Reviews
Review: Die Fledermaus makes grand return to Rennes, France
After an absence of over 20 years, Johann Strauss Jr.’s La Chauve-Souris (Die Fledermaus) made a grand return to Rennes, France this May in a delightful co-production between Opéra de Rennes, Angers Nantes Opéra, Opéra de Toulon, and Opéra Grand Avignon. A performance...
Review: Megan Latham finesses the shifts in POV’s Bon Appetit! & The Italian Lesson
Oh the agony: to see a practically perfect chocolate cake made right in front of you but not be able to taste it! If only Pacific Opera Victoria had thought to offer viewers of their filmed version of Lee Hoiby’s Bon Appetit! the option of DoorDash delivery … but no....
Rossini at play: an “ingenious staging” of Barber of Seville out of Opéra de Québec
Due to the pandemic, the last opera to be performed in Québec City was La traviata in October 2019. Having started his role as Opéra de Québec's artistic director soon thereafter, Jean-François Lapointe had to rethink the entire 2020-2021 season. Turning to webcasts,...
Opera Atelier’s The Resurrection is resplendent art in the face of adversity
George Frideric Handel’s The Resurrection is really an oratorio in name only. Discounting its liturgical basis, the piece has all the hallmarks of a baroque opera seria: dramatic characters, a clear—albeit skimpy—plot and a theatricality in the libretto that demands...
Emily D’Angelo earns ovation in ROH Clemenza
Mozart's La clemenza di Tito is currently undergoing a process of reappraisal by reinterpretation, the most radical in a flurry of recent productions being Peter Sellars' for the 2017 Salzburg Festival. That turned librettist Metastasio's "traitors" into "terrorists"...
Canadians create “highlight” of SFO’s The Adlers: Live at the Drive-In
San Francisco Opera (SFO), like so many musical organizations, has countered the pandemic closure by showering its audience with online recitals, concerts, lectures and celebrations. But SFO has done much more: large-scaled live performances. This spring on a...
Boris Godunov hybridized at Staatsoper Stuttgart
People just can’t keep their hands off Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov. The parade of revisers starts with the composer himself who left us two distinct versions, the 1869 original and an 1872 revision. A vocal score with further changes was published in 1874. Next in line...
UofT Opera’s miniature shows offer “much to enjoy” despite staging limitations
This spring, in lieu of its usual run of a fully staged opera given four performances with different casts, UofT Opera offered “Opera in Miniature: A Festival of One Act Operas.” There were five performances over four days with one show repeated with a second cast. Of...
Edmonton Opera goes live with drive-in opera
Edmonton Opera, like many companies, has tried to stay in touch with its supporters during the pandemic by offering various virtual performances, but it has also drawn a smattering of its audience to its Jubilee Auditorium venue for some live concerts. Well, at least...
Aida with puppets & Radvanovsky at Opéra national de Paris
Opéra national de Paris's new production of Verdi's Aida, which premiered online on Feb. 18th, marks the Paris debut of the Dutch director Lotte de Beer, recently appointed director of the Vienna Volksoper. She angles the spotlight on the problematic stereotypes which...
Songs for Murdered Sisters: Eking Beauty out of Tragedy
In the midst of a brutal cold spell that left millions of Texans without power, heat, and water, Houston Grand Opera (HGO)—unsinkable survivor of Hurricane Harvey, which flooded its home, the Wortham Center, and closed it down for a year in 2017/18—streamed what’s...
L’orangeraie interpretation takes racist turn at Chants Libres
I can't believe that it's 2021, one week after the U.S. swore in its first woman and first person of colour Vice-President, and yet here I am reviewing an opera where a white director sees no problem with putting an all-white cast of singers in brownface makeup and...