Gregory Spears and Tracy K. Smith’s new, luxuriously cast opera, which premiered in Cincinnati, depicts cousins at odds over family property in 2008’s American South and the complex history of their black ancestors. Reginald Smith Jr. and Talise Trevigne PHOTO: PHILIP GROSHONG By Heidi Waleson July 26, 2022 5:24 pm Cincinnati What makes a narrative operatic, demanding …
Continue reading “‘Castor and Patience’ Review: Land and Legacy”
The company’s 50th season highlights the strength of its programming with the premiere of ‘A Thousand Acres,’ based on Jane Smiley’s novel, and stagings of ‘Porgy and Bess’ and ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ Elise Quagliata and Roger Honeywell PHOTO: DUANE TINKEY By Heidi Waleson July 13, 2022 5:26 pm Indianola, Iowa Air travel being what it is …
Continue reading “Review: Arias Over the Fields at Des Moines Metro Opera”
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis’s spring season includes Tobias Picker’s new opera about neurologist Oliver Sacks’s patients suffering from sleeping sickness. Katharine Goeldner, Andres Acosta, Marc Molomot and Jarrett Porter (foreground) in Tobias Picker’s ‘Awakenings’ PHOTO: ERIC WOOLSEY By Heidi Waleson June 27, 2022 5:54 pm Webster Groves, MO Opera Theatre of Saint Louis returned to full …
The festival returns to a full performance schedule after two years with works including ‘Omar’ by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels and Yuval Sharon’s production of ‘La Bohème’ Jamez McCorkle as Omar PHOTO: LEIGH WEBBER By Heidi Waleson May 31, 2022 5:42 pm Charleston, S.C. Spoleto Festival USA has returned to a full performance schedule this spring—after …
Continue reading “Spoleto Festival USA Review: After a Rest, High Notes”
Anthony Davis’s opera about the iconic Black Power figure starts a nationwide series of engagements in Detroit. Davone Tines as Malcolm X (center)PHOTO: MICAH SHUMAKE / DETROIT OPERA By Heidi Waleson May 23, 2022 5:22 pm Detroit In 1986, when Anthony Davis’s opera “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” had its world premiere at the New …
Continue reading “‘X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X’ Review: More Self-Empowering Than Radical”
Brett Dean’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s tragedy has its North American premiere at the Met. Jacques Imbrailo as Horatio and Allan Clayton as HamletPHOTO: KAREN ALMOND / MET OPERA By Heidi Waleson May 18, 2022 5:37 pm New York I was ready tolove Brett Dean’s “Hamlet,” which had its North American premiere on Friday at the Metropolitan Opera. The …
Continue reading “‘Hamlet’ Review: A Princely Opera Usurped by Noise”
György Kurtág’s first opera, adapted from Samuel Beckett’s one-act play and completed at age 91, is filled with compassion for its four aged characters Frode Olsen PHOTO: SEBASTIEN MATHE By Heidi Waleson May. 12, 2022 5:16 pm The bleakness of György Kurtág’s opera “Fin de partie” (“Endgame”), now playing at the Paris Opera’s Palais Garnier, could be …
Continue reading “‘Fin de partie’ Review: Beauty in the Bleakness of ‘Endgame’”
Le chemin de St. Jacques from Cahors to Moissac and Paris
The Met’s new production of the Donizetti work, by Simon Stone and dubbed ‘Lucia: Closeups of a Cursed Life,’ transports the tragic tale to a dying American Rust Belt community in the present day. By Heidi Waleson April 25, 2022 5:10 pm ET Simon Stone’s remarkable new production of Donizetti’s “ Lucia di Lammermoor, ” which …
Continue reading “‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ Review: Despair Made Magnetic”
In Los Angeles, Du Yun’s solo opera about a father’s struggles has its premiere and the Los Angeles Philharmonic teams with Deaf West Theatre for a unique take on Beethoven’s work. By Heidi Waleson Updated April 18, 2022 6:29 pm ET Los Angeles In an early scene of Du Yun’s “In Our Daughter’s Eyes”—a solo …
Continue reading “‘In Our Daughter’s Eyes’ and ‘Fidelio’ Reviews: A Parent’s Pain and Beethoven”
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