Reviews
San Francisco Opera
Omar “a striking and beautiful production”
Omar ibn Said was a rich Senegalese man and devoted Muslim scholar, learned in the Qur’an and several disciplines. In 1807, he was seized in Futa Toro, transported via the slave trade’s horrible “middle passage” to Charleston, S.C. and sold to a cruel master. In...
Opéra de Québec
Lucie de Lammermoor “Soulignons la solide prestation du chœur…et l’excellence de l’orchestre symphonique de Québec”
Jean-François Lapointe, directeur général et artistique de l’Opéra de Québec est, on le sait, très attaché au répertoire lyrique chanté en français. En ouvrant la saison avec Lucie de Lammermoor, la version française du célèbre opéra de Donizetti, il a fait d’une...
Edmonton Opera
Carmen “solid” and “perfectly clear rendition”
Edmonton Opera opened its 60th anniversary season on October 19, a Thursday, rather than its traditional Saturday night, with Bizet’s Carmen. The company last did Carmen in 2016, and they enlisted the same director, Maria Lamont, for this three-show production. This...
Southern Ontario Lyric Opera (SOLO)
Madama Butterfly “With productions like this, Madama Butterfly will continue to remain a fan favourite.”
On October 15, Southern Ontario Lyric Opera (SOLO) opened their 2023/24 season with Madama Butterfly at the Burlington Performing Arts Centre. I am not surprised that this particular masterpiece by Puccini is one of the most performed operas worldwide. The sold-out...
Manitoba Underground Opera
The Corsair “Strong, committed singers on a visually stunning, authentic set”
Manitoba Underground Opera closed its 2023 Odyssey festival with notably the Manitoba premiere of Verdi’s The Corsair (Il Corsaro), performed on the deck of the historic 17th century Nonsuch (replica) ship now permanently "docked" at the Manitoba Museum. The 15-year...
The Metropolitan Opera
Dead Man Walking “Jake Heggie, I hope, was feeling justifiably proud”
Dead Man Walking, the opera, has enjoyed a remarkable life: it’s been around for twenty-three years now, performed in dozens of venues worldwide and commercially recorded twice, and it shows no signs of going away. I first encountered it in 2002, in Cincinnati, caught...
Canadian Opera Company
Fidelio “Built to a thrilling conclusion that was exhilarating”
Beethoven famously regarded his only opera, Fidelio, as a problem child that cost him dearly, and certainly it took about a decade from 1804-1814 and three distinct tries for him to get to the version that holds the stage today and that opened the Canadian Opera...
Canadian Opera
La bohème “The attractive power of La bohème is such that even after seeing it countless times, you can be sucked right back into its world after just a few bars”
The Canadian Opera Company mounted its John Caird staging of Puccini’s La bohème for the third time in a decade October 6 with a performance that was endearing if not on opening night as emotionally affective as it might have been. A co-production with Houston Grand...
San Francisco Opera
The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs “Olivia Smith was outstanding”
The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs by Mason Bates, with libretto by Mark Campbell, starts with Jobs’s frenzied 2007 launch of “the device” that has altered world culture and the habits of hundreds of millions of people--the actual name never proclaimed. It fits the hand,...
Park Avenue Armory
Doppelganger featured “Michael Levine’s typically spare and striking design”
What is it about Schubert song cycles that attracts the Regie gang? In recent years Christof Loy, William Kentridge, and David Alden have all had a go at Winterreise, whose coherent narrative plausibly invites theatrical treatment. Now Claus Guth has tackled...
San Francisco Opera
Il trovatore “Eun Sun Kim has brought fresh life to the San Francisco Opera”
Giuseppe Verdi’s Il trovatore is about a hallucinating witch and two men who do not know they are brothers. They both love the same woman. It is one of the great sing-fests in all of opera, lavishly piling glorious (often famous) numbers atop one another. The blood...
Opéra National de Paris
Don Giovanni John Relyea is “electrifying”
In Denise Wendel-Poray’s words: “Relyea‘s final entrance as the Commendatore is electrifying…his massive stature, charismatic presence, and sonorous voice, looming through the penumbra to deliver the final and fatal blow.”