Contracts, like agreements, are often broken in opera as well as life, giving grist for good plotlines. And Grand Operas, like our constitution, are rightly to be re-interpreted with an elastic, contemporary understanding. “Don’t you agree?” So says Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, with a twinkle in her eye. The Justice was at Glimmerglass […]
Ariadne in Naxos at Glimmerglass
It takes a confident and mature company like Glimmerglass to poke fun both at itself and the very form of opera. Ariadne in Naxos was, in many ways, both a celebration and a self-referential spoof of the entire “Glimmerglass family” that had gathered. The production was cast from past and present members of the Young […]
Madame Butterfly at Glimmerglass
I will wager, folks, that this year’s Glimmerglass production is the most dramatically sound, compellingly truthful, and emotionally wrenching Madame Butterfly that you will ever see. For my own part, by the time the fragile teenage-bride geisha, a girl known as “Butterfly,” was face-to-face alone with her charismatic if careless, naval officer husband, I was […]
The Flying Dutchman at Glimmerglass Festival 2013
A season programmed under an umbrella theme can feel a strain, but Artistic and General Director Francesca Zambello has pulled off a clean sweep of wins at Glimmerglass Festival this year, all under a banner featuring Romanticism. Glimmerglass Lake itself provides a most suitable setting that reflects nature as inspiration, and the shows bring to […]
A shining moment at Glimmerglass: Camelot
If Wagner’s creation of the Dutchman signifies a true Romantic anti-hero then in this season’s musical we are asked to consider Arthur in Camelot to be a twentieth-century counterpart. Though the genres and styles of music-theatre differ significantly, the alchemic individualistic imagining of the two lead characters made some strong connections.
Stabat Mater concludes our Glimmerglass 2013 series
Elegance, idealism, imagination, suffering. These are the words I take away from Glimmerglass Festival 2013. It would be wrong of me not to mention one last show, which for me may have stood as the emotional heart of the outstanding season, and it drove home all these shared motifs.
Kelley Rourke produces surprisingly funny adaptation for Verdi’s King for a Day at Glimmerglass
My introduction to this year’s Glimmerglass Festival featured a moving kaleidoscope of “pop” bubbles projected on the theatre’s curtain. The cheerful light show accompanied the overture, which, from its opening notes, raced like a cat-and-mouse chase, musically reminiscent of Rossini, and set the tone for a new, splendidly buoyant production of Giuseppe Verdi’s King for […]
Glimmerglass Festival Summer 2012 – Armide and The Music Man
– Susan Galbraith reports on the 25th anniversary year of the prestigious Glimmerglass Festival summer opera festival in Cooperstown, New York. –
Lost in the Stars at Glimmerglass
– Susan Galbraith reports on the four productions of Glimmerglass Festival, in Cooperstown, NY, now celebrating its 25th anniversary season. –
Aida at Glimmerglass
The prestigious Glimmerglass Festival leads off its 2012 season with an original and stunning production of Aida, without one elephant sighted except for a giant be-twigged mother-and-baby topiary on the entrance lawn. Instead, Artistic Director Francesca Zambello has seized on the themes of global conflict and in particular the casualties of war and policies of […]