Reviews
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...
Canadian Opera Company’s Fantasma: a haunting return to live performance
The Canadian Opera Company returned to live performance Mar. 9 with the world premiere of Fantasma by composer Ian Cusson and librettist Colleen Murphy. The piece, written with young audiences in mind, was staged in the newly named Canadian Opera Company Theatre...
Tapestry Opera makes a welcome return to live performance with Songbook XI
Songbook XI on the evening of Mar. 11 marked Toronto-based Tapestry Opera’s first performance in front of a live audience since Jacqueline in January 2020. It was the usual Songbook format. Fifteen singers, rather remarkably including two countertenors, and three...
Pacific Opera’s The Garden of Alice: formidable cast in a brave new genre
Pacific Opera Victoria’s film version of Canadian composer/librettist Elizabeth Raum’s The Garden of Alice, seen on a big screen at the Royal Theatre Feb. 24, is an odd creature. Sophisticated in some ways, naive in others; like Alice, more than a little uncertain...
UBC Opera gets to the heart of Le nozze di Figaro
If the Monty Python crew described Le nozze di Figaro as “silly—very silly,” I could hardly disagree. It’s a situation-comedy romp if ever there was one, with the situations no more profound than your basic TV sitcom. But Lorenzo da Ponte’s ingeniously tangled plot,...
Calgary Opera’s THE MERRY WIDOW “high-quality evening of music-making”
Live opera has been hard to come by in Canada these past few months and where there have been performances, audiences have been forcibly limited in numbers. For its long-awaited return to the Jubilee auditorium, Calgary Opera was constrained to 50% audience capacity...
Marie-Nicole Lemieux debuts Charlotte in Montpellier Opera’s Werther
With its sumptuous melodies coupled to a tale of unrequited love culminating in a dramatic suicide on Christmas Eve, Massenet’s Werther has long been a precious jewel in the operatic repertoire. How à propos that OperaVision.eu began a six-month livestream of...
Florie Valiquette ‘is vibrant’ in Théâtre des Champs Elysées’ La Vie Parisienne
Offenbach's La Vie Parisienne is perfect holiday fare, bubbly, joyful, and whimsical, especially when designed and directed by French fashion designer Christian Lacroix. We know that the famous couturier is a magician of colours, a lover of shimmering fabrics, a...
Sondra Radvanovsky ‘blossoms’ in the Met’s Tosca
So much press hoopla has been lavished on the Met’s two new operas, Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones and Matthew Aucoin’s Eurydice—Fire alone inspired four feature articles in The New York Times, not to mention an opinion column and an actual review—that...