Opera Theater Reviews

Review: TURANDOT at Belk Theater
by Perry Tannenbaum - April 22, 2024

Yes, a grand opera was inserted at Belk Theater as the clock or calendar was winding down! Around the world, Callas, Nilsson, and Sutherland are among the divas who have graced the powerhouse role of TURANDOT, and Franco Zeffirelli's production at the Met is as revered for its stateliness and splend...

Review: LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR, Royal Opera House
by Alexander Cohen - April 22, 2024

Nadine Sierra’s enthralling central performance helms this nerve-jangling revival....

Review: Separated at Birth? Boulanger's VILLE MORTE and Debussy's PELLEAS Fall Similarly on the Ear
by Richard Sasanow - April 20, 2024

It’s easy to understand why Neal Goren, founder and artistic director of Catapult Opera, was immediately taken with LA VILLE MORTE. (His program notes say, “Upon receiving the piano-vocal score, I found myself sighing in ecstasy…”) First, the name Nadia Boulanger is magic in 20th century music—in mu...

Review: Lighter Side of the Fall of the Weimar Republic, in Death of Classical's TIERGARTEN?
by Richard Sasanow - April 20, 2024

I wouldn’t say that Andrew Ousley’s TIERGARTEN cabaret draws parallels between Weimar Germany—from World War I, leading up to the Nazification of the country and finally World War II—and the current political climate in the US. But you could. After all, who doesn’t love a little escapist fiddling wh...

Review: SHORTS – A FESTIVAL OF POCKET OPERAS at Artscape Arena Offers Bite-Sized Operatic Treats
by Jaime Uranovsky - April 14, 2024

While there are three mini-operas within the SHORTS programme, this reviews centres around two of them: LA VOIX HUMANE and THE IMPRESARIO. Over the last couple of years, I have been lucky enough to attend various operas staged in Cape Town. They are magnificent: grand and opulent....

Review: Blanchard-Lemmons' FIRE SHUT UP Makes Another Splash at the Met
by Richard Sasanow - April 11, 2024

It was tough separating the opera from the event when FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES opened the first post-Covid pandemic season at the Met. Back then, in September 2021, FIRE made history as the first opera by a Black composer, Terence Blanchard with his librettist Kasi Lemmons (based on the book by Char...

Review: Heartbeat's Bio-Version EUGENE ONEGIN Dazzles under Director/Designer Dustin Wills
by Richard Sasanow - April 07, 2024

If you cross the traditional EUGENE ONEGIN by Tchaikovsky (great even when overfilled with drama and, yes, music music music, with Konstantin Shilovsky’s co-libretto) with a touch of Ken Russell’s 1971 “The Music Lovers” (the overwrought bio-pic of Tchaikovsky with Richard Chamberlin and Glenda Jack...

Review: CARMEN, Royal Opera House
by Gary Naylor - April 06, 2024

An old favourite brings the passion and the pain with beautiful singing and convincing acting...

Review: Fine Singing Makes RONDINE Easy to Swallow under Scappucci
by Richard Sasanow - March 30, 2024

The first night of the Met’s revival of Puccini’s LA RONDINE (THE SWALLOW) was filled with surprises of one sort or another, under the baton of that smart conductor, Speranza Scappucci. She knows her way around Puccini and deserves to be heard more frequently at the house. The production had glamour...

Review: DUKE BLUEBEARD'S CASTLE, London Coliseum
by Gary Naylor - March 22, 2024

English National Opera closes its troubled, but successful, 2023-24 season with Bartok's curious compelling slice of psychodrama beautifully played by its orchestra...

Review: Met's Laffont Competition Unleashes New Artists on Grateful Audience
by Richard Sasanow - March 21, 2024

No matter how many “star” performances the Met manages to muster in the course of a season, there’s nothing quite as exciting as the Laffont Grand Finals Concert—formerly known as the Met’s National Auditions Finals—which took place this past Sunday afternoon for its 70th season, when we got to hear...

Review: THE BARBER OF SEVILLE, Wilton's Music Hall
by Franco Milazzo - March 18, 2024

In the week when an Arts Council England report lambasted the current state of opera and questioned its relevance to wider society, Charles Court Opera’s The Barber Of Seville stands as a stern rebuff to those who consider this art form to be dated and irrelevant....

Review: JENŮFA, London Coliseum
by Franco Milazzo - March 15, 2024

Opera is not short of stories where women are violated and abandoned by the men in their lives but Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa is an especially cruel tale....

Review: Yahoo for Ermonela Jaho! at Palau de la Musica Tribute to Victoria de los Angeles
by Richard Sasanow - March 13, 2024

It’s hard to compete with a dazzling concert hall like Barcelona’s Palau de la Musica Catalana—designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner, one of Antonio Gaudi’s contemporaries in the modernista style. Or, with the famed Catalan (yes, not Spanish) diva Victoria de los Angeles, a Met favorite, whose cente...

Review: SONGBIRD at Kennedy Center
by Roger Catlin - March 12, 2024

There’s an awful lot of death in opera, Timothy O’Leary, the general director of Washington National Opera, lamented on a recent opening night. And those plentiful tragedies are also often further burdened with overbearing scores, turgid storylines, super-large casts and strident if not shrill perfo...

Review: Sierra, Bernheim Soar in the Met's ROMEO ET JULIETTE
by Richard Sasanow - March 10, 2024

While I’ve admired soprano Nadine Sierra’s before, she seemed to reach a whole new level with her glorious turn as Juliette in the season’s first performance of Gounod’s ROMEO ET JULIETTE at the Met the other night. She was vivid and a delight to watch as she inhabited the teenaged heroine of the pi...

Review: Lively ORFEO in Concert at Barcelona's Liceu Opera from Maestro Rene Jacobs
by Richard Sasanow - March 07, 2024

Composers can’t seem to keep away from the Orpheus story. Why not? It’s a juicy one, drawing on the Greek myth about a man who tries to use the power of music to rescue his beloved wife from Hades....

Review: ROMEO ET JULIETTE at Arizona Opera
by Herbert Paine - March 05, 2024

Arizona Opera's revival of Charles Gounod’s ROMEO ET JULIETTE is, by all measures, a triumph of staging and performance. Following its performances in Phoenix, the production moves to the Temple of Music and Art in Tucson AZ (March 9th and 10th)....

Review: Another BALLO, Another Peculiar Reinvention, at Barcelona's Liceu, under Riccardo Frizza
by Richard Sasanow - March 04, 2024

UN BALLO IN MASCHERA—A MASKED BALL—certainly makes for a juicy opera, on paper at least. It has a plot filled with passion, jealousy and conspiracies, and a score by Giuseppe Verdi that has some of his most memorable music, including a great duet, plus unforgettable arias for soprano, tenor and bari...

Review: THE NIGHTINGALE AND OTHER FABLES – ADELAIDE FESTIVAL 2024 at Adelaide Festival Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
by Barry Lenny - March 02, 2024

It is as visually rich as it is aurally....

Review: Juilliard's ERISMENA Goes for Truly Baroque with Game Cast under Heijboer Castanon
by Richard Sasanow - March 01, 2024

It’s always a joy to see the Juilliard Opera/Juilliard Historical Performance department perform in the intimate realm of the Rosemary and Meredith Willson Theatre, where the audience is up close and personal to the action on stage. Last week’s performances of Francesco Cavalli’s ERISMENA happily fe...

Review: THE FLYING DUTCHMAN, Royal Opera House
by Michael Higgs - March 01, 2024

Albery’s revival of his Flying Dutchman simply works: with a great cast and a smooth atmosphere created by a dreamlike ship-inspired set, it all builds towards a Gesamtkunstwerk that Wagner might have enjoyed himself. A great success, all around....

Review: THE MAGIC FLUTE, London Coliseum
by Alexander Cohen - February 29, 2024

It’s odd to watch an opera where the actual opera is an afterthought. At least that’s how it feels watching Simon McBurney’s The Magic Flute. His revival production sizzles with circus spectacle, high tech pageantry, and boundary breaking chutzpah. But underneath it all you’ll be hard pressed to fin...

Review: What's the Destiny of the Met's New FORZA? Close Your Eyes and Listen to the Fine Cast
by Richard Sasanow - February 27, 2024

Much was made of the fact that it’s been almost 20 years since Verdi’s LA FORZA DEL DESTINO was last seen at the Met. For its heralded return, they picked a choice cast (starting with Lise Davidsen), a fine conductor (Music Director Yannick Nezet Seguin) and a director (Mariusz Trelinski) who’s, wel...

Review: X: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MALCOLM X at McCaw Hall
by Erica Miner - February 25, 2024

Without doubt a definitive event for Seattle Opera, and worth experiencing in all of its many extraordinary aspects....