Kurt Weill meets Francis Poulenc in Opera Parallèle's innovative production

By Jaime Robles, 28 April 2014

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Reviewed at Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts, San Francisco on 25 April 2014

Weill, Mahagonny Songspiel

Poulenc, Les Mamelles de Tirésias (The Breasts of Tiresias)

Thomas Glenn, Tenor

Renée Rapier, Mezzo-soprano

Adler Fellow, Baritone

Aleksey Bogdanov, Baritone

Daniel Cilli, Baritone

Gabriel Preisser, Tenor

Rachel Schutz, Soprano

The Rake’s Progress at Glimmerglass: Temptation and collapse

Edward Sava-Segal, 3rd August

Stravinsky’s fable of desire and downfall receives a meticulously unified staging in Glimmerglass’s 50th season.

****1

A Rachmaninov troika from Odyssey Opera, with one lame horse

Kevin Wells, 25th September

Gil Rose conducts all three of Rachmaninov's operas in Boston, with impressive performances making a convincing case for at least two of them.

****1

The Metropolitan Opera performs a revelatory, original Boris Godunov

Robert Levine, 28th September

Forget Rimsky-Korsakov, forget the Polish act... Stephen Wadsworth's new production for The Met returns to Mussorgsky's original 1869 version of his Russian historical epic.

*****

Chicago Opera Theater's bold study of contrasts

Katherine Syer, 16th November

An unusual double bill of operas by Joby Talbot and Sergei Rachmaninov under conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya in Chicago.

****1

A rousing rarity in Boston: The Maid of Orléans

Kevin Wells, 16th September

Disparaged by critics and his fellow musicians, Tchaikovsky's The Maid of Orléans is performed by Odyssey Opera.

*****

Operatic righteous anger or self-indulgence?

Hilary Stroh, 14th November

A righteous, politically-relevant but musically questionable world premiere of Philip Glass' revised Appomattox.

**111

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Jaime Robles

Jaime Robles has previously written in the San Francisco Bay Area, including for the San Francisco Classical Voice. Also a poet, she has written song lyrics and librettos for several one-act operas, including Inferno (music by Peter Josheff), staged in 2009 by San Francisco Cabaret Opera, and Vladimir in Butterfly Country (music by Anne Callaway), staged in 2012.