With the many glories of the score and the easy butts of class and marital comedy, it is hard not to be pleased by a Figaro performance, although tonight’s did not sparkle as much as it might have.
Roberto Abbado's precise conducting made the score tingle with life. The magical glissandi were full of mystery, the hotbed of musical detail cleanly communicated and the amorous outbursts treated with Italianate ardour.
Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka, moving between the worlds and rooted in myth, is a shivering opera to experience with its opulent music and its fantastical plot.
What makes this Figaro memorable and admirable is the way it manages both to be sprightly in its tone and details and also luxuriant in places that another director might have blown through.
The opera, directed by Mary Birnbaum, rotates through a cast of characters including Tonic, Dominant, and Subdominant as well as a be-wigged Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.
“It is not his trial, it is mine, mine. It is I whom the devil awaits.” Richard Croft's Vere leads an outstanding cast in LA Opera's revival of Billy Budd.
Of the “ABCs” of opera (Aida, Bohème, and Carmen), Bizet’s masterpiece is the one that has made the transition to pop culture ubiquity. Surely even the most oblivious of listeners are able to whistle along to the “Habanera” and “Toreador Song”. Furthermore, the melodramatic story of exoticism, lust and rejection is one of the most popular of operatic tales.
