The upstate New York opera company’s 50th-anniversary season stretches from Puccini to a world premiere, and shines in stagings of Sondheim and Stravinsky.
By
Heidi Waleson
Aug. 13, 2025 at 5:00 pm ET
John Riddle (left) and the cast of ‘Sunday in the Park With George.’ PHOTO: BRENT DELANOY/THE GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL
Cooperstown, N.Y.
The Glimmerglass Festival, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this season (through Aug. 17), changed the face of American opera. Along with its fellow summer festivals in Santa Fe and St. Louis, Glimmerglass pushed the opera world to explore new and forgotten repertory, the cultivation of young singers, and nontraditional stagings of classic works. Glimmerglass has tweaked its formula over the decades; still based in the purpose-built, perfectly sized (918 seats) Alice Busch Opera Theater, it is now headed by Rob Ainsley.
To mark the occasion, the designer John Conklin, a company institution with more than 40 Glimmerglass shows to his credit, came out of retirement to craft an overall set for the season. He died at age 88 two weeks before the season opened, but his typically spare, red-hued backstage concept was a reminder that Glimmerglass knows how to economize.
The summer’s two best shows made the best use of it. Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park With George” is about how artists see the new in the ordinary, and Ethan Heard’s seamless direction brought characters seated on the sidelines onto the stage as Seurat imagined his painting into life. In Act 2, unused standing flats became the backdrop for Greg Emetaz’s ingenious figure projections representing the 20th-century George in his frantic, juggling pursuit of patrons (“Putting It Together”). The second act of “Sunday” is often considered an inferior add-on to the perfection of Act 1; here, it was an essential twist, believably depicting how a successful but disillusioned artist finds his way back to inspiration.
John Riddle and Marina Pires, gifted musical-theater performers, were an intense pair as George and Dot/Marie; as the Old Lady, Luretta Bybee brought a touching frailty to “Beautiful”; the company’s Resident Artists (formerly known as Young Artists) filled most of the other roles in the large, lively cast. Beth Goldenberg’s costumes nicely differentiated the two eras; Michael Ellis Ingram was the astute conductor.
Aleksey Bogdanov and Adrian Kramer in ‘The Rake’s Progress.’ PHOTO: KAYLEEN BERTRAND/THE GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL
The company also shone in Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress,” an enormously challenging score. The orchestra sounded crystalline and propulsive under conductor Joseph Colaneri, Glimmerglass’s music director, and the three leads were sensational. Adrian Kramer’s tenor grew bigger and richer as the eponymous Tom Rakewell sank ever-further into corruption; his clear enunciation of the brilliant English libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman was especially welcome. Lydia Grindatto brought an unusually velvety middle and low register to Tom’s savior, Anne Trulove, which gave her extra weight. Baritone Aleksey Bogdanov’s commanding baritone captured both the suave façade and the diabolical heart of Nick Shadow. Deborah Nansteel was an unsentimental Baba the Turk.
Director/choreographer Eric Sean Fogel’s smart staging animated Mr. Conklin’s set with a dancing and singing chorus, employed by Shadow to create Tom’s reality and his downfall. An updated 1950s setting was suggested by hard-edged, color field images—Ellsworth Kelly-style—and Lynly A. Saunders’s clever costumes. Some chairs, a movable ladder/platform, and Robert Wierzel’s lighting did the rest.
Mikaela Bennett (center) and company in ‘The House on Mango Street.’ PHOTO: KAYLEEN BERTRAND/THE GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL
Glimmerglass has offered some satisfying world premieres—the finest was Jeanine Tesori’s “Blue” in 2019—but Derek Bermel’s “The House on Mango Street” is not one of them. Its source is the revered 1984 novel by Sandra Cisneros, who collaborated on the libretto with the composer, but the book’s elegant mosaic of subtle, knife-like vignettes about growing up in a Latino neighborhood in Chicago has been expanded beyond recognition. The bloated result is a mawkish, didactic piece that tries to encompass everything from child abuse to gang behavior, guns, immigration, adolescent yearnings, and the writer’s responsibility to her community.
Mr. Bermel’s pastiche score incorporates Latin dances (with echoes of “In the Heights”) and rap (for the local boys and the girls who occasionally stand up to them). It is straightforwardly tonal, and there’s even a dash of Mahler in the interminable culminating sequence, a shamanic ritual that heals Esperanza (the protagonist) after she is raped.
Mikaela Bennett, a big-voiced soprano, was a sympathetic Esperanza; Taylor-Alexis DuPont was a spitfire Sally, a neighborhood teen with a complicated life. Most of the other characters in the large cast were played by Resident Artists; one standout voice in the texture was the resonant mezzo of Kendra Faith Beasley as Shamana 3. Nicole Paiement was the efficient conductor. Chía Patiño’s staging kept things moving around and inside the frameworks of two row houses; Erik Teague’s costumes evoked the neighborhood; and Mr. Emetaz’s projections cleverly shaped buildings and the like out of lines of type—Esperanza’s stories.
Michelle Bradley in ‘Tosca.’ PHOTO: BRENT DELANOY/THE GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL
It might be best to draw a veil over Puccini’s “Tosca.” The three principal singers were loud and unsubtle. With her heavy dramatic soprano, Michelle Bradley sounded ready to sing Brünnhilde and her pitch was uncertain at times; tenor Yongzhao Yu’s wiry, metallic timbre made for an unsatisfying Cavaradossi; and bass-baritone Greer Grimsley’s Scarpia was all brute and gravel. Mr. Colaneri’s orchestra blasted away with them.
The staging—the most elaborate of the four—matched their tone. Director Louisa Proske envisioned a contemporary setting in a troubled time; during the intermission, instructions on how to resist authoritarianism were projected on the black drop curtain. The Act 1 church was under renovation; its scaffolding and plastic sheeting were ripped down during the “Te Deum” to reveal a modernist Piéta that bled during the final chords.
Scarpia’s Act 2 lair was an ugly underground bunker. There was a lot of physical violence—Cavaradossi’s hand was smashed with a hammer during his first interrogation—though fortunately, the main torture still happened offstage. Tosca sang “Vissi d’arte” in the bathroom. She was unable to escape the bunker after killing Scarpia and spent Act 3 there as well (her reunion with Cavaradossi was imagined) and she shot herself with the gun purloined from Scarpia’s safe, her blood smearing the white tile wall. Tosca’s costumes—a bright yellow coat; a shimmering lamé concert gown—set her off from the rest of the cast in their grim attire, all designed by Kaye Voyce. Ms. Proske’s authoritarianism concept is intriguing, but without singers who could convey what’s at stake, it was assault without Puccinian pathos.
AndyManshel.nyc 