Reviews
Pacific Opera Victoria’s For a Look or a Touch “rings true in the heart”
Pacific Opera Victoria’s second leap into the world of film is very different from its psychedelic, special-effects-laden first, Elizabeth Raum’s The Garden of Alice. Jake Heggie’s For a Look or a Touch, seen April 23 on a big screen at the Royal Theatre, is firmly...
Wallis Giunta “Exemplary” in Opera North’s The Seven Deadly Sins
“Few love to hear the sins they love to act.” Truer words have never been spoken. But then again, Shakespeare’s Pericles never heard Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s The Seven Deadly Sins. Though this ballet chanté lags behind the popularity of the duo’s two previous...
Canadian Opera Company returns with an affecting La traviata
The Canadian Opera Company enjoyed a successful return to the mainstage of the Four Seasons Centre Apr. 23 with a splendidly sung, effectively staged performance of Verdi’s La traviata. The revival is in the hands of the production’s original director, American Arin...
LA TRAVIATACalgary Opera sets La traviata in the Roaring ’20s
Calgary Opera’s second production in its 2022 COVID-comeback season drew a large, largely unmasked crowd to the Jubilee Auditorium for its opening Apr. 2. This La traviata was a reprise of a concept staged in Edmonton in the fall of 2018, including the same adaptable...
VanessaVoicebox: Opera in Concert scores with Vanessa
Samuel Barber’s Vanessa is a Gothic romance set in winter in some unspecified part of northern Europe. Three generations of aristocratic women act on their differing ideas of love and honour as they encounter the unscrupulous Anatole, son of Vanessa’s former flame of...
COSÌ FAN TUTTERihab Chaieb is “a dream” in Washington National Opera’s Così fan tutte
I’d thought I was arriving early for a three o’clock Sunday matinee—but no, in frustrating fact I was fifteen minutes late for a two o’clock curtain. Mea culpa, and my distinct loss: the 150 minutes that remained of Washington National Opera’s Così fan tutte (20...
RigolettoLatest Liceu staging of Rigoletto at least musically effective
There’s no denying the popularity of Verdi’s Rigoletto. Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu has staged it 375 times, the second most frequently performed work in the theatre’s 175-year history. Fifteen further performances took place last Nov. 28-Dec. 19 in a revival of...
Edmonton Opera mounts Mozart’s Così fan tutte in short order
There was a shorter gap than usual between Edmonton Opera productions in this truncated season. Only two months ago, the company staged a solid three-night run of La bohème. On March 19, it opened a new production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, with sundry newcomers to...
Almost complete Don Carlos in French at the Met at last
Don Carlo, in Italian, not Don Carlos, in French—that’s how I, like nearly everyone who loves this noblest of operas, first made its acquaintance. This Schiller-inspired melding of romantic and political intrigues at the court of Spain’s Philip II remains my most...
Glenn Gould School surprises with a fresh take on Handel’s Rinaldo
The Royal Conservatory of Music Glenn Gould School spring opera was Handel’s Rinaldo or, perhaps more accurately, director Tom Diamond’s Rinaldo. It was a fairly radical and effective reworking of the original that provided on-stage roles for all the students of the...
AMPLIFY 1.0: Amplified Opera raises difficult questions about opera itself
AMPLIFY 1.0 from Toronto-based Amplified Opera was a series of three shows on aspects of “toxicity” in opera. There were three performances, with two of the three shows performed at each. The venue was Jeffrey Gibson’s installation I AM YOUR RELATIVE at the Museum of...
UBC Opera’s Shadow Catch conjures Oppenheimer Park in the Old Auditorium
Shadow Catch premiered in December 2011, at Vancouver’s Firehall Arts Centre as part of the Vancouver Pro Musica’s Further East/Further West series. It was a fitting location for the work’s debut since the FAC is mere blocks from the much-historied Downtown East...