Artiste: Morgan Smith

Aidan Lang, head of Seattle Opera, reveals his talents as a stage director in a fresh and engaging interpretation of Mozart's comic masterpiece. 

American composer Jake Heggie makes his Los Angeles Opera debut in this powerful performance of his 2010 opera, Moby-Dick.

A well-rehearsed and cohesive Bohème in San Diego, although with some vocal disappointments. 

Two worlds occupied by the same two women and presented, jarringly, as a single multi-story set. One is the pristine white deck of a 1960s ship bound for Brazil, and beneath it, where the hull might be, is the grey grim world of Auschwitz.

Though reports of the work’s importance and dramatic power have attended it since its 2010 premiere in Dallas, I doubt many in the audience of the War Memorial Opera House on Wednesday night were prepared for the impact of Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick.

Christmas may have inspired much of the greatest holiday-related popular music, but in the Classical tradition, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (to say nothing of his St. John Passion and Easter Oratorio) points toward the influence of Easter.