Reviews
Review: Four Note Opera, Erato Ensemble, Vancouver, Dec. 9, 2017
What does an opera lover do on a raw December night in Vancouver, with no opera on the visible horizon until the new year? You grab at a ‘four note’ opera, as four are better than none! On Dec. 9 at the Orpheum Annex, Erato Ensemble presented Tom Johnson’s hilarious...
Review: Barbe & Doucets’ La belle Hélène, Hamburg State Opera, Dec. 31, 2017
One good parody deserves another. And so it was with the Hamburg State Opera’s revival of Barbe & Doucet’s 2014 production of Offenbach’s three act opéra bouffe, La belle Hélène (seen Dec. 31, 2017, the third of six performances, playing until Jan. 19)....
Review: Julie Boulianne in Massenet’s Werther, Oper Frankfurt, Dec. 30, 2017
Massenet's Werther (seen at Oper Frankfurt on Dec. 30, 2017), based on Goethe’s epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther written in Wetzlar near the author’s native Frankfurt, is one of those timeless operas which has enriched the coffers of opera houses the...
Review: Against the Grain Theatre’s BOUND, Toronto, Dec. 15, 2017
BOUND is Against the Grain Theatre at its best, blending old and new in an immersive operatic experience. With BOUND, Founder & Artistic Director Joel Ivany and Founding Member & Music Director Topher Mokrzewski have created a troubling exposition of an...
Review: Hänsel und Gretel reopens Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden
Children, hardly a revelation, are not easy to please at the opera. A small boy spotted at Covent Garden for Semiramide – four hours of epic Rossini tragedy – must have been glad of the toy dog he thought to bring. His seat was empty by the interval. Few operas breach...
Review: Premiere of Richardson-Schulte & Chattertons’ Shot, Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, Dec. 7, 2017
It was a tale of two D’Arcy McGees as the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra presented a double bill of Dermot Nolan’s play, It’s Morning Now followed by the premiere of HPO composer-in-residence Abigail Richardson-Schulte’s chamber opera, Shot, in The Studio at...
Review: John Adams & Peter Sellars’ Girls of the Golden West, San Francisco Opera, Nov. 24, 2017
During recent decades, John Adams has composed a range of highly successful operas, including the repertory standard Nixon in China (1987). The more surprise then when Girls of the Golden West—in its San Francisco Opera world premiere—proved, on the whole, ponderous...
Review: Handel’s Rodelinda, VOICEBOX: Opera in Concert, Nov. 26, 2017
Opera in concert or a minimalist staging? Despite the company’s title, Voicebox: Opera in Concert’s Nov. 26 production of Rodelinda was by no means a static presentation with six singers “parking and barking” in front of a small Baroque orchestra of eleven players....
Semiramide review – Rossini sounds sublime in Alden’s eccentric staging
Rossini’s great 1823 tragedy Semiramide, his last work composed for Italy before he based himself in Paris, was deemed a masterpiece in the 19th century, but fell out of fashion for much of the 20th. David Alden’s staging is the first at Covent Garden since 1887,...
As One a Haunting Success in San Diego
The relatively new one act opera, As One (music by Laura Kaminsky, book by Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed), has become the most often performed contemporary work in recent years for several reasons. First, it is a wholly engrossing character study as it traces the...
Review: Don Giovanni for the #metoo generation at UofT Opera, Nov. 23, 2017
A changed world makes for a changed Don Giovanni. Produced by an all female team, UofT Opera’s production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni (seen Nov. 23) struck new chords in how to deal with the leading man’s appalling treatment of women. Flanked by a chorus of silent female...
Marnie review – Nico Muhly’s psycho thriller sounds beautiful but fails to thrill
Given its world premiere by English National Opera, Nico Muhly’s Marnie is drawn from Winston Graham’s 1961 novel of the same name, famously filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1964. The subject, Muhly argues, “screams out for operatic treatment”, and his heroine – a thief...