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 …
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‘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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‘Moby-Dick’ and ‘Fidelio’ Review: Opera Adrift at the Met
The New York company recently opened two underpowered productions: Jake Heggie’s 2010 adaptation of the Herman Melville classic, and Beethoven’s tale of a political prisoner and his wife featuring the star soprano Lise Davidsen. By Heidi Waleson March 6, 2025 at 5:31 pm ET A scene from ‘Moby-Dick.’ PHOTO: MET OPERA New York If “operatic” is a synonym …
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‘Salome’ and ‘Morgiane’ Review: Reinvention and Excavation
Heartbeat Opera presents a radically stripped down and re-orchestrated version of Strauss’s classic in Brooklyn; in Manhattan, Opera Lafayette and OperaCréole staged the world-premiere production of what is thought to be the oldest existing opera by a black American. By Heidi Waleson Feb. 11, 2025 at 11:45 am ET Melina Jaharis, Patrick Cook and Jeremy Harr …
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