Reviews
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...
Another take; Review: Missing, Pacific Opera Victoria, Nov. 19, 2017
As an opera, Missing is under-written. As an important piece of theatre that builds over its short 80 minutes to a shatteringly emotional conclusion, this Pacific Opera Victoria production is something every Canadian should see. Co-commissioned by Pacific Opera...
Review: La Cenerentola, Opéra de Montréal, Nov. 11, 2017
Nowadays, it seems even stagings of comic operas are enamored with minimalism, skewing toward a neutral palette of black, white, and grey. So how refreshing it was to revisit Catalonian director Joan Font and his maximalist Cenerentola, which explodes with all the...
Review: L’enfant et les sortilèges & Trouble in Tahiti, Opera North, Theatre Royal, Nottingham, Nov. 2 & 3, 2017
It would be difficult to imagine a more hard-working company than Britain’s Opera North. To Nottingham’s Theatre Royal they brought touring productions of six short operas split into double bills – on the two nights I saw (November 2 and 3), performed with real...
Review: Singing Stars: The Next Generation—IRCPA, Nov. 6, 2017
At Zoomer Hall (the performing space of 96.3 New Classical FM) on Nov. 6, I had the pleasure of attending a concert involving ten young artists, under the auspices of IRCPA, short for International Resource Centre for Performing Artists. For the avid opera fan,...
Review: Calixa Lavallée’s The Widow, Toronto Operetta Theatre, Nov. 5, 2018
Is Canada’s own ‘Merry’ Widow really Canadian at all? Marketed as Canada’s own ‘Merry’ Widow, referencing Franz Lehar’s famous German operetta The Merry Widow, Toronto Operetta Theatre’s single performance of Calixa Lavallée’s The Widow (presented in hounour of...
Review: Missing, City Opera Vancouver, Nov. 3, 2017
Missing, a co-commission by City Opera Vancouver and Pacific Opera Victoria, opened at Vancouver’s York Theatre on Nov. 3 and moves to Victoria for an already sold-out run on the 17th. A courageous commission, yes, but also canny: COV and POV must have put out feelers...
Review: New Berlioz: Les Troyens (Erato)
Berlioz: Les Troyens (Erato) John Nelson, Joyce DiDonato, Michael Spyres, Marie-Nicole Lemieux Almost every new release I sampled this week should never have been made. One album after another lacked conviction, coherence and, sometimes, pulse. These are records where...
La Tragédie de Carmen review – opera on an unforgivingly small scale
Wilton’s Music Hall, London Peter Brook’s take on Bizet squeezes all the famous tunes into an economic, stripped-down production for four, but demanded too much of these singers Strip all the packaging off Bizet’s Carmen – the cigarette factory girls, the...
The 2017 Glyndebourne Tour arrives in Canterbury with a satisfying Così fan tutte
Hytner’s elegant production is a smooth slow-burner: everything unfolds with subtlety and slickness - from the graceful sliding panel which transforms an urbane interior to a sun-drenched exterior in the blink of an eye, to Don Alfonso’s sly manoeuvrings, to the...