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 […]
Review: The Lion, the Unicorn and Me, Washington National Opera’s annual holiday treat
With the help of one “ordinary” angel with back-pack wings and a gaggle of colorful, singing animals, a story of complete enchantment unfolded, vying for the number one spot on the extensive list of Washington holiday traditions.
Review: Pulitzer Prize winner Silent Night from Washington National Opera
As I write this, leaders from around the world are marching down the Champs-Élysées in Paris under a canopy of umbrellas in the rain, gathered to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the peace that ended the First World War. Across the Atlantic the night before, the Washington National Opera (WNO) presented Kevin Puts’s Pulitzer-Prize winning […]
Librettist Mark Campbell on Silent Night, the WWI Christmas Eve miracle on the battlefield
Librettist Mark Campbell and I last spoke when he was mentoring young librettists in a “supportive role” for Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative. Now Campbell is front and center for Silent Night, his highly acclaimed opera with Kevin Puts – for which Puts won a 2012 Pulitzer for musical composition – at Washington National Opera. Silent […]
Review: La traviata, Washington National Opera’s season opener
The season’s opening night at Washington National Opera is always filled with excitement, but there were several elements that caused the atmosphere around Saturday evening’s La traviata to be especially electrifying. The audience brought with them both a heightened eagerness for escape into music and timeless art and an energy that threatened to erupt at […]
Nationals Park big screen turns from homerun recaps to WNO’s Barber of Seville for “Opera in the Outfield”
Washington National Opera, generously sponsored by Mars, Inc, has created what may be Washington’s most terrific recent tradition – “Opera in the Outfield.” There were 10,000 people reported to have been in the National’s Park, home of the Washington Nationals, last Saturday night. Many decided, as I had with friends, to picnic on the lawn, […]
Review: Candide from Washington National Opera: glorious with a bit more bite
Candide is one of those hybrids (opera/Broadway show) that seemed so radical and ungainly a child when it first appeared in 1953 that it shocked and raised the critical ire of many. No one was quite sure where or how to produce it. So, naturally it was a must for the mercurial appetites of a […]
Review: The Barber of Seville from Washington National Opera
Washington, especially the State Department it seems, wants to get back its swagger (sic.) No need to look further than taking a cue from the newly landed stellar body in our midst, baritone Andrey Zhilikhovsky. From the back of the Kennedy Center’s Opera House, his Figaro launched the character’s first clarion notes in darkness under […]
Washington National Opera announces its 2018-2019 season
The partnership between Washington National Opera and The Kennedy Center continues to dominate the opera scene in Washington. But Deborah Rutter, at the helm of the entire arts complex, continues to think “out of the box,” the Kennedy Center box that is, creating new spaces, reaching out to new audiences that better represent our city’s […]
Washington National Opera stages Verdi’s greatest opera Don Carlo(review)
The icy blast that whipped through Washington this past week blew in a work rarely seen to the Kennedy Center’s Opera House Saturday night that both tested one’s brain stamina and also brought some terrific revelations to Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlo. It’s a curious opera and poses quite a few challenges, but the production has […]
American Opera Initiative 2018: three new short operas
Opera has a promising future, judging by this past weekend’s plethora of riches delivered in the newly renovated Terrace Theatre at The Kennedy Center. As part of the American Opera Initiative, Washington National Opera (WNO) produced the opera Proving Up, and teamed up three pairs of young librettists with composers who were mentored in a year-long process […]