Reviews
Canadian Opera Company’s Hadrian: commanding vocals and powerful symbolism
“The Empire holds its breath, awaiting orders.” These lines, sung early in the Canadian Opera Company’s world premiere of Hadrian (seen Oct. 17th), plunge us immediately into the opera’s primary conflict of an emperor torn between his duty to lead and the mourning for...
Canadian Opera Company’s Eugene Onegin: “dynamic as it is sparse”
Canadian Opera Company’s season-opening, Eugene Onegin (seen Sept. 30th), was thrilling in its portrayal of gut-wrenching conflict and pathos as well as touching in its many sensitive and warm collaborations between orchestra and singers. Tchaikovsky’s three-act...
Review: Pacific Opera Victoria’s Fidelio: superb cast—heavy-handed production
Pacific Opera Victoria’s season-opening production of Beethoven’s Fidelio is musically magnificent. From minor roles to major, the voices are superb, and the Pacific Opera Chorus—mostly young, all volunteer—is impressive. The Victoria Symphony, too, played with verve...
Review: Canadian Opera Company’s Hadrian offers “operatic alchemy” despite “unimaginative production”
At Canadian Opera Company on Oct. 13th, Daniel MacIvor and Rufus Wainwrights’ first collaboration, Hadrian, came to life as a fairly accomplished opera. It could have been a greater experience had it not been tied to an unimaginative production that appears to have...
Review: Canadian Opera Company opens its season with an “intelligently and unfussily staged” Eugene Onegin
Less is not always more, especially in opera staging and design, but director Robert Carsen and his creative team have achieved a pared down Eugene Onegin that is at the same time distilled and intensified. Besides Carsen, the contributions of set and costume designer...
Review: Opéra de Montréal’s “ultra-conventional” approach to Rigoletto feels out of place in #MeToo era
Is there a more problematic opera for the #MeToo era than Rigoletto? As yet another wealthy, powerful, privileged man sits in Washington accused of sexual assault, Verdi’s portrayal of predatory male entitlement and unpunished crime seems more distasteful and vexing...
Review: “Thought-provoking and very funny” new play-opera I Call myself Princess tackles cultural appropriation at premiere in Toronto
Jani Lauzon’s I Call myself Princess (seen Sept. 13th) skilfully weaves together two stories. The first is the historical story of Charles Wakefield Cadman, an ‘Indianist’ composer of the early 20th century. Together with his professional partner, the Cherokee...
Review: English National Opera’s high-energy production of Paul Bunyan an “immersive theatrical event”
The trouble with Paul Bunyan is that the music is too good. If Benjamin Britten hadn’t been bursting with creativity and bristling with technical accomplishment in 1941—and had he not revised the score and passed it for publication just before his death—W.H. Auden’s...
Review: Manitoba Underground Opera wraps up another season of re-imagined classics
Manitoba Underground Opera surfaced once again on the cusp of Winnipeg's regular arts season with four new productions performed repertory style and now billed as an opera festival. This year’s lineup presented Aug. 16-24 at a variety of venues highlighted strong...
Review: Highlands Opera Studio 1940s La Bohème much more than an operatic warhorse
It was with a certain degree of ambivalence that I attended the summer 2018 production of La Bohème at Highlands Opera Studio. I was disappointed when I heard that the choruses in Acts II and III were cut, and I wasn’t particularly looking forward to sitting through...
Review: Russell Braun demonstrates “astonishing expressive power” in The Bassarids at Salzburg Festival
When he began working on The Bassarids in 1963, the 37-year-old Hans Werner Henze (1926-2012) had been writing operas for more than a decade, starting with his first full-length work for the stage, Boulevard Solitude (Hanover, 1952), a jazzy version of L’Abbey...
Review: Joyce El-Khoury brings a ‘meaty dramatic approach’ to long-lost Liszt opera Sardanapalo
Can something be called ‘new’ 170 years after it was written? In the case of Franz Liszt’s unfinished opera Sardanapalo, the answer is an emphatic yes. The first act of the work was given its world premiere this past weekend in Weimar, Germany thanks to David...