Opera Theater Reviews: Best Shows & Critic Recommendations Page 20

BWW Review: Forget 'Games of Thrones,' DiDonato's Got a Grip on AGRIPPINA in Barcelona, and Heading to the Met and Covent Garden
by Richard Sasanow - June 06, 2019

For those of us who couldn't wait to hear mezzo Joyce DiDonato in a fully staged performance of Handel's AGRIPPINA—heading to Covent Garden in September and the Met in February in different productions next season—she has given us a first-class preview at the Liceu in Barcelona. For a couple of w...

BWW Review: A Glorious RIGOLETTO Opens at Opera Theatre St. Louis
by Steve Callahan - June 04, 2019

The Opera Theatre of St. Louis continues its 44th festival season of world class opera with a magnificent production of Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto. OTSL presented a splendid Rigoletto fourteen years ago, but this production is, I think, even better. It's the best Rigoletto your ever likely to see....

BWW Review: DER ZWERG at THEATRE AT ACE HOTEL
by Maria Nockin - June 04, 2019

Numi Opera began its inaugural season with Alexander Zemlinsky's almost forgotten Der Zwerg (The Dwarf), a piece once condemned by the Nazi Third Reich. In Los Angeles, the dark and cavernous ground floor of the Theatre at Ace Hotel was more than half full for the matinee performance on Sunday, June...

BWW Review: Five Years and 26 Productions Later, AS ONE Makes a Splendid Return to New York at City Opera
by Richard Sasanow - June 03, 2019

The spectacularly musical, touchingly dramatic, surprisingly funny and profoundly moving chamber opera, AS ONE, by Laura Kaminsky, Kimberly Reed and Mark Campbell, made its long-overdue return to New York on Thursday, in a production by Matt Gray as part of New York City Opera's spring season....

BWW Review: THE BARTERED BRIDE, Garsington Opera
by Alexandra Coghlan - May 30, 2019

We haven't seen a lot of Smetana's The Bartered Bride in the UK recently. Bohemia's best-loved opera is rapidly becoming one of the repertoire's best-kept secrets, which is a shame because it's an enchanting comedy, whose colourful, folk-filled score might be propelled by exotic polka rhythms, but w...

BWW Review: FIGARO is Brilliantly Married in St. Louis
by Steve Callahan - May 28, 2019

Opera Theatre of St. Louis has opened its 44th festival season. This is St. Louis' prized centerpiece of opera, with a world-wide reputation. It is famous for its superb productions. The company's home is the beautiful and comfortable 763-seat Browning Theatre at Webster University. Gourmet picnic s...

BWW Review: Who Will Survive Barcelona's PECHEURS DE PERLES at the Liceu?
by Richard Sasanow - May 28, 2019

George Bizet--best known, of course, for CARMEN--wrote another opera that has become increasingly (and justifiably) popular in recent years, LES PECHEURS DE PERLES, better known in the English-speaking world as THE PEARL FISHERS. George Bizet--best known, of course, for CARMEN--wrote another opera t...

BWW Feature: New York City Opera Brings Music To Bryant Park
by George Weinhouse - May 21, 2019

When I was a child, my father took me to a series of outdoor concerts at a park near our home.  One of the programs featured excerpts from Bizet's opera CARMEN. This was one of my first exposures to opera and since then I have become a major devotee.  I have since joined the Patron Program at the Me...

BWW Review: Washington National Opera's Splendid TOSCA
by Roger Catlin - May 14, 2019

It's easy to see why 'Tosca' is one of the most popular works in opera.Its very musical style, broken free from the strict opera house rules before it, allows it to breathe. Singers are not urgently singing every moment. The supertitles person can take a break as it goes dark from time to time. Stil...

BWW Review: Nashville Opera's 'Gleefully Subversive' THE CRADLE WILL ROCK: Opera, Musical Theater or Both?
by Jeffrey Ellis - May 11, 2019

Now onstage through Mother's Day (Sunday, May 12) in a much anticipated and gleefully subversive production from Nashville Opera, The Cradle Will Rock remains hard to define: It could be described as a work of art whose meaning, its very raison d'etre, can be bent to suit any conceivable justificati...

BWW Review: MN Opera Portrays Sacrifices for Love in Magnificent LA TRAVIATA
by Peggy Sue Dunigan - May 10, 2019

Opening on the past Saturday night at the Ordway Center, MN Opera staged a magnificent production of Giuseppe Verdi's 1853 Opera La Traviata. Verdi's breathtaking love and death opera accompanied by Francesco Maria Piave's libretto was adapted after Alexander Dumas' 'Lady of the Camellias' or 'La Da...

BWW Review: OTELLO at the Opera de Monte-Carlo
by Marieke van den Wall Bake - May 07, 2019

The closing of the Monte-Carlo Opera season of 2018-2019 could not have ended better than with the new production of Verdi's Otello. And Monaco knew it: under the keen direction of Daniele Callegari and based on the play by Shakespeare, the opera was completely sold-out....

BWW Review: TRISTAN & ISOLDE at La Monnaie
by Alexander Diaconu - May 06, 2019

Tristan and Isolde is a show that has no spectacular or theatrical value, however it does have a certain value if considered from a very closed conceptual vision perspective that has nothing to do with the wonderful richness of the story....

BWW Review: CARD GAME / THE RITE OF SPRING at OPERA WROCLAW
by Natalia Jarczynska - May 06, 2019

This play contains two pieces: Card Game and The Rite of Spring. Both are amazing, both are composed by Igor Stravinsky and both were not understood during its premieres. ...

BWW Review: Leonard Is CARMELITES' Soft Center in Met's Brilliant Production
by Richard Sasanow - May 05, 2019

You'd never know that the Met's production of Francis Poulenc's DIALOGUES DES CARMELITES is over 40 years old, except for a few giveaways. There are no dancing nuns, no nudity, no screeching train whistle as the women go to their deaths (a la SWEENEY TODD). This fictionalized version of the story of...

BWW Review: DON GIOVANNI at Thomas Edmonds Opera Studio
by Barry Lenny - May 05, 2019

The cast features a good many of Adelaide's favourite singers....

BWW Review: LADY IN THE DARK a Walk on the Weill Side with MasterVoices and Victoria Clark at City Center
by Richard Sasanow - May 03, 2019

The line between Broadway-type musical theatre and opera becomes finer by the year--though I dare say that TOOTSIE is unlikely to be showing up at the Met any time soon. But the Kurt Weill-Ira Gershwin-Moss Hart LADY IN THE DARK might have morphed in a slightly different, better piece of music theat...

BWW Review: BILLY BUDD, Royal Opera House
by Sophia Lambton - April 30, 2019

In a minimalist setting, Benjamin Britten's 20th-century reflections on Herman Melville's novel are deftly captured musically and visually....

BWW Review: UNSHAKEABLE at the Santa Fe Opera (Spring Tour)
by Zoe Burke - April 29, 2019

Shakespeare and opera are an intuitive combination. Adding star crossed lovers to the mix is also a logical choice; a memory erasing pandemic in a post-apocalyptic society, though, is a plot element not commonly found with the others. Such comprises the basis for the plot of the Santa Fe Opera's tou...

BWW Review: SIMON SINGS PORGY AND BESS at Des Moines Symphony: A Jubilant Evening of Beautiful Music
by DC Felton - April 28, 2019

It is always a jubilant evening when I get to see the Des Moines Symphony, and their most recent concert was no different. I had the pleasure of attending the Saturday evening performance of 'Simon Sings Porgy and Bess' and was treated to an evening of stunning music. One thing I appreciate about th...

BWW Review: KATHLEEN FERRIER AWARDS 2019 FINAL, Wigmore Hall
by Sophia Lambton - April 28, 2019

Stupendous singing from a group of students battled old professionals who didn't dare reward risks....

BWW Review: SS MENDI: DANCING THE DEATH DRILL, Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House
by Gary Naylor - April 23, 2019

Isango Ensemble's SS Mendi: Dancing the Death Drill is a sad lament for needlessly lost lives and a celebration of the cultures from which the men had sprung. And it's ever so emotional....

BWW Review: A MAN OF GOOD HOPE, Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House
by Gary Naylor - April 18, 2019

Isango Ensemble bring their unique storytelling skills to show us the life of a Somali boy, alone and running away to a place that barely differs from the hell he leaves behind....

BWW Review: MADAMA BUTTERFLY at the Aratani Theatre
by Maria Nockin - April 16, 2019

On Sunday April 14 Pacific Opera Project (POP) presented Giacomo Puccini's 1904 opera, Madama Butterfly, in Japanese and English in Los Angeles's Little Tokyo. The company also live-streamed it online. Did anyone ever think an American Navy officer would speak to a young Japanese lady in Italian? l'...

BWW Review: FAUST, Royal Opera House
by Fraser MacDonald - April 12, 2019

Bruno Ravella sparks new magic into David McVicar's production, refreshing the feel of the piece whilst ensuring its original spark is retained. Although the fifth revival of McVicar's take on the classic, Ravella ensures that the original text is delivered to ensure the story is allowed to speak fo...