Reviews
Review: Christopher Dunham embodies Don Giovanni for SOLO
On Mar. 2, Southern Ontario Lyric Opera produced a fully staged production of Don Giovanni. Under the artistic direction of maestro Sabatino Vacca, this relatively new company’s mandate is to promote “the magnificent world of operatic entertainment across Southern...
Review: Edmonton’s Mercury Opera La Bohème offers “emotional penetration”
Edmonton’s Mercury Opera prides itself on being a maverick enterprise, taking grand opera into alleys and subway corridors, arid barrens and inner-city parks. It once produced Puccini’s Il tabarro on a docked riverboat. Last year, Mercury Opera staged La traviata in a...
Review: Robert Gleadow in “thrilling voice” in Paris Opera’s Il primo omicidio
Alessandro Scarlatti’s Il primo omicidio (1707), recounts the first murder in the history of mankind. Cain and Abel are the sons of Adam and Eve. Cain, a farmer, becomes enraged when the Lord accepts the offering of his brother Abel, a shepherd, in preference to his...
Review: Vancouver Opera creates a “visually and vocally memorable” La Bohème
Every opera I have ever seen staged by the director/designer team of Renaud Doucet and André Barbe has been visually memorable and Vancouver Opera’s new La Bohème (seen Feb. 16th) is no exception. Interestingly, their production (originally for Scottish Opera and...
Review: Pacific Opera Victoria’s roaring 20s La traviata
It’s Valentine’s Day and what better thing to do than watch poor, consumptive Violetta Valéry take a risky leap into love with young Alfredo Germont, only to be forced to leave him by his hidebound father, then tenderly reconcile with her beloved mere minutes before...
Review: Canadian Opera Company tackles ‘paradoxical’ Cosí fan tutte
The final Mozart-Da Ponte collaboration, 1790’s Cosí fan tutte, o sia La Scuola degli Amanti (Women Are Like That, or A School for Lovers) is hard to stage effectively. Atom Egoyan’s 2014 production, revived on Feb. 6th at the Canadian Opera Company, doesn’t quite get...
Review: Die Walküre times two at TSO and LPO
Experiencing two concert presentations of Wagner’s Die Walküre within a week on two different continents presents a unique set of challenges. Along with the exhaustion of travel, how does one adjust to the diverse artistries of soloists, orchestras, and conductors?...
Review: Edmonton Opera’s Hansel and Gretel “enchanting and appropriately ghoulish”
There was a time when ‘opera’ implied a notion of music that unabashedly included the expectation of actual melodies, and Engelbert Humperdinck’s 1893 treatment of the macabre and ultimately triumphant fairy tale Hansel and Gretel is a marvel in that tradition....
Review: Gerald Finley brings an “aching pathos” to Metropolitan Opera’s Bluebeard’s Castle
To see or not to see: that’s the question posed by Metropolitan Opera’s intriguing pairing of Iolanta and Bluebeard’s Castle. The eponymous princess of Tchaikovsky’s opera, blind from birth, has been zealously shielded from the harder truths of her condition by her...
Review: L’Opéra de Montréal’s Champion offers redemption…in black and blue
What makes a man? His wins? His losses? His mistakes and regrets? His memories? Is it in how he sees himself, or in how others see him? These are some of the questions the audience is left with at the end of Champion, jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard’s 2013...
Review: Canadian Opera Company Elektra “a rare theatrical perfect storm”
Best productions of Elektra have a lead singer who can make the jagged vocal score sound effortlessly smooth and a director who can finesse the extremes of Greek tragedy into something psychologically believable for the 21st-century viewer. James Robinson’s Canadian...
Review: Die Fledermaus a 2018 antidote from Toronto Operetta Theatre
Tired out from the Holiday Season festivities? How about something frivolous, frothy and fun to get rid of those post-Christmas blues? It’s always nice to end the year—and 2018 has turned out to be quite the annus horribilis for the world—with some escapist...