filled with poison—why shouldn’t that be true? Into my budding manhood, you poured your poison through.” But to have Kaufmann back in New York was a ...
BWW Review: THE IDEA, Jack Studio Theatre
by Gary Naylor - October 08, 2021
Irrational Theatre resurrect a long neglected work from the early days of the celebrated composer and find plenty of parallels with 20th century comedy and 21st century politics....
BWW Review: The Met's Short Version of BORIS is Good-Enough for Me
by Richard Sasanow - September 30, 2021
The Lady or the Tiger? In this case, both are Mussorgsky’s BORIS GODUNOV—just different versions of it. Which is the preferred one? (Or, more properly, “the preferred one of several,” including one that the composer’s friend, Rimsky Korsakov, fiddled with after his death.) The Met chose Mussorgsky's...
BWW Review: Blanchard's FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES Opens Met Season with Fireworks
by Richard Sasanow - September 28, 2021
It’s been a long 18 months since the last opera on the Met’s stage. The Terence Blanchard-Kasi Lemmons FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES roared into Lincoln Center to let the audience know what it has been missing....
BWW Review: This CARMEN's Ready for Her Close-up on Film in Atlanta
by Richard Sasanow - September 20, 2021
For one of the most popular operas in the traditional repertoire--ABC in the opera world means AIDA, BOHEME and CARMEN--the work by Bizet has had to have more lives than the proverbial cat to get there. The version, now called THE THREEPENNY CARMEN, by the Atlanta Opera’s General and Artistic Direct...
BWW Review: Nezet-Seguin and Met Forces Return to the Stage with Verdi REQUIEM as Tribute to 9/11
by Richard Sasanow - September 18, 2021
Though the Met’s season doesn’t technically start till the end of the month, the company started off with a pair of what French chefs might call “amuses bouches”—sort of tastebud teasers. The first was Mahler’s Second, which was done in the open air; the second was its first inside the hall:The Verd...
BWW Review: RIGOLETTO, Royal Opera House
by Gary Naylor - September 17, 2021
Rigoletto delves deep into the human psyche to ask questions both through its subject matter and its melding of music and voices...
BWW Review: ORFEO ED EURIDICE / ZANETTO, Arcola Outside
by Gary Naylor - September 06, 2021
The Grimeborn Festival presents two short operas concerning love failing to land as required, leading to tragic consequences...
BWW Review: PAGLIACCI at Lyric Opera of Chicago
by Maria Nockin - September 01, 2021
Lyric Opera of Chicago announced that registration is now open for audiences to secure a free link to screen its new, original film production of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, made at the Lyric Opera House. Audiences can now secure a free, on-demand viewing of this verismo production. More information ab...
BWW Review: TOSCA at Opera Wroclaw
by Natalia Jarczynska - September 01, 2021
What can I say, Tosca was so great I really don't know where to start. Set design, lights, costumes and actors were so perfect together that watching the show was like stepping into hot chocolate, a phenomenal pleasure for all the senses directed with a virtuosity by Michael Gieleta....
BWW Review: SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY'S OPENING CONCERT AT THE NEW RADY SHELL AMPHITHEATER in Jacobs Park
by Ron Bierman - August 11, 2021
What was a makes-you-jump BOOM!! doing in Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue? Had someone mistakenly lit an 1812 Overture cannon? Were we under attack?! Oh wait! It was just a bass drum resonating through the San Diego Symphony’s spectacular new state-of-the-art sound system at the Rady Shell. And so, Rafa...
BWW Review: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM Simulcast To Cars in Parking Lot
by Maria Nockin - August 05, 2021
British stage director Netia Jones put her singular stamp on a production of Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream seen at the Santa Fe Opera on August 4, 2021. Performed in the opera house, it was simulcast to the lower parking lot where hundreds of patrons watched from the safety of their c...
BWW Reviews: Santa Fe's Back with a MIDSUMMER Treat and a LORD-ly Mishap
by Richard Sasanow - August 04, 2021
There are a number of parallels between the two operas I saw in Santa Fe (NM) this past weekend: The Benjamin Britten/Peter Pears treatment of Shakespeare’s A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM and the world premiere of the John Corigliano/Mark Adamo THE LORD OF CRIES. The first was, for me at least, an all-ar...
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