San Francisco Opera's Die Walküre overcame a disappointing first act, winning the audience over with excellent singing and playing and impressive stage effects.
San Francisco Opera's Aida features exciting role debuts from Leah Crocetto and Brian Jagde and a visually striking production, but a lack of good direction keeps it from being great music drama.
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.
We find Donald Runnicles and his BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra on fine form for a dramatic Verdi Requiem, packed with magical sound pictures and lashings of all-important terror.
San Francisco Opera's thoughtful version of the 1955 opera Susannah, one of the most performed American operas, placing the story of Susannah and the Elders in the Appalachian hills of the 1930s.
La Fura dels Baus's production balances the familiar with modern detail in a clever staging that packs a real punch. The Arena enjoyed its centennial edition last year, and one wonders whether this might be the production that they celebrate the next time around.
Don Giovanni is perhaps the most difficult of the Mozart–Da Ponte opera trilogy to stage. Not only is there the problem of how exactly the Don is to be consumed in flames at the end of its three-hour span, or the issue of how to make the statue of the Commendatore come to life.
The Cleveland Orchestra closed its 2011/12 season on Thursday and Saturday, May 31 and June 2, with stirring performances of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem, with the orchestra’s Director of Choruses Robert Porco conducting the orchestra, the precisely-trained Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, and an unusually well-matched quartet of soloists.
In our youth, my brother and I adored Cecil B. DeMille’s epic film The Ten Commandments. Not only did we like the well-written and brilliant take on the beloved biblical story of Moses, but we were also fascinated by the lavish sets and historical aspects of the film.
Ukranian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska made a sensational Royal Opera debut earlier this season, as a late substitute for the title role of Aida. In the revival of Phyllida Lloyd's production of Verdi's Macbeth, she produced an equally commanding performance.
Rigoletto is what an opera promoter might describe as a "banker": it's a safe bet to get those seats filled and keep the audience happy. There's a rare blend of gorgeously beautiful music allied to darkly nasty drama that gives the opera enormous, continuing appeal.
