Reviews
Halifax Summer Opera Festival
Serse and La Jolie Parfumeuse “Brought great pleasure to the audience”
This summer, in its 17th season, Halifax Summer Opera Festival brought enthusiastic young singers to town again to produce two double-cast fully staged operas: Serse (1738) by G.F. Handel and La Jolie Parfumeuse (1873) by Jacques Offenbach, the latter apparently a...
Highlands Opera Studio
Regeneration “stunning example of what collaboration between artists of different ethnicities, ages, and styles can produce”
On August 17 and 19, at the Northern Lights Performing Arts Pavilion in Haliburton, Ontario, patrons of Highlands Opera Studio witnessed a remarkable artistic creation. Regeneration, a multi-textured work designed and directed by Valerie Kuinka, was inspired by the...
Festival D’Aix-en-Provence
Così fan tutte “Russell Braun is a consummate actor and an artist who continues to astound with his range of roles”
Mozart's Così fan tutte is emblematic of the Festival d'Aix en Provence. It's the opera that opened the festival in 1948 and has been one of the most frequently performed over the 75 years of the festival. It has also received the most prestigious treatment, with the...
Brott Opera
La traviata Anne-Marie “MacIntosh is ready to unleash her Violetta on the world”
On July 13 and 14, Brott Opera presented La traviata in the 470 seat Peller Hall at Ancaster Memorial Arts Centre. Director of Development for Brott music, Jacqui Templeton Muir, mentioned in her opening remarks that it was the Peller Hall’s “baptism by opera”, the...
Boston Early Music Festival
Caccini Alcina “It could well have been written for Mireille Lebel”
Few operas can have enjoyed a splashier premiere than Francesca Caccini’s Alcina. In the Florence of February 1625, the Medici court gathered at the grand villa of Maria Magdalena, widow of Grand Duke Cosimo II, to welcome the visiting Prince Wladyslaw of Poland, to...
![The Little Opera Company The Magic Flute: The Trials of Tamino and Pamina “a testament to [John] Greer’s sensitive artistry”](https://operacanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_9609-400x250.jpg)
The Little Opera Company The Magic Flute: The Trials of Tamino and Pamina “a testament to [John] Greer’s sensitive artistry”
The Little Opera Company closed its 2022/23 season with a bite-sized version of Mozart’s great singspiel, Die Zauberflöte, featuring Canadian composer John Greer’s compact, 90-minute adaptation titled The Magic Flute: The Trials of Tamino and Pamina performed in English.
![Boston Early Music Festival Circé “no one knows the nuances of French baroque style better than [Karina Gauvin] does.”](https://operacanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/2023-06-03-Circe-dress_8-1-400x250.jpg)
Boston Early Music Festival Circé “no one knows the nuances of French baroque style better than [Karina Gauvin] does.”
“Wort oder Ton?”: which has the upper hand, the words or the music? That centuries-old debate, as immortalized in Richard Strauss’s Capriccio, popped into my head in the midst of the Boston Early Music Festival’s Circé (11 June), a tragédie en musique first performed...
Canadians triumph in the UK
It was a banner month of June for Canadian singers in the UK. First, mezzo Simone McIntosh proudly represented the Maple Leaf at the 2023 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. She delivered a stellar aria round in the competition’s opening heat on June 11–a...
San Francisco OperaDie Frau Ohne Schatten “Productions like this, rare though they be, are why we live in hope every time we go to the opera”
The glorious history of Richard Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten at the San Francisco Opera—including its 1959 U.S. premiere and the still vivid 1976 staging under Karl Böhm and Nikolaus Lehnhoff—is continuing in brilliant form. Sir Donald Runnicles, the beloved past...
Manitoba Underground Opera The Mansplaining Division “Alissa Watson’s spot-on stage direction allows each character to shine”
Manitoba Underground Opera surfaced this spring with its ambitious new 2023 festival titled "Odyssey", setting sail with Laura Gow’s The Mansplaining Division as the first of three mainstage shows presented May 24-26. This year also marks a radical departure for the...
Metropolitan Opera Die Zauberflöte “Musically, this Flute was top-flight”
How often does an opera audience seem united by one big, heady communal high? That was the feeling at The Metropolitan Opera’s new Die Zauberflöte on May 22, a giddily joyous experience that sent me home in buoyant spirits. Simon McBurney’s tirelessly inventive,...
Opéra de Québec Madama Butterfly “La révélation de la soirée fut assurément l’inspirante et dynamique Clelia Cafiero”
Pour sa première production, en 1985, L’Opéra de Québec avait choisi Madama Butterfly. Repris en 1999, 2005 et 2013, cet opéra de Puccini revient donc sur la scène du Grand Théâtre pour la 5e fois. La pandémie étant officiellement terminée, ses quatre représentations...