Aix Festival 2026 Review: Brilliant Strauss, Messy Mozart

A new production of ‘Die Frau Ohne Schatten,’ conducted by Klaus Mäkelä, proved a highlight of this year’s festival in Provence, France, in contrast to its incoherent stagings of two Mozart works.

Heidi Waleson

July 8, 2026 at 5:49 pm ET

A scene from ‘Die Frau Ohne Schatten.’ MONIKA RITTERSHAUS

Aix-en-Provence, France

The opening days of this year’s Aix Festival—which was planned by Pierre Audi, who died in 2025— ranged from brilliance to absurdity. On the plus side: A new production of Richard Strauss’s enigmatic “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” dreamed up by the 30-year-old wunderkind conductor Klaus Mäkelä and the singular stage director Barrie Kosky and starring a quintet of exceptional singers, at the Grand Théâtre de Provence.

Mr. Kosky embraced both the magical and psychological aspects of “Frau,” in which the Empress, a supernatural being, seeks a shadow in the mortal world in order to prevent her husband, the Emperor, from being turned to stone. In the first two acts, Michael Levine’s set had a magic-show quality: A black box at the center of the stage would rise to reveal scenic elements like the Emperor’s giant rocking horse or the crowded three-story dwelling of Barak the Dyer and his wife, built of metal tubes and festooned with drying fabric. The malignant Nurse conjures up a pack of monkeys, an octet of twirling black dresses, and a silver-painted dancer to seduce the Dyer’s Wife. But Mr. Kosky’s sensitive direction ensured that the show was about learning through trials what it is to be human. In the third act, set in a stark white box, the characters (all shadowless, thanks to Franck Evin’s skillful lighting) battle their negative instincts to discover tenderness and generosity.

Leading the Orchestre de Paris, of which he is music director, Mr. Mäkelä revealed the transparency in Strauss’s massive score while maintaining its energy and the dramatic propulsion of the story, letting the tension and anxiety of the conflicts relax and bloom into lyricism. Ambur Braid was revelatory as the Dyer’s Wife, rich-toned and theatrically complex. Vida Miknevičiūtė’s bright, plaintive soprano made the Empress’s final triumph especially powerful. Michael Spyres’s clarion tenor and Brian Mulligan’swarm baritone limned the Emperor and Barak; Nina Stemme’s register leaps brought the Nurse to ferocious life. Victoria Behr’s witty costumes—from the Emperor’s robes to the Wife’s casual shorts—completed the picture.

A scene from ‘Accabadora.’ JEAN-LOUIS FERNANDEZ

The world premiere of Francesco Filidei’s “Accabadora” was also worth the trip. Based on a 2009 novel by Michela Murgia, this intense 80-minute chamber opera is set in a Sardinian village in the 1950s, where an elderly woman, Tzia Bonaria Urrai, adopts Maria, a six-year-old from a poor family, as her “soul child.” By day, Bonaria is a seamstress; her other role is to help the dying out of the world with strategically placed pillows.

The libretto, by the composer and Manuelle Mureddu, efficiently condenses the novel using a chorus as both narrator and the village community. The choral writing, in Sardinian dialect, reflects the traditional canto a tenore, giving it an earthy, ritualistic flavor. The style blends remarkably well with Mr. Filidei’s modernist instrumental writing, a haunting, layered texture of squeaks and sighs, colored with celesta and accordion, that seems to breathe with the natural world and the troubled humans in it. Scenes are quick; the solo vocal writing (in Italian) is deft and expressive without being showy, stressing clarity of emotion.

Contralto Noa Frenkel was powerful as Bonaria; Rachel Masclet’s delicate soprano made her believable as the adolescent Maria (who grows to young adulthood over the course of the story). Four other singers played multiple roles and doubled as chorus members; baritone Lodovico Filippo Ravizzawas a standout as the angry Nicola, a young farmer whose death forces a confrontation between Bonaria and Maria. Lucie Leguay was the adept conductor, leading 17 musicians from the Orchestre de l’Opera de Lyon.

In the intimate Théâtre du Jeu de Paume, Valentina Carrasco’s mesmerizing staging evoked the mythic roots beneath the community rituals. Openwork textile weavings formed the backdrop (Ms. Carrasco and Mariangela Mazzeo did the set design); six silent elderly women dressed in black were everything from bread bakers to grape stompers to the Fates weaving—and cutting—the threads of destiny. Mauro Tinti created the period costumes, complete with sculpted black masks for the removers of the dead; Antonio Castro did the eerie lighting.

A scene from ‘Die Zauberflöte.’ JEAN-LOUIS FERNANDEZ

By contrast, the two Mozart works, performed in the outdoor Théâtre de l’Archeveché, were concept-driven and incoherent. “Die Zauberflöte,” a collaboration between director Clément Cogitore and conductor Leonardo García-Alarcón, posited an elaborate allegory about the end of childhood and the collapse of post-World War II optimism. In practice, it was confusing and often chaotic. We got child and adolescent avatars of Tamino and Pamina, who spoke the dialogue while the singers, in black, ducked behind screens (Alban Ho Van designed the minimalist set; Sylvain Verdet the stygian lighting). The principal scenic element was archival video assembled by Mr. Cogitore. For Act 1, it featured bombed-out European cites; for Act 2, we got the building of skyscrapers and suburbia in the United States. The production leaned into the patriarchal negatives of the Temple of Wisdom: Sarastro, blind and creepy, had fascistic leanings; Monostatos wore an NYPD uniform. Wojciech Dziedzic’s costumes took their cues from the video, including 1960s looks for the chorus in Act 2.

The singers were mostly upstaged by the visuals; only Ying Fang broke through with a forthright, gorgeously sung Pamina. Mr. Garcia-Alarcón, conducting his period-instrument orchestra Cappella Mediterranea, tended to push the tempi.

A scene from ‘Requiem.’ MONIKA RITTERSHAUS

Mozart’s “Requiem” a revival from 2019, was worse. Director Romeo Castellucci (also responsible for set, costumes and lighting), aided by choreographer Evelin Facchini, decided that this work about death was a celebration of life, complete with folk dances, trees and a stage gradually spread with dirt. Projected on the rear wall were entries dubbed an Atlas of Extinctions, starting with Trilobites and moving from species through peoples, languages, religions, art works, and institutions in modern Gaza. These were almost as distracting as the dancing. Toward the end, the valiant choral singers removed their clothes under black drapes and skulked offstage in a naked clump in near-darkness.

Conductor Raphaël Pichon, leading Pygmalion, his period-instrument orchestra and chorus, padded the “Requiem” with some additional Mozart works and Gregorian chants. One of those additions, a text setting of a movement of the “Gran Partita,” showed off some excellent oboe playing. Of the four soloists, alto Beth Taylor and tenor Duke Kim were the most impressive. But overall, the music was at odds with the unintelligible staging.

Opera Theatre of Saint Louis Review: From ‘Streetcar’ to Shakespeare

The highlight of the company’s season is a production of André Previn’s ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’; also being presented are Adam Guettel’s musical ‘The Light in the Piazza’ and Gounod’s ‘Romeo and Juliet.’

Sara Gartland in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire.’ ERIC WOOLSEY

By Heidi Waleson

June 15, 2026 5:03 pm ET

Webster Groves, Mo.

Patricia Racette launched her first season as artistic director of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis with a winner: She and the company’s music director, Daniela Candillari, breathed new life into André Previn’s “A Streetcar Named Desire”(1998). Its wordy libretto, faithfully adapted by Philip Littell from the Tennessee Williams play, is a bit too long. Yet unlike many operas that closely mirror their sources, Previn’s music adds serious depth and dimension to the characters and story in the tradition of Poulenc’s “Dialogues des Carmélites” or Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande.”

Previn’s complex, inventive orchestral palette, carefully shaped by Ms. Candillari, deploys jazz-tinged New Orleans brass and sinuous woodwinds along with subtle dissonances to map the tragedy of the fading Southern belle Blanche DuBois, destroyed by Stanley Kowalski, her sister Stella’s brutal, working-class husband. The vocal writing, even in the conversational sections, is distinctive, and Sara Gartland was revelatory in the punishing role of Blanche. Beneath the character’s flirtatious wiles, her powerful soprano brought steel to Blanche’s determination to live in her fantasy—a lost world of wealth and graciousness. The music seesaws brilliantly between Blanche’s dreaming arias, when time seems to stop, and her impoverished reality. Finally, the two states can no longer coexist, and she retreats permanently into delusion, murmuring “Whoever you are” to the doctor escorting her off to an asylum.

Andrew Boyce’s unit set evoked the French Quarter of New Orleans. The kitchen and bedroom of the Kowalskis’ claustrophobic two-room apartment were set against a rear wall of louvered shutters with a second-story wrought-iron balcony reached by a spiral staircase; a streetlamp marked the outdoor scenes. Kylee Loera’s mostly black-and-white projections strategically added atmospheric images, including the eponymous streetcar; Eric Southern’s lighting zeroed in on Blanche—in different colors—whenever she slipped into reverie. Amanda Gladu’s handsome costumes underlined the contrast between Blanche’s finery and the everyday wear of the other characters.

Ms. Racette’s sharply detailed direction kept the focus on Blanche and her gradual disintegration through tiny details—in Act 3, Blanche starts nervously playing with her hair—and bold statements. Stanley’s rape of Blanche was violent and explicit for a few seconds. Then the singers froze in place, the lighting changed, and the screaming orchestra and Ms. Loera’s projections of Blanche’s agonized face told the rest.

Soprano Lauren Snouffer was a sensual Stella, in thrall to her husband; David Adam Moore was all aggression and fierce cunning as Stanley, determined not to let anyone get the better of him. As Mitch, Stanley’s poker buddy who is attracted to Blanche, Bille Bruley’shigh tenor poignantly embodied a weak man trying to be strong.

A scene from ‘The Light in the Piazza.’ ERIC WOOLSEY

Ms. Racette is also experimenting with Broadway musicals, beginning this season with Adam Guettel’salluring “The Light in the Piazza”(2005). The book, adapted by Craig Lucas from a novella by Elizabeth Spencer and set in the 1950s, is the tender story of Clara and Margaret, her very protective mother, who are visiting Florence, where Clara and Fabrizio, a young Italian, fall instantly in love. Clara is developmentally disabled due to a childhood accident; Margaret’s efforts to keep her safe gradually give way to a fuller understanding of her daughter’s awakening, and the lovelessness of her own marriage. Mr. Guettel’s twining, urgent vocal music captures the complexity of the situation, encompassing the innocent, sincere mutual recognition of the lovers and Margaret’s sadness and guilt.

Broadway actress Kate Baldwinmissed Margaret’s profound emotional intensity; an intermittent Southern accent did not help. With her high, bright soprano, Katrina Galka was a persuasive Clara—you believed in her emotional blossoming; tenor Roy Hage needed to be more of a crooner as Fabrizio. Crossover expert Paulo Szot was stylish as Signor Naccarelli, Fabrizio’s father, and Kelly Guerrahad a fine Sondheim-esque number as Franca, Fabrizio’s embittered sister-in-law. Rob Berman was the capable conductor. The bare-bones production, designed by Cameron Anderson with costumes by Ulises Alcala, was efficiently directed by Crystal Manich.

Emma Marhefka and Leonardo Sánchez in ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ ERIC WOOLSEY

The season’s only classic opera title, Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet,” fared the least well. This feast of gorgeous tunes fell prey to a clunky English translation by Edmund Tracey and unidiomatic conducting by Ramón Tebar, making it dull rather than sublime. As Juliet, Emma Marhefka’slyric soprano was best in dramatic moments, such as Act 4’s poison aria; as Romeo, Leonardo Sánchez tended to overcook his tenor. Benjamin Taylor had some trouble with the many words of Mercutio’s “Queen Mab” aria; he was stronger in the duel scene. Bass-baritone Nicholas Newton was a solid, affecting Friar Lawrence. The chorus had good diction, which was not necessarily a plus, given the words.

Like “Piazza,” the very basic production—designed by Liliana Duque Piñeiro—had a decorative back wall and some columns that were moved around by costumed figures for scene changes. The appearance of an actual bed for the Act 4 wedding night was a surprise. Robert Perdziola’s period costumes, repurposed from OTSL’s 2005 staging, conveniently put the Capulets in red and the Montagues in blue, which was awkward when some of Romeo’s interloper friends had to briefly join in the Capulet ball to make up the numbers in the chorus. Keturah Stickann supplied the serviceable direction.

‘Vanessa’ Review: Heartbeat Opera’s Strident Samuel Barber

The New York company offers a stark, taxing adaptation of the composer’s 1958 work, which centers on a woman waiting for her long-gone lover’s return.

Heidi Waleson

May 18, 2026 at 4:28 pm ET

Inna Dukach as Vanessa. RUSS ROWLAND

Heartbeat Opera’s 100-minute adaptation of Samuel Barber’s “Vanessa”(1958) by company artistic director Jacob Ashworth, first presented last summer at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, came off as a relentless screamfest in the cramped Baruch Performing Arts Center. Trimmed of its subordinate characters and chorus, it was directed with minimalist fervor by R.B. Schlather—set against a white wall with a few chairs, extreme shadow-throwing lighting by Yuki Nakase Link and modern all-black costumes by Terese Wadden.

Gian Carlo Menotti’s gothic libretto felt weirder than usual. The wealthy Vanessa has spent her life in seclusion, waiting for Anatol, the lover who abandoned her 20 years earlier. His son, also named Anatol, a penniless adventurer, arrives and seduces her as well as Erika, her niece. Which woman will accept his obviously feigned love? In this streamlined, starkly realized scenario, the cracks in the opera’s emotional logic are glaring.

Dan Schlosberg’s seven-player arrangement of Barber’s technicolor orchestration, conducted by Mr. Ashworth, was clever but mostly loud with prominent trumpet and trombone, contributing to a musical performance that had just one gear: ferociously strident intensity. Soprano Inna Dukach’sscenery-chewing Vanessa seemed demented from the start, oversinging the role in the small space. She was matched by tenor Freddie Ballentine’sforceful Anatol. Mezzo Kelsey Lauritano’s Erika got a few lyrical moments, including her signature aria, “Must the winter come so soon,” which was briefly reprised—unnecessarily—to drive home the bleakness of the ending. Baritone Joshua Jeremiah’s sentimental Doctor was overwhelmed by the tornado of the love triangle; Vanessa’s mother, the Baroness (mezzo Mary Phillips), was even more cryptic than usual. Even the famous concluding quintet, “To leave, to break,” a bitter dissection of love, was noisy rather than poignant or profound.

‘El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego’ Review: Painters Reunited at the Met Opera

Gabriela Lena Frank’s work about Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera is full of luxuriant color—visual and musical—in the company’s new production.

Heidi Waleson

Updated May 18, 2026 at 4:46 pm ET

Isabel Leonard and Carlos Álvarez MARTY SOHL / MET OPERA

New York

The lavish new Metropolitan Opera production of Gabriela Lena Frank’smagical “El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego” (2022), which opened on Thursday, demonstrates this opera’s richness and potential for interpretation. The original San Diego staging, which stressed Mexican folklore, was charming but static. In New York, director/choreographer Deborah Colker, who made her house debut with a flamenco-infused “Ainadamar” in 2024, vividly uses dance and scenic effects to conjure the porousness of the border between the worlds of the living and the dead.

Nilo Cruz’s eloquent Spanish-language libretto imagines a moment in the tumultuous romance of the Mexican painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera: In 1957, on the Day of the Dead, when the departed can rejoin their loved ones for 24 hours, Diego tries to summon the deceased Frida. She resists, preferring to forget the intense physical and emotional pain of her life, but is lured by her longing to paint again. Ms. Frank’s unconventional, imaginatively orchestrated score maps their dreamlike journey as they ricochet through different planes of existence, and find resolution together in their love and their art.

The opera opens in the real world, as drably attired villagers assemble marigold- and candle-festooned Day of the Dead altars. Dancers strip an old flower seller of her cloak, revealing Catrina, the Keeper of the Dead. Adam Silverman’s lighting turns red; cracks appear in the floor of Jon Bausor’s set as Catrina pounds on it with her parasol to summon Frida; and dancers dressed as skeletons emerge from the crevices.

From then on, the realms of the living and the passed-on blur together. A blood-red tree descends, its skeletal branches and ropy roots suggesting veins and arteries. When Diego and Frida walk through a street market, the sellers are wearing carnival masks; in Frida’s house, a skeleton dances atop her canopy bed as she lies on it remembering her life, an image inspired by her painting “The Dream.” A murmuring, echoing chorus of the dead surrounds the central platform; they wear brilliantly colored, Mexican-inspired costumes designed by Mr. Bausor and Wilberth Gonzalez. Ms. Colker choreographs the singers as well as the dancers, creating a visual movement that matches the flow of Ms. Frank’s music, just as the set and costume colors echo its luxuriant hues.

Mr. Álvarez and Ms. Leonard MARTY SOHL / MET OPERA

A strikingly potent Frida, Isabel Leonard used her velvety mezzo to find the drama of the artist’s remembered torment as well as the undulating sensuality of her love for painting and colors. Baritone Carlos Álvarez was convincing as the troubled Diego, trying hard to keep up a macho veneer. One felt the underlying bond that transcended their conflicts. Soprano Gabriella Reyes brought both menace and comedy to Catrina, tossing off her coloratura laughter and rocking her costume of silvery bones painted on black and swathed in tulle. In his house debut as Leonardo, the dead actor who dresses as Greta Garbo and persuades Frida to find her art again among the living, Nils Wanderer displayed a robust countertenor, which was edgy at the top of his range.

The orchestra, adroitly conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, reveled in the otherworldly environment of the score. There are brief Mexican accents, such as the mariachi-style trumpets that precede the market scene. More often, Ms. Frank deploys an unusual combination of instruments, such as piccolos and celesta, or a motif—like the short, repeated pulse that sounds like a cry—to create a dreamscape that is all her own. The excellent Met chorus, a crucial and almost omnipresent element in the musical fabric, acted like another instrument in this brilliantly textured tapestry.

‘Sleepers Awake’ Review: Opera Philadelphia’s Refashioned Fairy Tale

A world premiere by Gregory Spears casts a veil of dream-like haunting over the story of Sleeping Beauty.

Heidi Waleson

April 24, 2026 at 5:18 pm ET

Jonghyun Park and Susanne Burgess STEVEN PISANO

Philadelphia

“Sleepers Awake” by Gregory Spears, given its world premiere by Opera Philadelphia at the Academy of Music on Wednesday, turns “Sleeping Beauty” on its head. In the familiar fairy tale, sleep represents something close to the curse of death; in this version, and in Mr. Spears’s haunting musical landscape, it is a state preferable to waking.

Mr. Spears concocted his libretto from the writings of the turn-of-the-century authors Robert Walser (translated by Ron Sadan) and Arthur Quiller-Couch, plus an English translation by Frances Cox of “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme,” a 1599 hymn text by Philipp Nicolai. (The hymn, though superficially about marriage, is actually about the resurrection into eternal life, which offers yet another level to an already multilayered concept.) The story starts where it usually ends: The Stranger (tenor Jonghyun Park) kisses Thorn Rose (soprano Susanne Burgess), the sleeping princess, waking her and her court from a century of enchanted sleep. No one seems pleased to be roused from dreams. They enact for their confused rescuer the story of the forgotten fairy at the christening, the curse and the spindle—and then go back to sleep. The cycle begins again, but this time the Stranger explains how he came to find the castle and mysteriously breach its defenses. Thorn Rose accepts him and everyone rejoices—but soon they all fall asleep again, suggesting that the cycle will repeat forever.

The accomplished Opera Philadelphia Chorus has the starring role in the 80-minute opera. In Mr. Spears’s hypnotic text settings and harmonies, the chorus becomes a kind of breathing atmosphere, echoing the lines of the individual characters and carrying them along with it into waking and sleeping. The opening setting of the “Sleepers, awake!” text starts out muddy, as though the singers are still half asleep and not quite on their parts. Words become a texture of stasis, as when “winding” and “whirring” are repeated multiple times to describe Thorn Rose’s climb to the turret where she finds the fatal spindle. The penultimate ensemble, as the crowd trips off happily to the wedding feast, is the brightest, perkiest moment of the opera, but suddenly the pitch drops, like a record player slowing down, and everyone sinks musically back into sleep.

Mr. Spears’s orchestration is similarly evocative of this timeless state, with rumbles, lush strings, and no high woodwinds. A pair of harps, placed antiphonally in boxes at opposite sides of the stage, plus a theorbo, offer an otherworldly descant, as do the sounds of the celesta and chimes. Percussion instruments—including a whistle and slap-stick—interrupt and startle.

Mr. Park’s ardent tenor brilliantly evokes the Stranger’s position as an intruder in this world as he insists, “Isn’t reality itself a kind of dream?” Ms. Burgess’s light soprano and plaintive vibrato suggest that Thorn Rose is not entirely convinced that awakening is a good idea, but she goes along with it. As the Court Poet, baritone Brian Major enlists the Stranger into the storytelling—their eerie duet as the voice of the evil fairy Carabosse is a striking musical moment. Four godmothers—Sophia Santiago, Annalise Dzwonczyk, Maren Montalbano and Robin Bier—step out of the texture as a close-toned quartet. Corrado Rovaris was the sensitive conductor.

The production, directed by Jenny Koons, doubles down on the mystery, not always helpfully. Jason Ardizzone West’s abstract set is a construction of curving ramps, accommodating much of the big chorus and festooned with night lights; a large disc hangs above a center platform, occasionally tilting and dipping. Yuki Link deploys dramatically colored lighting to accompany theatrical transitions, though the stage is often in shadow, making Maiko Matsushima’s monochromatic black and gray costumes for the workers, courtiers and townspeople of the chorus hard to distinguish. (The principal characters are dressed in color.)

No one lies down—the chorus members don delicate face veils and hold lighted candles to show when they are sleeping. Ms. Koons uses movement sparingly, in moments such as the arrival of the Stranger and Thorn Rose’s climb to the turret. Sometimes the movement makes a point—in the final dance, paired-off chorus members happily strut between the two reluctant lovers, who haven’t yet managed to hold hands, suggesting the fragility of their union.

While the stage pictures can be alluring, the effect is one of mood rather than storytelling. The production also tries to include the audience in its liminal state. We barely notice the beginning of the performance—a low, rumbling drone accompanies our arrival in the theater, and the actual music begins before the lights fully dim. The puzzling question of whether sleeping and waking are actually the same thing remains unanswered, but the powerful lure of sleep—soothing and with the promise of unknowing—is clear.

‘Innocence’ Review: An Attack’s Aftermath at the Metropolitan Opera

The Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s final work is an immersive, astonishing achievement, viscerally depicting a group of people affected in different ways by a school shooting.

Heidi Waleson

April 8, 2026 at 5:27 pm ET

Vilma Jää (above) and Joyce DiDonato (below) in a scene from ‘Innocence.’ MET OPERA

New York

Kaija Saariaho’s “Innocence,” one of the most important new operas of this century, finally made it to the Metropolitan Opera on Monday in a superb performance. I have now seen it four times, including the video of its 2021 premiere at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, and it feels more remarkable with each experience. Through an alchemical synthesis of music, text and dramaturgy, the audience is immersed in the deepest feelings of its characters. It’s not just a story—it’s a living world, growing out of a violent event that is only too familiar. Through “Innocence,” we understand that world viscerally.

Sofi Oksanen’s crystalline Finnish libretto, translated into multiple languages by Aleksi Barrière, Saariaho’s son, takes place on two levels that gradually meld into one. A wedding is being celebrated in Helsinki in the 2000s; at the same time, seven people existing in the “world of memory” recall a tragic event that took place 10 years earlier. Bit by bit, the connection between the two is revealed and deepened—the Bridegroom’s brother shot up his high school, killing 10 students and a teacher. The Waitress, a last-minute substitution at the banquet, is the mother of one of the dead. On the surface, the wedding-party family has seemingly moved on; the others have not.

Saariaho’s interests are not preachy or didactic. Rather, the opera illuminates the enduring underlying trauma of everyone affected by the shooting and extends that uncomfortable sensation to the audience. The uneasy orchestral writing acts as a collective, disturbed subconscious. The opera begins with a low rumble, and snippets of sound—a bassoon, a celesta, a flute—emerge out of the darkness, like memories fighting their way to the surface, and continues in that vein, as the remembered pain surfaces and grows progressively more explicit over the opera’s 110 minutes. An unseen chorus acts like another orchestral element, echoing the singers and amplifying the music’s insidious power.

Rod Gilfry and Ms. DiDonato MET OPERA

The solo vocal writing is similarly evocative, its mix of styles making each character distinctive. The bright coloratura of the Mother-in-Law (Kathleen Kim) is full of anxiety and denial (she still insists her son’s act was “an accident”). As the Father-in-Law, baritone Rod Gilfry wrestles with his sense of responsibility for the shooting, and the heavy, deliberate bass of the Priest (Stephen Milling) conveys his guilt—he knew “something was wrong with that boy” but said nothing. The Waitress’s agony is ever-present—in mezzo Joyce DiDonato’s blistering performance it manifests as rage, searing the others as she confronts them one by one.

In the “memory” universe, most of the surviving students speak—jaggedly—in multiple languages (it was an international school) as they recount their present circumstances (“I can’t go to work”) and relive the shooting and its aftermath. One of them, Lily (soprano Beate Mordal), sings, her surface insouciance concealing something darker. As the Teacher, Lucy Shelton’s increasingly exaggerated Sprechstimme suggests that she is losing her mind. Most distinctive of all is the Waitress’s dead daughter Markéta (Vilma Jää): Her high, vibrato-less, folk-style leaps and yelps make her seem both eerie and childlike—the “angel” that her mother, inaccurately, insists she was.

Lucy Shelton MET OPERA

Simon Stone’s incisive production, first mounted in Aix, makes visual how the complex strands of the two stories wind together, mirroring the opera’s varied pacing. As Chloe Lamford’s brilliant two-level set rotates, we—and the characters—travel from the banquet room to the classroom, through intermediate spaces like a bathroom, a kitchen and a supply closet. Students frantically flee between the desks and down the stairs; the Bridegroom’s parents argue in a vestibule; the Waitress and Markéta, on different levels, recall that last morning as though in a dream. Markéta slowly walks on a lunchroom table, singing “Frog boy,” the bullying song that set the tragedy in motion.

As the truth is revealed, the spaces transform, almost magically. The entire set becomes the school, and then a series of empty rooms, with blood stains on the walls, as the full impact of the tragedy overtakes the present day. The saddest revelations happen here, against blank walls: The Bride (soprano Jacquelyn Stucker), who had been kept in the dark about the secret, poignantly renounces her hope of a real family; the Bridegroom (the piercing tenor Miles Mykkanen) admits that he was part of the shooting plan but chickened out. “I loved my brother,” he sings, a cappella. “I love him still.”

James Farncombe’s precise lighting underscores the time shifts; Mel Page’scostumes limn character—such as the Goth look of the student Iris (Julie Hega), the shooter’s death-besotted friend and co-conspirator, who also left him to act alone. Arco Renz’s choreography of the students as they haunt the present day makes their distress visible through physical contortions. Timo Kurkikangas’s sound design could use some tweaks—the spoken text was sometimes tinny or drowned out by the orchestra. Susanna Mälkki was the sensitive conductor.

The opera is dark, yet Saariaho offers some light. In the final scene, the haunted students relate how they are starting to regain some normalcy in their lives; the twitching, turbulent orchestra settles a bit, like a calmed nervous system; and Markéta quietly tells the Waitress, “Mom, let me go.” Guilt is pervasive in the opera, Saariaho’s last before her death in 2023, yet it is called “Innocence,” a reflection of its deep humanity, and the idea that tragedy can also encompass survival and forgiveness.

‘The Crucible’ Review: Washington National Opera’s Nimble Reset

Following its split with the Kennedy Center, the company has ably adapted to George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium, where it is presenting a gripping staging of Robert Ward’s version of the Arthur Miller classic.

Heidi Waleson

March 23, 2026 at 5:01 pm ET

A scene from the Washington National Opera production of ‘The Crucible.’ SCOTT SUCHMAN

Washington

The Washington National Opera, which opened its production of Robert Ward’s “The Crucible” (1961) on Saturday, did not expect to be presenting some of its 70th-anniversary season back where it started, in George Washington University’s 1,482-seat Lisner Auditorium. But WNO’s situation at its Kennedy Center home following President Trump’s takeover of the venue last year became increasingly untenable. Artists canceled, donors and audience members stayed away, the Center’s staff was slashed, and its new president, Richard Grenell, demanded a “revenue neutral” model for every show, meaning each one had to pay for itself, an impossible task for an opera company. As contingency planning last summer, the company embarked on a stealth tour of potential venues for its season’s operas, and on Jan. 9 it announced that it would leave the Center after 55 years in residence. “We had soft holds on the venues,” says Francesca Zambello, the company’s artistic director. “On Jan. 10, we locked them down.”

The pivot has been challenging. The theaters (Lisner for “The Crucible” and “Treemonisha,” which played earlier this month, as well as Lyric Baltimore and the Music Center at Strathmore for “West Side Story,” both larger, in May) were not available for the number of dates originally scheduled; the company is nonetheless paying its artists for their full contracts. Production adaptations are required. Ticketing systems are different. The company had to immediately launch an independent website, reconstruct its mailing list from scratch—the release of its data, along with $20 million in endowment funds, is still being litigated—and sell tickets for its shows. Most critically, it had to turbocharge its fundraising. The end of the affiliation agreement with the Kennedy Center, which provided about $3 million a year, the use of the theaters, and staff support, means that WNO must now pay for those services itself, adding substantially to its former $25 million to $30 million annual budget.

WNO has been buoyed by an outpouring of support. The three performances of “Treemonisha” sold out, and donors—old and new—have stepped up. The company plans to continue to produce at the same activity level as in the past. Programming for the 2026-27 season, which will be announced in May, is unchanged: The company’s pattern of seven shows of different sizes will be mounted in five theaters in Washington, Maryland and Virginia. “The big change will be the creativity required to adapt into multiple venues,” says Timothy O’Leary, WNO’s general director and CEO. “In some cases, we are going to be investing in reconfiguring the venues so we can do things that will be exciting visually and experientially for the audience.”

WNO’s spring 2026 operas are all American, saluting the nation’s 250th birthday. “The Crucible” was substituted for “Fellow Travelers,” an excellent 2016 work about the 1950s “Lavender Scare” that was withdrawn last March by its creators, who were concerned that it might be sabotaged by the new Kennedy Center administration’s crusade against “woke” programming. Ward’s opera has a related theme: It is based on the 1953 Arthur Miller play that used the 17th-century Salem witch trials as a metaphor for the McCarthy era.

Ms. Zambello’s production, adapted from the one at the Glimmerglass Festival in 2016, has Puritan costumes, gray clapboard walls, and simple furnishings that depict dwellings, a courtroom and a jail. (Neil Pateldesigned the set, Jessica Jahn the costumes, and Jason Lynch the lighting; the original lighting designer was Mark McCullough, who died in December.) It capitalizes on the opera’s ensemble framework. Bernard Stambler’s libretto has a lot of text, but the piece is clearly and tightly constructed, and the action rarely slows as the numerous characters seem to pile onto each other, building the atmosphere of mass hysteria.

Yet in this staging the madness works on multiple levels. The antics of the “bewitched” girls are so clearly feigned that the audience can recognize the corrupt motivations of the powerful people who are feeding the frenzy. These include the wealthy Thomas Putnam (baritone Chandler Benn), who wants the land that will be forfeited by convicted witches, and the imperious Judge Danforth (tenor Chauncey Packer), who can’t afford to lose face by admitting that the conflagration he has fanned is based on fraud and “private vengeance.” Under Ms. Zambello’s pithy direction, those ensnared in the juggernaut can only lose.

Bass-baritone Ryan McKinny was eloquent as John Proctor, the opera’s flawed hero, cogently depicting his struggles with guilt. John’s old affair with the poisonous Abigail Williams (a viciously bright-voiced Lauren Carroll), ringleader of the girls, puts his wife, Elizabeth (the poignant, troubled J’Nai Bridges), in danger. Mezzo Ronnita Miller made the enslaved Tituba, the only character with actual conjuring experience, a properly alien presence. As truth-telling victims, mezzo Michelle Mariposa was staunch and gentle as Rebecca Nurse while Nicholas Huff brought a vigorous, exciting tenor to Giles Corey. Other notable singers included bass-baritone Robert Frazier as the Rev. John Hale, who realizes the truth too late, and soprano Kresley Figueroa as the treacherously weak-willed Mary Warren.

Conductor Robert Spano ably managed the intricate ensembles, the opera’s relentless drive, and an orchestra pit so small that some players had to perform amplified from a separate room. The Kennedy Center’s other resident ensembles will soon be dealing with unfamiliar spaces and circumstances as well: After July 4, the Center will close for two years for unspecified renovations, making all its inhabitants itinerant.

‘Hercules’ Review: Handel’s Musical Myth at Carnegie Hall

Harry Bicket and the English Concert presented the composer’s highly theatrical but little-known 1745 oratorio in an uneven but frequently arresting performance.

Heidi Waleson

March 18, 2026 at 5:22 pm ET

Harry Bicket and the English Concert at Carnegie Hall. RICHARD TERMINE

New York

The annual Carnegie Hall visit of Harry Bicket and the English Concert, the superb period-instrument orchestra, is a required date for Handel opera fans. On Sunday, the ensemble presented “Hercules” (1745), one of the composer’s less familiar works.

Handel was financially buffeted by battles with rival opera companies in London, and by the late 1730s he had moved from writing Italian operas to composing oratorios in English, at first with biblical subjects and texts. “Hercules,” with a secular story drawn from Greek mythology, is nominally an oratorio—it was unstaged at its London premiere and carries a moral lesson—but it is highly theatrical.

Thomas Broughton’s vivid text zeroes in on the last days of the hero Hercules, who returns victorious from war with a string of captives. His wife, Dejanira, instantly—and incorrectly—suspects that her husband is having an affair with one of them, the beautiful princess Iole. No one can convince her otherwise, and she decides to win her spouse back with an enchanted robe that the dying centaur Nessus told her was a love charm. But the robe is poisoned (there’s a back story about the centaur’s revenge), so her jealousy effectively kills the man she loves.

“Hercules” is more streamlined than Handel’s operas, and its most dramatic passages—including Hercules’ death and Dejanira’s subsequent mad scene—are written as accompanied recitatives rather than da capo arias. The chorus—here the superb Clarion Choir—reinforces the moral lessons at salient points. Lighthearted moments are few, as are colors from winds or brass. This slightly trimmed concert version ran three hours with one intermission.

The title notwithstanding, this is Dejanira’s story, and mezzo Ann Hallenberg had the attitude but ultimately not enough vocal heft to fully express her fury and despair. She started off strong, rich and nuanced in Dejanira’s bleak lament about her husband’s long absence and her beatific vision of their future together after death. But once the hero returns, and Dejanira’s suspicions awaken when she sees the lovely Iole, the character’s music demands more. The fast passages of her sarcastic attack on Hercules (“Resign thy club and lion’s spoils”) were muted rather than stinging; in the demanding mad scene “Where shall I fly?,” as she invoked the punishing furies, a lack of projection in her middle range undercut her credibility, flying hair and bare feet notwithstanding.

As Hercules, bass William Guanbo Su displayed an imposing instrument. He conveyed the character’s self-regard in the aria “Alcides’ name in latest story” (Alcides is another moniker for Hercules), his attempt to school Dejanira into proper respect; two oboes that appeared to be mocking him gave the aria a slightly comical tinge. But he didn’t have the expressive variety to make the horror of Hercules’ death scene match lines like “Along my feverish veins, like liquid fire, the subtle poison hastes.”

This left the afternoon’s solo vocal honors to the more conventionally written characters. Soprano Hilary Cronin was a dazzling, lyrical Iole, her precisely calibrated da capo arias capturing the princess’s serene acceptance of her lot and her consoling, thoughtful presence—the antithesis of the disturbed Dejanira. She also excelled in the fast, showy aria in which she warns Dejanira to beware of jealousy. An elaborate ornament on the word “fraught” (“With venom fraught the bosom swells”) and the intense da capo section, “Adieu to peace,” emphasized the danger of such a course.

As Hyllus, the son of Hercules and Dejanira, David Portillo was similarly impressive, his bright, easy tenor and excellent diction assets in his ardent filial devotion and wooing of Iole. Countertenor Alexander Chance was careful and effective as the herald Lichas who supplies some narrative glue—he recounts the horror of Hercules burning to death in the poisoned robe. Bass-baritone Jonathan Woody had a strong cameo as the Priest of Jupiter who announces the god’s decree of a happy ending (Hercules ascends to Olympus and Iole and Hyllus are to marry).

Some of the most arresting work came from the Clarion Choir. In the chorus at the opera’s midpoint, an almost whispered exclamation of “Jealousy! Infernal pest” was followed by subtle dissonances and then a complete change of character as the ethereal sopranos warned that “Trifles, light as floating air, strongest proofs to thee appear.” Later, its soft intoning of “The world’s avenger is no more” embodied the mourning and loss of hope after the death of Hercules.

Snappily led from the harpsichord by Mr. Bicket, the English Concert strings delivered dramatic tension and a wide variety of rhythmic effects; the continuo players—Jonathan Byers (cello), Sergio Bucheli (theorbo) and Tom Foster (harpsichord and organ)—dovetailed seamlessly with the bigger band. Extra color moments came from those mocking oboes, as well as some brief military flourishes from a pair of trumpeters. Next year’s even more unfamiliar offering, “Alessandro” (1726), with its countertenor hero (Alexander the Great) and a pair of sopranos competing for his attention, should offer another intriguing addition to this illustrious series.

‘Tristan und Isolde’ Review: At the Met Opera, Wagner’s Vast World

Director Yuval Sharon’s company debut is an imaginative, expansive production headed by two top-flight singers, Lise Davidsen and Michael Spyres.

Heidi Waleson

Lise Davidsen and Michael Spyres. MET OPERA

New York

In his 2024 book, “A New Philosophy of Opera,” the American director Yuval Sharon offered a radical vision for an art form that is often mired in convention and conformity. He posited that opera’s magic lies in its inherent ambiguity and its true power is rebirth. It is thus fitting that his Metropolitan Opera debut production, which opened on Monday, was Wagner’s long and unwieldy “Tristan und Isolde,” which offers plenty of space for interpretation. His expansive theatrical vision embraced the outstanding work of the top-flight cast headed by Michael Spyres and Lise Davidsen in the title roles and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

It was a double story from the start. Mr. Sharon staged the orchestral prelude with Ms. Davidsen and Mr. Spyres sitting across from each other at a downstage table, their subtle gestures speaking to a fraught relationship, amplified by Ruth Hogben’s evocative live video projected on Es Devlin’s proscenium-filling set that suggested an enormous camera shutter. Their places at the table were then taken by actor/dancer doubles, and the shutter opened to reveal a tunnel floating above the stage floor, where most of the singing happened. In Act 1, the tunnel was the claustrophobic quarters of Tristan’s ship, bringing the furious Isolde from Ireland to Cornwall; in Act 2, it morphed into the magical, hermetic, nighttime world of the lovers; in Act 3, it became the space between life and death, in which the dying Tristan hallucinates.

A scene from ‘Tristan und Isolde.’ MET OPERA

Mr. Sharon maintained multiple perspectives throughout. The doubles (Tim Bendernagel and Simon Catillon as Tristan; Cecily Campbell and Caitlin Scranton as Isolde), wearing simpler versions of Clint Ramos’s medieval-style costumes for the singers—green for Isolde, blue for Tristan—seemed to be miming a more explicit contemporary version of the story while the singers gave voice to their innermost feelings above, their tunnel environment suffused in John Torres’s vibrantly hued lighting. Aided by the video and Jason H. Thompson’s projections, the two worlds coexisted, complementing each other, especially in the wrenching third act, in which the Tristan double lay dying on the table, tended by his henchman Kurwenal, while his delirious, suffering mind sang in the tunnel above. At times, the singers and doubles smoothly switched places, and when the singers appeared on the floor—as when the lovers are discovered in Act 2—it was always a shock, like an awakening from a world of dreams.

Mr. Sharon’s theatrical world made space for the vastness of the emotional drama and thematic subtexts contained in Wagner’s music, and the orchestra and singers filled it with ease. Mr. Nézet-Séguin found the score’s oceanic qualities without wallowing in them, holding to its throughline even in the most fervid passages, and making the mood changes between the acts and within them clear. Both principal singers made their punishing roles sound easy. Mr. Spyres’s tenor has the necessary brightness and stamina along with a bel canto-style legato that made the love duet of Act 2 magical; his agony in Act 3 seemed to well up from a very deep level. Ms. Davidsen’s soprano is both beautiful and brilliantly penetrating; she can also sing softly and still be heard. Isolde is a mercurial character, and Ms. Davidsen expressed her simmering rage, her girlish flirtatiousness, and her serenity in the “Liebestod.” The acoustic properties of Ms. Devlin’s tunnel also noticeably helped with their vocal projection over the large orchestra.

Bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny was powerful as Kurwenal, his cocky sarcasm of Act 1 giving way to the caretaker’s forced optimism in Act 3. He and Brangäne (the potent mezzo Ekaterina Gubanova) struggle in vain to drag the enchanted lovers back into the real world. Bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green captured the anguish and humanity of the betrayed King Marke, though he was underpowered in comparison with the others. Pedro R. Díaz played the haunting English horn solos—in costume in the tunnel—embodying the lifelong mourning that torments Tristan.

Ms. Davidsen, Ekaterina Gubanova, Ryan Speedo Green, Tomasz Konieczny and Mr. Spyres. MET OPERA

Mr. Sharon’s direction wove together the different strands of the opera and the production, exploring the narrative and themes while encompassing the humanity of the characters. The doubles also provide movement and context that keep the longest musical sections from feeling static, and the sensitive use of live video, sometimes shot from overhead, keeps switching the audience’s perspective. In one especially striking video moment in Act 1, the image of the Isolde double’s knife, pointed at Tristan’s throat, was hugely enlarged and became the knife-shaped opening in which the Tristan and Isolde singers meet.

The director has said that he interprets the death wish in the opera as part of the cycle of rebirth. The production offers clues to this: In a silent interpolation, the Isolde double gives birth after Tristan dies, and Ms. Davidsen seemed to be singing her “Liebestod” to the baby. Tristan’s passage between worlds is anything but serene, and dancers, subtly choreographed by Annie-B Parson, accompany him as he hovers in the tunnel that suggests the bardo of Tibetan Buddhism. Yet Mr. Sharon has not drowned the human, emotional roots of the opera in concept. As Tristan breathed his final “Isolde,” the expression on Mr. Spyres’s face—open-eyed and naked with longing—said it all. The combination bodes well for Mr. Sharon’s Met “Ring,” scheduled to begin in the 2027-28 season. Also a good sign: The original seven-performance run of “Tristan” sold out fast, so the company added one on April 4, though without Mr. Spyres. You can catch him on the HD transmission in movie theaters on March 21.

‘Time to Act’ Review: Pittsburgh Opera’s Didactic Trauma Drama

This world-premiere production of a work by Laura Kaminsky and Crystal Manich focuses on a group of students confronting the aftermath of a shooting.

Heidi Waleson

Updated March 3, 2026 at 2:33 am ET

Timothi Williams DAVID BACHMAN

Pittsburgh

One of opera’s superpowers is its ability to communicate rich layers of ambiguity through music. Laura Kaminsky and Crystal Manich’s “Time to Act,” which had its world premiere at the Pittsburgh Opera’s Bitz Opera Factory on Saturday, goes for plot clarity and uplift instead. In Ms. Manich’s libretto, which drives the piece, a high-school drama class tackling Sophocles’ “Antigone” is confronted with a recent shooting at another school: Alona, who has just joined the class, was there, and her brother was the assailant. Unlike Kaija Saariaho’s devastating “Innocence” (coming to the Metropolitan Opera in April), which also deals with the aftermath of a school shooting, “Time to Act” approaches this trauma didactically and ties it up as neatly as an afterschool television special.

At 95 minutes, the opera is about 15 minutes too long, laden with considerable exposition and repetition. Drama-class tropes like a team-building exercise in which the students “tune in” to one another by tapping rhythms on their chests, and mantras like “Time to act,” “Find your light” and “Build the world you want to see,” are repeated ad nauseam. Each of the five principals has a theatrical “role to play”: Alona (cast as Antigone) is the mysterious interloper and disturber of the status quo; Tyson (Creon), an injured football player longing for his sports comfort zone, is the ego-driven authoritarian; José (Haemon), an eager aspiring actor, wants to rewrite the story; Bailey (Ismene), a girl in the class, is the sympathizer; Robin Grace, the drama teacher, helps extract lessons from the ordeal. But the parallels drawn between Sophocles’ play and the students’ real-world experience feel forced and even naïve, as are the instant healing that follows intimate revelations, the final “Kumbaya” moment, and the transformation of a Greek tragedy into a feminist victory.

Ms. Kaminsky’s score illustrates and propels rather than commanding attention itself. Individual instruments in the six-person ensemble (violin, cello, bass, clarinet/saxophone, piano and percussion) are strategically deployed for atmosphere. The eight-voice chorus (portraying the other students in the class) amplifies important moments: In the scene following an active-shooter drill, when the students talk about the shooting at the other school, they murmur, “Like a war zone,” showing how these events creep into the psyches of children.

The solo vocal writing has a handful of high points. Most notably, Ms. Kaminsky portrays Alona’s anguish in her big revelation scene with a jagged vocal line that seems painfully extracted from her, with the cello echoing Timothi Williams’s vibrant mezzo. By contrast, Tyson’s subsequent aria revealing his own old trauma is pat and unconvincing.

Joe Atkinson, Yazid Gray, Logan Wagner and Erik Nordstrom DAVID BACHMAN

The strong cast of young singers made persuasive high-school students. Shannon Crowley’s high soprano captured Bailey’s ditzy kindness; tenor Logan Wagner embodied José’s eager theater-kid ambition and insecurity. Baritone Erik Nordstrom did his best with the too-obvious character of Tyson as a macho egotist with hidden wounds. Best of all was Ms. Williams, imbuing Alona with a magnetic stage presence, emotional resonance and vocal versatility. Yazid Gray’s soothing baritone made Robin Grace into your all-time-favorite high-school teacher, challenging and supportive at the same time. Michael Sakir was the energetic and sensitive conductor.

Set and costume designer Lindsay Fuori created an instantly recognizable drama classroom with a central platform, a rack of costumes, desks and chairs that got piled up to barricade the doors during the active-shooter drill, and a recognizable range of student clothing choices. (Some were emblematic—Ty wears a varsity letter jacket over his injured arm; Alona huddles inside her dead brother’s oversize windbreaker.) Mary Ellen Stebbins’s lighting set the mood, from the red urgency of the drill to the spotlight on Alona as she finally unleashes her story. Ms. Manich’s detailed directing made the story and the play within it clear and created individual characterizations for the ensemble members as well as the principals. Even the celebratory ending—as the students resolve to “change the story”—seemed credible in context, though regrettably a more daunting task in the real world.