Reviews
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.”
Atom Egoyan
Seven Veils TIFF Avant-Première at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts
Seven Veils TIFF Avant-Première at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts
For opera fans who are also movie buffs, a highly anticipated event of the 2023 TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) is Seven Veils, a new film written and directed by Canadian opera director and filmmaker Atom Egoyan. It is based on his 27-year-old production...
Manitoba Underground Opera
Castor et Pollux “an all-immersive, late summer treat”
Manitoba Underground Opera took audiences from heaven to hell this summer, with Rameau’s Castor et Pollux, its second production of its Odyssey 2023 festival. This year’s line-up wraps up with Verdi’s The Corsair being staged on deck of the historic Nonsuch ship...
Maritime Concert Opera
La Traviata Verdi “A major triumph”
When La Traviata was first performed in Venice in 1853 it was a major disappointment. This was the age of Wagner and Verdi and big operatic drama. Verdi had disregarded the moral and artistic convention of his time, as well as the expectations of his audience; instead...
OrpheusPDX
Il Re Pastore Mozart “Whyte created a stellar Aminta”
Operagoers may have been tempted to think that an opera from the likes of a teenage Mozart would be a lightweight thing, but in the hands of director Dan Rigazzi, Il Re Pastore (“The Royal Shepherd”) offered a fresh look at what it means to rule and who should do it....
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...