BWW Review: GIANNI SCHICCHI/L'ENFANT ET LES SORTILEGES at Occidental College
by Maria Nockin - February 03, 2020
On February 2, 2020, Pacific Opera Project (POP) presented Giacomo Puccini and Giovacchino Forzano's 1918 Gianni Schicchi with Maurice Ravel and Colette's 1925 L'Enfant et les Sortilèges (The Child and the Magic Spells), a pair of lesser known operas, to a most receptive audience at Occidental...
BWW Review: DAS BARBECU Ribs Wagner's Tetralogy with Saucy Results from On Site Opera
by Richard Sasanow - February 01, 2020
There must be something in the air, with a couple of New York's small opera companies transporting 19th-century German Romantic operas by Weber and Wagner to Texas within a couple of months, in search of ways to attract new audiences. The first was Weber's DIE FREISCHUTZ from Heartbeat Opera, now On...
BWW Review: Gustavo Dudamel Leads DAS LIED with the NY Philharmonic at Geffen Hall
by Richard Sasanow - January 27, 2020
Maestro Gustavo Dudamel, who usually leads the LA Philharmonic, took a busman's holiday to NY for a brace of performances with his orchestra's East Coast counterpart, the New York Philharmonic. His reputation as a master on the podium is not overrated: I can't think of a more understated, yet fully...
BWW Reviews: Once Again, PROTOTYPE Shows What "Opera-Theatre-Now" Means to Musical Life in New York
by Richard Sasanow - January 21, 2020
This year's edition of PROTOTYPE, which refers to itself as 'Opera-Theatre-Now,' has come and gone. You never know what to expect, for better or for worse: Try guessing what's going to be 'the next big thing' at your own peril, even if it has played somewhere else first, for they things might not be...
BWW Review: WHEN THERE ARE NINE at KC Lyric Opera
by Kelly Luck - January 20, 2020
'And Still We Dream' song cycle carries most of the weight of this rather thin production....
BWW Overview: The People, the Places, the Operas that Spelled Pleasure in 2019
by Richard Sasanow - January 13, 2020
I admit this is an absolutely personal, totally one-sided view of what gave one man opera thrills last year and what I will look back on with delight. Some are old works, some are new, some are individual performers, some are ensembles, some are complete productions, some are merely the highlight of...
BWW Review: Met Audiences Learn to Love WOZZECK in Kentridge Production, with Mattei, Led by Nezet-Seguin
by Richard Sasanow - January 04, 2020
A funny thing happened the other night at the Met when the curtain came down on William Kentridge's stunning new production of Alban Berg's cruel and devastating WOZZECK. The audience didn't rush from their seats to escape into the night. They stayed and cheered for an opera with a reputation for be...
BWW Review: A Silver Rose, Golden Voices and a Platinum Conductor Mark This Season's ROSENKAVALIER at the Met
by Richard Sasanow - December 20, 2019
For a composer so well known for his dramatic operas--SALOME and ELEKTRA the most famous of them--Richard Strauss's most popular work remains the more comic DER ROSENKAVALIER, which just made its season debut under the scintillating baton of Sir Simon Rattle, with a bevy of first-rate singers....
BWW Review: LA TRAVIATA, Royal Opera House
by Gary Naylor - December 18, 2019
Richard Eyre's production gets yet another run out 25 years on, but it's so beautiful and brilliantly sung, no further justification is required....
BWW Review: ANDREA BOCELLI at Capital One Arena
by Elliot Lanes - December 16, 2019
As a reviewer you hear lots of advance hype about a particular show or performer before having your own experience. Much of the time the hype doesn't live up to the end product. Selling over 90 million recordings opera singer Andrea Bocelli was definitely one of those performers who I had heard a lo...
BWW Review: SAN DIEGO OPERA'S AMAZING NIGHT at At The Balboa Theatre
by Ron Bierman - December 16, 2019
The San Diego Opera's first Detour Series performance this season was 'One Amazing Night' with Soprano Ailyn Pérez, tenor Joshua Guerrero and accompanist Abdiel Vázquez. All are outstanding young award winners with impressive resumes. The first half featured operatic arias, enjoyable and worth the t...
BWW Review: Heartbeat Opera's Take on Weber's FREISCHUTZ Hits the Mark
by Richard Sasanow - December 10, 2019
Since it's highly unlikely that the Met will take on Carl Maria von Weber's DIE FREISCHUTZ (frequently translated as THE MARKSMAN) anytime soon--or even in the lifetime of any baby born this year--we should be grateful to Heartbeat Opera for bringing it to New York audiences through December 15, in ...
BWW Review: OTELLO , Royal Opera House
by Gary Naylor - December 10, 2019
Two years on, Otello is revived in all its austere majesty, albeit a majesty that can be demanding to watch across a three hours running time....
BWW Review: Tchaikovsky's QUEEN Reigns and a Star is Born at the Met
by Richard Sasanow - December 04, 2019
I know it takes a leap of faith for the Met to schedule something outside the ABC operas--AIDA, BOHEME, CARMEN plus a TOSCA, TURANDOT and a few others--and go for something a little more off the beaten track. Tchaikovsky's QUEEN OF SPADES certainly falls into that category, even though it isn't exac...
BWW Review: THE ASTOUNDING ASTANA BALLET at The Saban Theatre
by Valerie-Jean Miller - December 04, 2019
November 22, 2019 Astonishing in their choice of repertoire, their innovative choreography, their elaborate and colorfully creative costuming and their commanding performance of the choreography. Don't let this first photo confuse you. This Company is so many things, and the picture represents b...
Photos/Reviews: THE QUEEN OF SPADES at the Metropolitan Opera, New York
by Alan Henry - December 04, 2019
Get a first look and check out reviews for the Met Opera's The Queen of Spades! Tchaikovsky's eerie thriller of imperial Russia has its first performances at the Met since 2011. Tenor Yusif Eyvazov is Hermann, the fanatical gambler whose obsession with a powerful secret drives him to madness. Sopran...
BWW Review: COSI FAN TUTTE Meets GREASE At The Juilliard School
by George Weinhouse - November 25, 2019
Of numerous operaphiles I have encountered, there is a fair amount of partisanship when it comes to COSI FAN TUTTE by Mozart. People either love it or dislike it. I believe the plot is partially to blame; an aging bachelor challenges two younger friends to test their fiancees' devotion and suppos...
BWW Review: MANON LESCAUT at War Memorial Opera House
by Maria Nockin - November 25, 2019
On November 24, 2019, San Francisco Opera presented Giacomo Puccini's third opera, MANON LESCAUT with two spectacularly large-voiced singers, Liana Haroutounian and Brian Jagde. In a most forthright manner, Director Olivier Tambosi told the story of Renato Des Grieux' unrequited love for Manon, the ...
BWW Review: DEATH IN VENICE, Royal Opera House
by Gary Naylor - November 22, 2019
David McVicar's compelling new production of Benjamin Britten's last opera is an extraordinary tour-de-force that takes you inside a troubled mind and leaves you as ill-at-ease as you might expect, but strangely uplifted too, the beauty present in even a dying world underlined and celebrated....
BWW Review: TRAVIATA at Opera WROCLAW - Feel The Breath Of The Universe
by Natalia Jarczynska - November 21, 2019
Have you ever wandered why two cheesecakes based on one recipe are slightly different? Even tough you use the same flour, sugar and cheese the taste is not the same. Sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse. But if you take great ingredients like Traviata, big budget, good voices, Grazyna Szapolo...
BWW Review: It's TRISTAN Interruptus Again, with Goerke and Gould in Act II of the Wagner Epic
by Richard Sasanow - November 19, 2019
When New Yorkers last saw a concert performance of Act II of Wagner's TRISTAN UND ISOLDE--in the spring of 2018 with the Boston Symphony under Nelsons--a major singer was trying on one of the title characters for size. That was tenor Jonas Kaufmann. This time, it was Isolde who was ready for her clo...
BWW Review: Bring on the Jugglers, Philip Glass's AKHNATEN Finally Arrives at the Met
by Richard Sasanow - November 16, 2019
It has taken 35 years for Philip Glass's AKHNATEN to get to the Met, since its premiere at the Staatsoper in Stuttgart in 1984. If you're an acolyte of Glass, Phelim McDermott's production, designed by Tom Pye, made it well worth the wait; if you're not, there's enough going on to keep you occupied ...
BWW Review: FELLOW TRAVELERS at Boston Lyric Opera
by Andrew Child - November 14, 2019
When I first saw Boston Lyric Opera's promotional images for Fellow Travelers, a new opera by Greg Pierce and Gregory Spears, in a production that premiered at Minnesota Opera, I was incredibly wary. Photos of conventionally attractive white men in their boxers clinging to each other in a fit of pas...
BWW Review: Austin Opera Dazzles With RIGOLETTO
by Lynn Beaver - November 13, 2019
Austin Opera's latest effort, Verdi's, RIGOLETTO dazzles in every way. They absolutely outdid themselves this time....
Review: Bavarians under Jansons with Damrau as Soloist Turn Back the Clock at Carnegie Hall
by Richard Sasanow - November 12, 2019
According to the Carnegie Hall program, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra was founded just a year after the most modern pieces on last Friday's program were written. Those were Richard Strauss's “Four Last Songs,” composed in 1948, some of the most gorgeous music he wrote. Though I came for the ...
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