This weekend a new opera, Proving Up, proved itself indeed – a chamber opera worthy for the 21st century. Born out of a spirit of inquiry, Proving Up is mysterious, mesmerizing, startling in moments, and highly atmospheric. The work is less plot-driven than most traditional opera; it has earmarks rather of an extended tone poem.
Birthing Opera: The Next Generation of Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative
This coming weekend Washington National Opera will showcase its most vital work: insuring the future of the form by developing young creative talent through its American Opera Initiative (AOI), a process that includes getting short operatic gems up on their feet.
Is WNO’s The Little Prince too sophisticated for children? (review)
The Little Prince returned to earth this past weekend, filling the newly renovated Terrace Theater at the Kennedy Center with a veritable feast of sound and sights. “Amazing!” pronounced Kiko, a first grader from Olney, Md, attending opera for the first time.
WNO’s Alcina casts its spell at The Kennedy Center (review)
Old things may become new. Handel’s opera, Alcina, which premiered in 1735 has done just that – quite magically so. Washington National Opera has dared to take on the classic sorceress for the first time, and it couldn’t have been better timed. “Witchy” and “witchiness” have come back into vogue as women choose to reclaim […]
Aida at Washington National Opera (review)
Aida opened Washington National Opera’s season, and the production is stunning grand opera. From the remarkable singing to the stage pictures filled with RETNA’s startling, rich iconography, this is a production not to be missed.
WNO presents a bold, modern Madame Butterfly (review)
In most productions, Madame Butterfly is unabashedly atmospheric in its romanticism. “Orientalism” carries us back to composer Giacomo Puccini’s time when the West imagined a fanciful Japan with geishas in pastel colors, a watery moon over stirring waters, a pinkish snow of cherry blossoms, and the like. Those of us who love this opera succumb willingly […]
“Champion” Librettist Wins $25,000 Steinberg/ATCA Award for play about boxer Emile Griffith
Michael Cristofer, who wrote the libretto for the opera Champion, seen at Washington National Opera earlier this year, mined the same territory to write Man in the Ring, which debuted in Chicago last September. The American Theatre Critics Association yesterday announced that his efforts have earned him the $25,000 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics […]
Don Giovanni gets a youthful outing at Washington National Opera
Mozart would have been grinning at this youthful production of his tried-and-true opera that reached out to a new younger and diverse audience Friday night, March 17th. Washington National Opera’s Don Giovanni was Mozart as he wanted to be known: someone who delivered stories-in-song with popular appeal.
Champion at Washington National Opera (review)
The air was electric at Kennedy Center Saturday night with the promise of a great fight mounted as opera on stage, and I had what amounted to ringside seats. Champion clearly had some heavy hitters, headed up with a score by the great jazz trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard and a libretto by award winning […]
What Cristofer’s Champion leaves out from Emile Griffith’s deadly seven seconds in the ring
On the 24th of March, 1962, welterweight champion Benny Paret called former champ Emile Griffith a maricón at their weigh-in. The closest contemporary American-English equivalent to this word is faggot, but maricón means more, and worse. Griffith understood what it meant. He climbed into the ring with Paret that night, fought him, and killed him.
Dead Man Walking at Washington National Opera (review)
The opera Dead Man Walking is a journey of harrowing truth and compelling beauty. If, as Sister Helen Prejean says, “ Grace is waking up to the gospel of encounter,” then Director Francesca Zambello and her company of stunning singer-actors has graced us with a revelatory theatrical encounter – that is to say an American […]
Rehearsing Dead Man Walking: Week 3, focus on Sister Helen’s Journey
How will Director Francesca Zambello accompany her singer’s journey on the dark and lonely path of playing the nun who befriended a convicted killer and witnessed his execution? This is what I wondered while watching Kate Lindsey prepare her Washington National Opera debut in the lead role of Sister Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking.