The French ensemble made its New York debut with an immersive experience at the luxury department store Printemps and a concert at L’Alliance; at City Center, the local bel-canto company presented a nuanced rendition of Bellini’s ‘La Sonnambula.’ By Heidi Waleson July 30, 2025 at 4:05 pm ET A moment from ‘The Affair of the Poisons.’ PHOTO: KEVIN …
Author Archives: Andy Manshel
‘Dalibor’ Review: At Bard, Beauty From Behind Bars
The college’s SummerScape festival stages Bedřich Smetana’s tuneful 1868 opera, which finds the title character imprisoned for murder even as he attracts the romantic interest of his victim’s sister. By Heidi Waleson July 30, 2025 at 4:11 pm ET John Matthew Myers and Cadie J. Bryan PHOTO: MARIA BARANOVA Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. This year’s opera rarity at Bard SummerScape, …
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Run AMOC* Festival and ‘The Gospel at Colonus’ Review: Mythology and Mortality in Opera
At Lincoln Center, the American Modern Opera Company contemplates the past, present and future through strikingly different productions; at its open-air amphitheater, Little Island stages the landmark 1983 musical retelling of a Sophocles tragedy, rethinking central elements. By Heidi Waleson July 16, 2025 at 4:38 pm ET A performance of ‘Music for New Bodies’ at Lincoln …
‘Faust’ Review: Heartbeat Opera Deals With Gounod’s Devil
The New York company adapts the French composer’s classic in a production that proves theatrically inventive but musically uneven. By Heidi Waleson May 21, 2025 at 5:02 pm ET John Taylor Ward and Rachel Kobernick PHOTO: ANDREW BOYLE New York Heartbeat Opera’s radical adaptations of classic titles can soar or fall flat, but one constant has always been …
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‘Loving v. Virginia’ and ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ Reviews: Opera Couples in Crisis
The Virginia Opera and the Richmond Symphony presented Damien Geter’s new opera about the landmark Supreme Court case striking down bans on interracial marriage; at the Met, John Adams’s Shakespeare adaptation is much improved from its 2022 premiere in San Francisco. By Heidi Waleson May 14, 2025 at 4:09 pm ET Flora Hawk and Jonathan Michie PHOTO: DAVE …
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‘Salome’ and ‘Giulio Cesare in Egitto’ Reviews: In These Operas, Heads Will Roll
Claus Guth’s production of the Strauss opera at the Met emphasizes its heroine’s history of abuse in telling the tale of obsession and decapitation; at Carnegie Hall, Harry Bicket and the English Concert brought Handel’s epic of love and vengeance vividly to life. By Heidi Waleson May 5, 2025 at 5:08 pm ET Peter Mattei and …
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Enveloping Acoustics in the Frick Collection’s New Auditorium
In the hall’s inaugural concert last weekend, the Jupiter Ensemble performed the music of Handel featuring mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre and was joined by countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo for a premiere by Nico Muhly. By Heidi Waleson May 1, 2025 at 4:03 pm ET Jupiter Ensemble and Lea Desandre at the Frick’s new Stephen A. Schwarzman Auditorium. PHOTO: GEORGE …
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‘Giulio Cesare’ and ‘Countertenor’ Review: Experiments in Sound and Scent
In upstate New York, director R.B. Schlather sought to wrestle Handel’s opera into modernity; in Brooklyn, Anthony Roth Costanzo offered a performance considering the high male voice that included an olfactory component. Randall Scotting in the title role of ‘Giulio Cesare.’ PHOTO: MATTHEW PLACEK By Heidi Waleson April 21, 2025 at 5:15 pm ET Hudson, N.Y. Director R.B. Schlather’s operas …
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‘Così fan tutte’ and ‘The Threepenny Opera’ Reviews: Directors Disrupt the Classics
At the Detroit Opera, Yuval Sharon reimagined Mozart’s tale of infidelity for the age of artificial intelligence; at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Barrie Kosky offered a fiercely expressive staging of Kurt Weill’s Weimar-era work. By Heidi Waleson April 14, 2025 at 4:57 pm ET Olivia Boen in Yuval Sharon’s AI-themed production of Mozart’s ‘Così fan …
Opera in Europe: Established but Adventurous
Recent productions in Germany and the Netherlands—of classics, curiosities and contemporary works by composers ranging from Strauss to Saariaho—powerfully exemplified the scene’s risk-taking artistic ethos. By Heidi Waleson April 7, 2025 at 4:43 pm ET The company of Offenbach’s ‘Die Schöne Helena.’ PHOTO: IKO FREESE Berlin; Dresden, Germany; Amsterdam New Yorkers who visit Berlin often feel at home—the …
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