Reviews
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...
Review: Festival d’Automne à Paris’ Kopernikus: a “brilliant performance” of Claude Vivier’s “other-worldly, ethereal work”
Kopernikus (Rituel de la mort, 1978-79) was Claude Vivier’s only opera. Seen Dec. 4th at Espace Pierre Cardin in Paris, this production concludes Le Festival d'Automne à Paris 2018's series of five concerts dedicated to the work of the enigmatic Québecois composer....
Review: San Francisco Opera’s It’s a Wonderful Life “Everyone loved it. There were tears.”
San Francisco Opera’s It’s a Wonderful Life (seen Nov. 20th), Jake Heggie’s latest work for the operatic stage, might be called a musical—and he would not object. He declares that he has been writing them for years. Still, his prior successes with Dead Man Walking...
Review: Bavarian State Opera’s Otello: Gerald Finley’s Iago shines in misguided staging
Bavarian State Opera’s new production of Otello (seen Nov. 28th) would seem to have all the ingredients for a compelling take on Verdi’s distillation of Shakespeare’s tragedy: top soloists Jonas Kaufmann (Otello), Anja Harteros (Desdemona) and Gerald Finley (Iago);...
Review: Manitoba Opera’s Don Giovanni captivated “21st century savvy listeners”
It’s no mere tilting at windmills that Mozart’s Don Giovanni, rising from its own grave 231 years since its premiere in Prague in 1787, shudders with even greater resonance in today’s brave new #MeToo world, where modern day moguls fueled by their own narcissistic...
Review: UofT Opera’s Street Scene “gripping” despite unfocused story
Kurt Weill’s Street Scene, presented by UofT Opera and directed by Michael Patrick Albano takes advantage of a talented ensemble while dealing with what is a rather unfocused work for the stage. As seen on Nov. 22, the opera’s themes—relevant when introduced in 1946...