Fractured legend of Camelia la Tejana jumbles reality and fiction

It takes some brashness (and perhaps just a little bit of megalomania) on the part of a composer to choose Macbeth, of all of the Bard’s plays, to set to music. As if one can ignore that in the hearts and minds of most listeners, Verdi had the first, last, and only word in musical adaptations of Shakespeare’s drama of bloody intrigue.

Is there a more exciting opera company than Long Beach Opera in Southern California – or even anywhere west of Santa Fe? With the Dorothy Chandler’s house company and even local opera outfits seemingly content with just cranking out production after production of the same three Puccini operas ad infinitum and often ad nauseum, it’s heartening to see a company that views opera not as a dusty museum

Markus Bothe’s Botticelli-inspired production fuses tableau vivant aesthetics with Jörg Halubek’s surgical musical precision, offering a peerless, vivid tribute to the fragrant dawn of opera.

Very few singers can hold an audience in the palm of their hand the way Brenda Rae as Marie does in this rollicking frolic. 

Tales of love and loss as operas by Elena Langer, Charlotte Bray and Elizabeth Maconchy form a varied triple bill in this showcase for The Royal Opera’s Jette Parker Artists. 

Carlisle Floyd's operatic setting of John Steinbeck’s classic novella is given a new production in the composer's centenary year at the Lyric Opera of Kansas City.