Originally from New York City, Maria Nockin began attending opera and concerts as a child when her parents could not find a babysitter. She has studied violin, piano and guitar as well as voice, and she has a master’s degree in education from Fordham University. Having spent many years teaching high school in winter and working at the Salzburg Festival in summer, she now lives in the Southwest where she covers classical music for Opera Today, Bachtrack, Fanfare, and Classical Singer as well as publications in Spanish, Dutch, and Italian.
Maestro Jordan did not present a cut down version of the score. Every instrument Wagner called for was on stage, even the six harps, but the only sung piece was Brünnhilde’s Immolation.
Richard Jones's production of Puccini’s Western opera La fanciulla del West is well sung, but fails to tap in to the Wild West atmosphere of the surroundings.
Santa Fe Opera presented Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette in Stephen Lawless’ mid 19th-century staging, a co-production with Barcelona's Liceu. Before the overture, General Director Charles MacKay came onstage to announce that Stephen Costello was ill and would be replaced by Joshua Guerrero, a graduate of the Los Angeles Opera Young Artist Program.
Calixto Bieito’s production of Georges Bizet’s Carmen isn't without controversy. San Francisco Opera gave us raw sexuality unvarnished by any degree of social refinement.
Great opera at the Los Angeles Philharmonic as Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande as part of the City of Light, a retrospective that examines works seen in Paris during the first half of the 20th century.
This performance marked Sir Mark Elder’s debut with the company and, beginning with the overture, he offered his individual interpretation of the score. He had an enormous range of dynamics and his tempi varied widely with the emotional values of each scene.
As a tenor, Jay Hunter Morris is used to playing the love interest. In Jennifer Higdon’s new opera Cold Mountain, which receives its world première on 1 August at Santa Fe Opera, the tables are turned and he gets to portray a nasty, dark villain himself.
