Every age gets to reassess the value of a work of art relative to its present times, and not just aesthetically but politically. Never more so than today. Sometimes in our society’s self-congratulating political correctness this comes on with a vengeance; a work gets excoriated, bashed in, and thrown on the artistic ash heap. But […]
Review: New Jeanine Tesori/Tazewell Thompson opera Blue at Glimmerglass Festival
The Glimmerglass Festival offers a unique opportunity to singers and audiences alike to be around living composers. The “live relationship” creates a work that breathes and where new discoveries in the process can bring about further growth and development. This has happened with having composer John Corigliano as artist-in-residence all summer serving as mentor to […]
Review: The Ghosts of Versailles at Glimmerglass Festival 2019
Glimmerglass Festival has made a bold choice in re-mounting The Ghosts of Versailles, a complicated, multi-layered late 20th-century opera, as part of its 2019 season. Contemporary opera tends to suffer through an unusually difficult and long gestation before it is brought into this world. The Ghosts of Versailles is no exception. Commissioned with the team […]
Review: Show Boat at Glimmerglass Festival
Glimmerglass Festival opened its 45th season with a sensational Show Boat. The musical, based on Edna Ferber’s novel about a floating theater on the Mississippi, could have been delivered as just a slice of Americana and even get sweetly sentimental under less capable hands. But Artistic Director Francesca Zambello has dug deeply into this enormously […]
Review: La traviata at Glimmerglass Festival
A “new” production of La traviata shared the buzz opening weekend at Glimmerglass Festival. Nonetheless, as a co-production with Washington National Opera (and a handful of other opera companies because this is how opera sustains itself these days,) it was seen first at the Kennedy Center last Fall as its season’s gala opening. My review […]
Review: The Tale of Serse. Handel’s rarely seen opera gets a stunning production from In Series
Timothy Nelson has ended his first season as Artistic Director of In Series with a stunning and musically gorgeous production of The Tale of Serse. Like George Frideric Handel, the composer of the opera, Nelson is a synthetic artist who likes to tweak and merge disparate material to create radical new experiences for the operatic […]
Spoleto Festival 2019: Inspiring opening ceremony followed by a shocking Salomé
A sun-drenched morning greeted townsfolk and cultural tourists alike for the 43rd no-weather-spoiler day at this year’s Spoleto Festival Opening. People gathered in the street outside City Hall. Many of the wise women of this fair city sported wide-brimmed hats and beat fans against the heat; seersucker suits and straw hats remained the dress code […]
Washington National Opera’s glittery Gala 2019. Opera stars share stage with WNO patron John Pohanka
What makes someone a devoted opera fan? Is it the “gilterati?” If so, there was much in abundance Saturday night when the Washington National Opera hosted its Gala in the Opera House. From the fashion statements to the Austrian crystal chandeliers that dominate the auditorium’s iconic look, and from which a few “spares” were made […]
Review: For Washington National Opera, Faust is in the house
Only one week ago, Washington National Opera gave us a cool, minimalist modern take on a romantic opera (Eugene Onegin); this week the company took us back to an old world, even hedonistic approach to grand opera with its production of Charles Gounod’s Faust. It was in many ways being fed the operatic equivalent of […]
Opera review: Eugene Onegin features a Tatiana for our times
The wait of thirty years came to an end Saturday night when Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin returned to Washington in a spare yet stunningly beautiful production. The minimalist ‘box’ set became a canvas for color and light to carry the audience not only through the hours of a day and memories shared in autumnal display […]
Washington National Opera looks to the future with 3 short operas in development
Snow could not deter the faithful from The John F. Kennedy Center last weekend where we saw an extraordinary commitment of artists and audience members gather as part of this year’s American Opera Initiative from Washington National Opera. Many came bringing skills and focus to give respectful consideration to four pairs of composers-and-librettists and their […]
Taking Up Serpents review. Haunting new opera about Pentecostal snake handlers
Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative, now in its seventh season, annually holds a mini-festival and commissions a composer-librettist team to create an hour-long opera and raise up American unsung voices and stories. Nothing – short of reopening the government – could be more timely. Despite the almost universal cry currently from the lips of […]
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