Reviews
Paris Opera Tosca Gerald Finley: “magnificent tone and varied nuance, endowing his character with more interiority and complexity than I’ve ever seen in this role”
Pierre Audi's production of Tosca, which premiered in 2014, has become a staple of the Paris Opera repertoire; and rightly so, it's a classic beauty. Puccini made his lyric tragedy site and time specific, and Audi respects this. We are in Rome in 1800 during the...
Royal Opera House Alcina Emily D’Angelo’s “art is unequaled in ‘Verdi Prati'”
Handel's 1735 opera Alcina is one of the most popular baroque operas in the repertoire and is featured somewhere around Europe or England every year, either in a festival or an opera house. The last decade has seen: Katie Mitchel's darkly satirical, Shades of...
ALBUM: Candide London Symphony Orchestra “Cunegonde’s “Glitter and Be Gay”…a coloratura extravaganza knocked off with aplomb by Archibald”
The recent hybrid CD/SACD release of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide on the London Symphony Orchestra’s own label is drawn from live semi-staged performances at the Barbican in London in December 2018. That production was, in turn, based on a 2004 production for the New...
Metropolitan OperaThe Hours A fine opera deserving of a smaller stage
Is Kevin Puts’s The Hours the best brand-new opera the Metropolitan Opera has presented in years? Probably. It’s meticulously crafted, eminently singable, and makes for an eclectically influenced but almost consistently alluring listen. “Based on the book by Michael...
Opéra Comique Armide “All critics seem to agree upon one thing at least: Véronique Gens is unsurpassable as Armide.”
Purists apparently have some bones to pick with this new production of Armide, judging from the various and contradictory criticism in the French press, but for me, the essential elements were united to make for a very satisfactory performance, to say the least. First...
Calgary Opera Carmen A very fine production dedicated to the late Bramwell Tovey
To open its 50th anniversary season, Calgary Opera is presenting Bizet’s Carmen. The idea to do this opera for the anniversary came from former Artistic Director Bramwell Tovey, a much-appreciated figure on the Calgary musical scene who recently died from cancer. The...
Manitoba Opera La Cenerentola “Haute couture frocks…brilliant set…well lit…crisply led…worth the wait”
Manitoba Opera trumpeted goodness as it opened its auspicious 50th anniversary season with Rossini’s La Cenerentola, an ideal choice for pandemic-weary audiences stage directed by Winnipeg’s Robert Herriot, and notably its first full-scale production since its...
Teatro Nuovo Maometto Secondo “Vancouver native Simone McIntosh, lithe and lovely, whose crystalline high mezzo fully commanded Anna’s wide range”
Patience can be amply rewarded: Teatro Nuovo’s Maometto Secondo, thrice deferred, at last hit the New York stage (Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater, on November 2) and proved the best thing Will Crutchfield’s period-practicing aggregation has done in the four and...
Edmonton Opera Tosca Slack, Pomeroy, and Barrett “were uniformly strong, both musically and dramatically”
Edmonton Opera opened its three-show season on October 22 with a compelling production of Puccini’s Tosca. It will be the only traditional take on a canonic work in Artistic Director Joel Ivany’s first crack at designing an Edmonton Opera season. Productions of Cosi...
Metropolitan Opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk Maestro Keri-Lynn Wilson “masterfully captured not just the score’s cornucopia of arresting sonorities but its vibrant pulse”
Some operas have grown on me over the years; some productions have, too. Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is one of those operas, and Graham Vick’s Metropolitan Opera staging of it is one of those productions. I’d always respected Shostakovich’s trenchant troublemaker of 1934,...
Opera Atelier Dido and Aeneas “well sung and satisfying”
Opera Atelier’s production of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas which opened last night at the Elgin Theatre is essentially a remount of their 2016 production though shorn of the prologue created for that version. This cuts the piece to the normal 65 minutes or so and allows...
Vocalypse ProductionsEscape to Freedom A World Premiere In Halifax
This 90-minute performance of song was an intense interpretation of a real woman’s story. Mona Parsons, the only Canadian woman to be imprisoned by the German army in World War II, was a Nova Scotian who married a Dutch businessman and moved with him to Holland. The...