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Les Arts Florissants performed a concert in dialogue with an exhibition devoted to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher; Sonnambula, the museum’s ensemble-in-residence, collaborated with singer Davóne Tines to reconstruct a 1605 court entertainment.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Nov. 4, 2025 at 5:09 pm ET

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Singers of Les Arts Florissants. CHRIS SUNWOO/THE FRICK COLLECTION

New York

The Oct. 26 “Music at the Frick” concert by Les Arts Florissants, designed to be in dialogue with the collection’s current special exhibition, “To the Holy Sepulcher: Treasures From the Terra Sancta Museum,” did just that. The church, in Jerusalem, was originally built in the fourth century on what is purported to be the site of Christ’s crucifixion, burial and resurrection. The exhibition encompasses more than 40 religious objects sent to it as gifts by Catholic monarchs in Europe and the Holy Roman Empire in the 17th and 18th centuries. The objects, which include richly embroidered vestments and lavishly sculpted monstrances, Eucharist thrones and sanctuary lamps made of jewel-studded precious metals, are eye-catchingly high Baroque. The music, most of it from the early 17th century, is more austere, demanding concentration and contemplation.

Paul Agnew, who directed and sang tenor in the six-voice ensemble, constructed the hour-long program as a meditation on the origin of the Holy Sepulcher. Each section—crucifixion, burial and resurrection—began with plainchant and continued with more elaborate settings of those and other sacred texts on the subjects. At the heart of the Good Friday and Holy Saturday sections were four responsories from Carlo Gesualdo’s 1611 collection for Holy Week. The word-painting in these arresting madrigal-style pieces, heightened by Gesualdo’s characteristic dissonances, is starkly immediate. Words like “cilicio” (sackcloth) jumped out of the texture; the rushing turbulence of “Vos fugam capietis” (Ye shall take flight), following the first mournful words of Jesus in Gethsemane in “Tristis est anima mea usque ad mortem,” graphically depicted the cowardice of his followers. Dynamics were also crucial: When Jesus cried out on the cross in the “Tenebrae” responsory, “exclamavit” was startlingly loud; his death, “emisit spiritum,” was barely audible.

The excellent singers embraced the storytelling structure and different composers added new qualities to the same texts. Antonio Lotti’s highly dramatic “Crucifixus à 6” contrasted with Claudio Monteverdi’s much earlier version—a dark, four-part setting sung by low voices, with deep bass notes on the concluding “sepultus est” (was buried). The Resurrection section of the program was more cheerful—a “Victimae paschali laudes” motet by the Spanish composer Fernando de las Infantas was jolly, and Jacques Mauduit’s French setting of Psalm 150 (the only non-Latin number) was a positively raucous celebration, its catchy rhythms depicting all the instruments praising God. The program ended on a note of jubilation with William Byrd’s bright-toned “Resurrexi.” It was a sly addition: The nationalities of most of the program’s composers reflected the origins of the exhibition’s objects, and although Byrd was a Catholic, England’s monarchs during nearly all of the period covered by the exhibition were most definitely not.

The Nov. 2 Frick concert, “A Black Masque,” was also an intriguing musical-historical exercise. Devised by Sonnambula—the Frick’s new ensemble-in-residence, directed by viol player and scholar Elizabeth Weinfield—and bass-baritone Davóne Tines, it was a creative reconstruction of the 1605 court entertainment “The Masque of Blackness” by poet Ben Jonson, designer Inigo Jones, and composer Alfonso Ferrabosco II. The original music, apart from one song, is lost, so the performers supplemented an abridged version of the text and stage directions with pieces by other composers of the period, even ingeniously setting some of Jonson’s song lyrics to them.

The masque’s subject is problematic: Some beautiful African water nymphs—portrayed by the queen and her ladies-in-waiting in blackface—wish to travel to Britain to be made white. The text is an elaborate explanation of the nymphs’ quest, told in the voices of Oceanus (Ocean), Niger (River), and Æthiopia (Moon); there are songs and dances before the nymphs plunge into the ocean to swim to Britannia, which, they have been told, is “Ruled by a sun, that to this height doth grace it: Whose beams shine day and night, and are of force / To blanch an Æthiop, and revive a corse.” The actual transformation occurs in Jonson’s subsequent masque.

The instrumental consort—three viols, two violins, harpsichord and lute/theorbo—offered an invigorating collection of Elizabethan and Jacobean hits by such contemporaneous composers as William Brade, William Lawes, John Dowland and Anthony Holborne. Elegantly played laments and dances were woven between the text sections, and sometimes skillfully repurposed as their background accompaniments. Ferrabosco’s surviving number, “Come Away, Come Away,” was a pleasantly simple tune, less sophisticated than John Coprario’s mourning song, “So Parted You,” in which the violins plaintively echoed the singer. Mr. Tines gave the texts suitably dramatic readings, but his singing voice proved heavy and overly emphatic for this Renaissance style.

It would be difficult to re-create the actual experience of the masque, given its elaborate stage setting, which called for blue-haired tritons (part human, part fish), sea monsters, and a giant shell to contain the performers, for starters. The program made the point about the racist subject without being excessively didactic; the one projection was a period drawing of a costumed lady in blackface. During the final song—Jonson’s text “Now, Dian,” deftly set to Dowland’s famous tune “Flow My Tears”—it slowly transformed into its negative image, so her face became white. It was a thought-provoking hour, offering new contextual insight into period music and art that we think we know.

The company opened its 50th season with a gleefully silly, powerfully sung production that set the 1825 comedy in an art gallery; in New York, Samoan tenor Pene Pati brought warmth and expressiveness to a recital at Park Avenue Armory.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Oct. 1, 2025 at 5:01 pm ET

A scene from the opera. PHOTO: STEVEN PISANO

Philadelphia

Opera Philadelphia’s 50th-season opener, Rossini’s “Il Viaggio a Reims,” performed over the past two weekends at the Academy of Music, was appropriately tongue-in-cheek. Anthony Roth Costanzo, who took over as OP’s general director and president last year, is busy upending the prevailing opera-company model, starting with a “Pick Your Price” offer of every available ticket at $11 (or whatever amount above that you want to pay), and a season lineup studded with new, highly unconventional pieces. “Viaggio” itself teases tradition. Written in 1825 to celebrate the coronation of the French king Charles X, it is a comic pageant with the wispiest of plots: An international group of aristocrats is stuck in a spa hotel en route to the coronation without onward transportation. There are tantrums, squabbles and romantic jealousies, but it is mostly an opportunity for bravura singing.

Damiano Michieletto’s well-traveled production, first mounted at the Dutch National Opera in 2015, leans into the silliness. Staged in Philadelphia by Eleonora Gravagnola, it is set in a modern-day art gallery, where a traveling exhibit is being crated up for transfer to its next location. Some of the opera’s characters become figures from the art; others are gallery employees or visitors. The conceit cleverly integrates both worlds and is entertaining without making much more sense than the original. Paintings and sculptures come to life in various amusing ways, and the characters finally coalesce into François Gérard’s 1827 painting of Charles X’s coronation.

The score calls for a large cast with serious bel canto skills, and Opera Philadelphia’s lineup delivered. As Madama Cortese, here the gallery’s proprietor, soprano Brenda Rae looked splendidly Anna Wintour-ish in Carla Teti’s chic outfit, complete with elbow-length black gloves and dark glasses. As she scrabbled for a laser pointer in her large handbag, her coloratura was comically on point, though she was inaudible in her middle range during the cabaletta. Soprano Lindsey Reynolds emerged from a packing crate in 19th-century dishabille and threw a convincing diva fit as La Contessa di Folleville. Her clothes have been lost en route, and she furiously rejected all proffered substitutes. Il Conte di Libenskof (the excellent high tenor Alasdair Kent) and Don Alvaro (the witty baritone Alex DeSocio) drew their swords over La Marchesa Melibea (mezzo Katherine Beck).

Brenda Rae PHOTO: STEVEN PISANO

Everyone was soon corralled into a large picture frame for a typically ebullient Rossini ensemble as Don Profondo (bass-baritone Ben Brady), an antiquarian, hung price tags on them. Then, for a complete change of musical and dramatic pace, Alessandro Carletti’s lighting took on a mysterious dimness; offstage an exquisite lyric soprano (Emilie Kealani), accompanied by solo harp, offered a serene aria; and the figures from Canova’s sculpture “The Three Graces” came to life and struck balletic poses.

Other arias were staged using even more elaborate art-related gags. After the arrival of a new assortment of relatively modern paintings (by Frida Kahlo, Fernando Boteroand Keith Haring, among others) and actor avatars of their subjects, Lord Sidney (Scott Conner)—here an art restorer—sang his aria of unrequited love, full of surprising bass coloratura, to John Singer Sargent’s “Madame X,” who came to life and covered him with paint. Mr. Brady pulled off Don Profondo’s patter song “Medaglie incomparabili,” a tongue-twisting list of precious objects, as an auctioneer’s spiel. 

Some of the best singing of the night came from tenor Minghao Liu (as Il Cavaliere Belfiore) with his boasting yet playful wooing of the poet Corinna (Ms. Kealani), here a modern-day art student; to get past her indifference, he forces an unsuspecting gallery visitor, at sword point, to surrender his clothes and puts them on. The final parade of “national” songs was also cleverly handled: The characters, now appropriately costumed, stepped into a large frame, in front of a throne-room background, to perform. And during Ms. Kealani’s closing paean to Charles X, once again sensitively accompanied by the solo harp, the Gérard picture slowly assembled, with the painting itself finally projected onto the singers and Paulo Fantin’s set.

The chorus, usually engaged in packing or cleanup activities for the gallery, was also lively. Conductor Corrado Rovaris led a sprightly, transparent performance, full of Rossinian sparkle and verve, and the solo musicians, particularly the flutist, were as vivid and idiomatic as the singers.

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New York

The Park Avenue Armory’s recital series is a good place to catch interesting vocalists. Last week, the Samoan tenor Pene Pati made his North American solo recital debut with pianist Ronny Michael Greenberg. Mr. Pati, who has sung in many European houses, got a quick Metropolitan Opera debut this January with a few performances as the Duke in “Rigoletto”; given the warmth and expressiveness of the instrument on display at the Armory, I hope he’ll be back there soon.

The program included French, English and German repertoire. A pair of Henri Duparc chansons sounded too loud in the small Board of Officers room, but for Lili Boulanger’s “Clairières dans le ciel” Mr. Pati found a conversational intimacy rare in big lyric-tenor voices. The English selections were superbly communicative. Mr. Pati’s idiomatic eloquence in pieces by Benjamin Britten, evoking the darkness of the final verse of “The Last Rose of Summer” and the poignant storytelling of “The Choirmaster’s Burial,” made me want to hear him sing Captain Vere in the composer’s “Billy Budd.” His just-released recording of Neapolitan songs with the ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro is similarly surprising. Instead of the full-throated, Pavarotti-style belt that’s common in this repertoire, Mr. Pati makes a familiar song like “O sole mio” as gentle as a caress.

An adaptation of Michael Chabon’s novel about the creation of a comic-book hero at the outset of World War II struggled to come to life in the company’s season-opening production, directed by Bartlett Sher.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Sept. 23, 2025 at 5:22 pm ET

Andrzej Filończyk and Miles Mykkanen PHOTO: EVAN ZIMMERMAN / MET OPERA

Like many contemporary operas, “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” by Mason Bates, a commissioned work that opened the Metropolitan Opera season on Sunday evening, walks the line between novelty and tradition without embracing either. (Met commissions are typically given their world premieres elsewhere; “Kavalier & Clay” got its tryout in November 2024 at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music.) Librettist Gene Scheer distilled Michael Chabon’s sprawling, Pulitzer Prize-winning book from 2000 into a straightforward, primary-colored plot, losing much of its magical, elliptical atmosphere. Mr. Bates’s music illustrates the story rather than evoking the intense emotional journeys of its two protagonists.

This pair are teenage Jewish cousins. Joe Kavalier (Andrzej Filończyk) has made a dramatic escape from Prague (it is 1939) and taken refuge with his relatives in Brooklyn. A gifted artist, Joe teams up with his writer cousin Sam Clay (Miles Mykkanen) to create a comic-book hero inspired by his exploits: “The Escapist,” who fights Nazis and rescues the imprisoned and persecuted. His goal is to earn enough money to save his parents and sister from Nazi-overrun Prague. “The Escapist” is a wild success; the rescue is not, and Joe’s romance with Rosa (Sun-Ly Pierce) is a casualty.

Meanwhile, Sam tentatively explores his homosexual desires with Tracy (Edward Nelson), the hunky actor who plays The Escapist in its radio version, only to find himself a target of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. Most of this happens in just the first act—overlong at 90 minutes. In Act 2, which spans about three years in 55 minutes, the cousins work their way back from the painful discovery that the creation of an alternative world through art cannot alone solve terrible problems.

Mr. Bates’s strongest moments are the jazz-inflected, uptempo chorus scenes. The show first comes to life at the toy company where Sam is a copywriter, as he and Joe work to sell the boss on the comic-book idea, backed by a spirited ensemble of singing typists. The number’s catchy, repetitive structure (“Dime by dime”) is dramatically juxtaposed with a totally different repeated motif—Joe’s mother and another chorus sing a Hebrew prayer on a train to Auschwitz.

The arias and duets, which are almost always slowly paced and formless, lack that visceral, theatrical punch and do not musically distinguish one character from another. Exceptions are Joe’s lament when he finds out that his parents are dead (its repeated line is “Alone in the dark”) and the bluntness of the Nazi Gerhard (bass-baritone Craig Colclough) who tells the hallucinating Joe, “Bullets are all that matter.” Because of this, Sam’s gay awakening story, set against the Nazis and Holocaust, never comes into emotional focus and just makes the show feel longer. Also unsatisfying are some purely plot-driven scenes, such as a sequence in which Joe rescues the artist Salvador Dalí from a deep-sea diver costume. 

The orchestral writing, nicely handled by conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, can be colorful, though the ominous Wagner tubas become predictable after a while and the electronica for which Mr. Bates is best known is barely discernible.

The heroes of the evening are director Bartlett Sher; his set, lighting and video design collaborators 59 Studio; and costume designer Jennifer Moeller, who supply the speed, atmosphere and dramatic build missing in the music. Scenes switch effortlessly from Prague, with its shadowy bridge looming over the Moldau, to a Brooklyn tenement, a busy office, a tony art gallery, and the roof of the Empire State Building. Joe’s first drawings take shape on video screens; later, the Escapist comic-book stories scroll across them. The team dealt especially well with the interlocked scenes of Act 2, set as an ensemble with chorus: A turntable deftly alternated Joe’s experience as a soldier on the Western Front in Europe with life back at home where the comic-book company is making money and Sam and Rosa, in a union of convenience, are raising Rosa and Joe’s child on Long Island.

Mr. Filończyk, making his Met debut, displayed a dark, expressive baritone; it helped contrast the older Joe’s buried trauma and Sam’s yearnings, sung in Mr. Mykkanen’s more open, poignant tenor. Ms. Pierce’s soothing mezzo gave Rosa an anchoring presence; as Joe’s 14-year-old sister, Sarah, soprano Lauren Snouffer, also making her debut, was bright and affecting; and Mr. Nelson was a lively Tracy. Standouts in the large supporting cast included soprano Ellie Dehn as Joe’s mother and Amanda Batista as Helen, a perky radio actress. The Met chorus, directed by Tilman Michael, was excellent in its various incarnations.

The Met has committed itself to presenting several modern operas each season, featuring both its own commissions and pieces with track records in other theaters. It is an important project that has had mixed results so far. “Kavalier & Clay” skews toward the safe, to its detriment. The two contemporary operas that will have Met premieres in April and May—Kaija Saariaho’s “Innocence” (2021) and Gabriela Lena Frank’s “El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego” (2022)—are more adventurous and merit their turns on the country’s biggest opera stage.

The countertenor stars and sings in Charles Ludlam’s irreverent 1983 play about the legendary diva, directed by Eric Ting at New York’s Little Island.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Sept. 15, 2025 at 5:03 pm ET

Anthony Roth Costanzo in ‘Galas.’ PHOTO: NINA WESTERVELT

New York

The countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo has a seemingly endless appetite for work and risk—just last year, he took on the leadership of the faltering Opera Philadelphia and starred in a brilliantly eccentric version of Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” in which he sang all the roles. An unusually deep and thoughtful passion for opera informs everything he does, so it seems appropriate that he is now performing at Little Island in the ultimate homage to the ultimate diva.

“Galas,” written by Charles Ludlam, is the lightly fictionalized story of Maria Callas; it was first presented in 1983 by Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company with the author as the star. Ludlam didn’t sing in the show; the aria snippets came from Callas recordings. Mr. Costanzo, of course, does. We get a little of “Vissi d’arte” and “Casta diva” and he has added more excerpts, such as Charlotte’s “Letters” aria from “Werther” and Desdemona’s “Ave Maria” from “Otello,” which fit seamlessly into the evening. (The “Ave Maria,” hilariously, is used to help the title character upstage the pope at her private audience.)

Mr. Costanzo sings everything with finesse and brio, as one might expect. The revelation is his strength as a speaking actor. Channeling her distinctive accent and carriage, he’s remarkably believable as Galas/Callas in her many incarnations. Sometimes demure, often fiery, he conveys her drive, perfectionism and heartbreak, all without slipping into caricature or camp. Critical to the illusion is his delicate build, which is swathed in some truly fabulous costumes by Jackson Wiederhoeft and capped with spot-on wigs by Amanda Miller and makeup by James Kaliardos.

The play itself, even in director Eric Ting’s well-calibrated production, hasn’t aged well. At 100 minutes, the show feels long; its slapstick comedy routines grow tedious; and the gay transgressive energy that was exciting four decades ago is now predictable and routine. Seven scenes cover significant beats in Callas’s life, including her meeting with Giovanni (Carmelita Tropicana), the brick manufacturer who would become her husband and manager; the Rome Opera performance of “Norma” that she left after the first act (“The voice is slipping”), causing a national scandal; her love affair with the Greek shipping tycoon here named Aristotle Plato Socrates Odysseus, aka “Sock” (Caleb Eberhardt); her lonely final years after he married Jacqueline Kennedy.

Jeremy Rafal, Mary Testa and Austin Durant PHOTO: NINA WESTERVELT

It’s enacted in a cascade of comedy, with Galas as the relatively sane linchpin circled by a cast of deliberately overacting supporting players. There’s Bruna (Mary Testa), Galas’s maid, a former opera singer who offers career advice and makes oracular pronouncements; the two representatives of La Scala (Austin Durant and Jeremy Rafal) who grudgingly offer her contracts and enunciate the last “la” of La Scala with stuck-out tongues.

Gender fluidity is in the mix: Trans actress Samora la Perdida is both a wildly swishy Pope Sixtus VII (Hahnji Jang, who did the non-Costanzo costumes, provided a striptease-ready white papal robe and high lace-up white platform boots) and the predatory journalist Ilka Winterhalter, who thrills at the hot tip that Galas’s extreme weight loss was deliberately induced by a tapeworm. Ms. Tropicana, short and bedizened with a glittery fake mustache, makes Giovanni the quintessential troll; spurned by his wife at a masquerade party on Sock’s yacht, he puts on a clown costume and chokes out “Vesti la giubba” from “Pagliacci.” Mimi Lien’s set—a gilded catwalk—emphasizes the play’s operatic theatricality. So do Jiyoun Chang’s lighting, complete with explosive flashes and colors, and the recorded musical interpolations—Verdi’s “Dies irae” and the Scarpia chords from “Tosca” ring out as Galas vows revenge on her enemies.

Samora la Perdida PHOTO: NINA WESTERVELT

The cleverest aspect of the show is how it quickly switches tone from quasi-realism to high melodrama and back again. Mr. Costanzo plays these eruptions with appropriately operatic flair—the open-mouthed, silent scream when the news of Sock’s death arrives is an indelible picture—yet even in Galas’s most outrageous moments, we feel her humanity. The play’s principal theme is her loneliness, and while her final speech—“What do I do if I have no career?”— has the inevitable deadpan punchline—“And there’s nothing good on television tonight”—we remember a poignant earlier statement: “I hate freedom. I don’t belong to anyone.” Galas’s (fictional) suicide is a fully theatrical moment, à la “Madama Butterfly,” yet as Mr. Costanzo strips off the kimono and the wig before plunging in the dagger, we get why these operas, even at their most extreme, resonate with reality.

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.

The summer program—featuring ‘Die Walküre,’ ‘The Marriage of Figaro,’ ‘La Bohème,’ ‘Rigoletto’ and ‘The Turn of the Screw’—offers largely standard repertoire enriched with subtle surprises and compelling performances.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Aug. 4, 2025 at 4:30 pm ET

Ryan Speedo Green and Tamara Wilson in ‘Die Walküre.’ PHOTO: SANTA FE OPERA/CURTIS BROWN

Santa Fe, N.M.

This summer’s Santa Fe Opera season, which runs through Aug. 23, skews toward standard repertoire, but there were surprises within that narrow compass. Director Melly Still gave Wagner’s “Die Walküre” a feminist gloss: Its women see clearly, while Wotan’s betrayal of his children, however agonizing and supposedly for the greater good, is the inevitable result of his lust for power.

The walls of designer Leslie Travers’s abstract environment are made of stretchy cords; shadowy figures lurk behind and slip through them. The past, present and future of the “Ring” universe exist simultaneously, and someone is always watching, whether it’s Fricka witnessing the meeting of Siegmund and Sieglinde, or Alberich jeering at Wotan. The Valkyries’ costumes (also by Mr. Travers) invoke powerful women like Joan of Arc and Madame Defarge, yet Wotan controls them—his black-clad soldiers drag them away when they try to protect the errant Brünnhilde. In the final tableau, two expectant mothers—Sieglinde and Alberich’s unnamed woman—stare at each other across Brünnhilde’s fiery bier, foreshadowing the conflict that requires two more operas to resolve. I’d be interested in Ms. Still’s take on those.

For his role debut as Wotan, bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green husbanded his resources into a careful portrayal; his savage chastisement of Brünnhilde in Act 3 hinted at future development. Tamara Wilson was a steely, efficient Brünnhilde, her static demeanor gaining some nuance after she shed her warrior garb. Tiny and intense, Vida Miknevičiūtė was the evening’s hit, her crystalline soprano giving explosive voice to Sieglinde’s long-crushed spirit. Mezzo Sarah Saturnino was a formidable, dogged Fricka. Jamez McCorkle brought a lyric desperation to the beleaguered Siegmund, but his tenor lacked the metallic core needed to sustain this punishing role. With his thundering bass, Soloman Howard’s Hunding was a man who lives by violence. The Santa Fe Opera Orchestra sounds better than usual this season, although conductor James Gaffigan’s sluggish pacing made for some longueurs.

Liv Redpath and Riccardo Fassi in ‘The Marriage of Figaro.’ PHOTO: SANTA FE OPERA/BRONWEN SHARP

Laurent Pelly’s production of Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” is much improved over its first outing at the company in 2021, no doubt because Mr. Pelly was able to supervise the staging in person this time. (In 2021, Covid-19 meant he directed via Zoom.) Chantal Thomas’s revolving set, inspired by a clock mechanism, made its point about the intricate ensemble nature of the opera, while Mr. Pelly’s direction—and his handsome 1930s-era costumes—balanced humor with the seriousness of the issues at stake.

Riccardo Fassi was a deftly comic Figaro; Liv Redpath an exquisite Susanna. Ailyn Pérez, a late substitution as the Countess, sounded tight at first, but her soprano soon bloomed. With his dark baritone, Florian Sempey played up the Count’s disagreeable characteristics, making his final capitulation all the more striking. Hongni Wu was a delightfully eager Cherubino; Maurizio Muraro and Steven Colewere hilarious as Doctor Bartolo and Basilio, the Count’s enablers. Conductor Harry Bicket’s sprightly tempi complemented Mr. Pelly’s precise pacing.

Lightly updated to the 1920s, James Robinson’s touching production of Puccini’s “La Bohème” subtly emphasized the opera’s theme of poverty. Allen Moyer’s sets told that story: When their Act 1 garret reappeared in Act 4, most of the Bohemians’ few possessions were gone, no doubt pawned or sold, and the Café Momus, rather than a working-class hangout, was a fancy restaurant with chandeliers and patrons in evening dress looking askance at the shabby artists celebrating a fleeting windfall. Drunken veterans and an ambulance repurposed for prostitution suggested the grim aftermath of the war, while a cemetery glimpsed in Act 3 foreshadowed Mimì’s fate.

The lively ensemble cast featured Sylvia D’Eramo as a dreamy, fragile Mimì; Long Long’s solid Rodolfo; Szymon Mechliński as a voluble Marcello; and Emma Marhefka’sexuberant Musetta, who got the evening’s most fabulous costume, a black fur-and-feathers number designed by Constance Hoffman. Duane Schuler’s acute lighting—Mimì and Rodolfo have their first tryst by moonlight—and Iván López Reynoso’ssensitive conducting further enhanced the evening.

Soloman Howard, Long Long, Sylvia D’Eramo, Emma Marhefka, Szymon Mechliński and Efraín Solís in ‘La Bohème.’ PHOTO: SANTA FE OPERA/CURTIS BROWN

No new enlightenment was to be had in Julien Chavaz’s take on Verdi’s “Rigoletto.”Designers Jamie Vartan (sets) and Jean-Jacques Delmotte (costumes) suggested a Renaissance-themed carnival, with colored flashing lights on geometric cutouts and a brocade wallpaper design that was echoed in the burgundy costumes of the ensemble members, who formed a dancing chorus line during some of the arias. A legion of standing lamps served no particular purpose.

Michael Chioldi, a late replacement, powered his way through the title role. Elena Villalón was an appealing Gilda, convincing in her depiction of an innocent girl’s first (and fatally, last) love. Duke Kim was a properly callous Duke of Mantua, his leather jacket contrasting with the Renaissance tunics of his courtiers. Monterone’s curse was a high point, thanks to Le Bu’s thunderous bass-baritone. He was able to prevail over Carlo Montanaro’s noisy, unsubtle conducting, which frequently covered the other singers.

Jacquelyn Stucker in ‘The Turn of the Screw.’ PHOTO: SANTA FE OPERA/CURTIS BROWN

The season’s best show was “The Turn of the Screw,” highlighted by Gemma New’s incisive conducting of Britten’s eerie chamber orchestration, its spareness intensifying the opera’s atmosphere of ever-increasing dread. (It has, alas, the shortest run, with the last of its four performances on Aug. 5.) With her rich soprano, Jacquelyn Stucker captured the frightened, resolute Governess; tenor Brenton Ryan’shigh-class English accent and insinuating melismas made the ghost Peter Quint the embodiment of evil; Jennifer Johnson Cano’s staunch but clueless Mrs. Grose added to the Governess’s isolation.

There’s no ambiguity in Louisa Muller’s staging. The ghosts are present; the only question is whether they or the Governess will prevail in the struggle for the children—Flora (Annie Blitz) and Miles (Everett Baumgarten). Designer Christopher Oramcreated tall windows and distressed walls for Bly, the country house. All the locations—including the lake out of which the other ghost, Miss Jessel (Wendy Bryn Harmer), materializes—are inside. This added to the work’s claustrophobia, as did the black Victorian dresses of the three adult women and Malcolm Rippeth’s creepy lighting. Ms. Muller’s directing flowed through the scenes and orchestral interludes, constructing a seamless, terrifying arc from the Governess’s anxious journey to Bly to her final wail over the dead Miles and her walk into the lake, the last victim of Peter Quint.

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 CONDON

New York

Last week brought operatic rarities to this city, beginning with the local debut of the Versailles Royal Opera Orchestra, an ensemble based at the palace outside Paris. Presented by Death of Classical, which specializes in unusual locations, the residency began on July 21 with an event at Printemps, a curated luxury emporium and outpost of the French department-store company that opened in the Art Deco building One Wall Street in March.

A performer at Printemps. PHOTO: KEVIN CONDON

For the three-hour experience, dubbed “The Affair of the Poisons”—a narrative based on a 1670s murder scandal involving Louis XIV, his mistress and witchcraft—guests wandered through the store encountering circus performers and actors offering vials of “poison,” all in period costume. The 31-musician orchestra, which played its brief set midway through, oddly leaped forward in time with 19th-century bravura pieces: Conductor/violinist Stefan Plewniak channeled Paganini in a speedy Polonaise from a concerto by Pierre Rode, and countertenor Franco Fagioli gave a vigorous rendition of an aria from Rossini’s “Semiramide.”

Other musicians situated elsewhere in the store—Adam Young, a viola da gamba player; Ariadne Greif and Dušan Balarin, a soprano/theorbo duo—stuck ably to the French baroque theme. Creatine Price, a drag artist, gave a creditable rendition of the sleepwalking aria from Verdi’s “Macbeth” in the two-story “Red Room,” its landmarked mosaic walls now setting off Manolo Blahnik shoes displayed like jewels. The overall narrative didn’t hang together; instead, the evening was an Instagrammable celebration of luxurious excess minus the promised investigation of the rot beneath.

Two nights later, the orchestra played an expanded concert at L’Alliance New York’s Florence Gould Theater, with Mr. Fagioli performing selections from “The Last Castrato: Arias for Velluti,” his new recording with the group. Mr. Plewniak’s clumsy conducting stressed excitement rather than finesse, and the period-wind-instrument playing was uneven. The arias were an intriguing collection of 19th-century bel canto showpieces mostly by such forgotten composers as Paolo Bonfichi.

Mr. Fagioli, who has extraordinary breath control, pinpoint pitch, and excels in brilliantly florid music, made a case for the works’ virtuosity, but with no texts supplied, they began to blend together. It was a relief to hear the instantly recognizable Sinfonia from Rossini’s 1813 “Aureliano in Palmira”—that non-obscure composer recycled it as the overture for his 1816 “Il Barbiere di Siviglia.”

Franco Fagioli and the Versailles Royal Opera Orchestra at L’Alliance New York. PHOTO: SAM ROPPOLA

On July 24, Teatro Nuovo, which specializes in historically informed performances of bel canto operas, presented Bellini’s “La Sonnambula” at City Center. The sizable period-instrument orchestra, sensitively directed by Elisa Citterio from the first violin chair along with Will Crutchfield, the company’s general and artistic director, at the keyboard, brought an unusually luminous aura to this simple but poignant tale of innocence denied and then restored. As Amina, who sleepwalks into a nobleman’s bedroom, causing an uproar in her Swiss village, soprano Teresa Castillo exuded sweetness, making her heartbreak when she is accused of infidelity all the more expressive; the explosive ornaments in her joyous final rondo felt well-earned. 

Tenor Christopher Bozeka found nuances in the jealousy of Elvino, her betrothed, though his high notes were sometimes strained—perhaps because he sang the arias in their original keys instead of transposed down, now a common practice—and his red shoes distracting. Bass-baritone Owen Phillipson was solid and lyrical as Rodolfo, the nobleman who vainly tries to persuade everyone of Amina’s innocence, and soprano Abigail Raiford’s sparkling coloratura gave Lisa, Amina’s frenemy, a lively edge.

The robust chorus ably represented the villagers, who whipsaw between belief and incredulity; the tiptoeing cadence of their description of the village ghost was particularly well-executed. Standout orchestral moments included many by the eloquent wind players and a pastoral trumpet duet in Act 2, performed with remarkable lyricism and finesse.  The minimalist staging, with backdrops of historical set designs, did not get in the way.

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, in Dutchess County, is Bedřich Smetana’s “Dalibor” (1868), running through Aug. 3, a tuneful Romantic work hampered by a creaky, static libretto that was translated from German into Czech. The title character, a 15th-century knight with a popular following, spends the opera imprisoned for killing a government official in revenge for the execution of his beloved friend, the musician Zdeněk. Milada, the official’s sister, first demands Dalibor’s blood from the king but then falls in love with him and plots his rescue—there’s a “Fidelio”-type adventure with Milada disguising herself as a boy to get into the prison. It doesn’t end happily. 

“Dalibor” is a sturdy vehicle for big dramatic arias, choruses and a colorful Wagnerian orchestration, complete with harp and violin solos to accompany Dalibor’s obsession with the dead Zdeněk and ominous, foreshadowing brass choirs. The American Symphony Orchestra was in excellent form under Leon Botstein. The two principal singers, late substitutions for European artists stymied by visa problems, acquitted themselves admirably—John Matthew Myers (Dalibor) with his enormous, clarion tenor and Cadie J. Bryan (Milada) with her sensitive soprano. The impressive cast also included the bright-voiced Erica Petrocelli as Jitka, who conspires with Milada to free Dalibor; the suave bass-baritone Alfred Walker as the conflicted King Vladislav, who condemns him to death, and the booming bass Wei Wu as the jailer Beneš. 

Director Jean-Romain Vesperini and designer Bruno de Lavenère devised an ingenious unit set: A pair of spiral staircases formed a double helix on a revolving central platform, and Étienne Guiol’s shadowy black-and-white images, projected on silvery hangings, seemed three-dimensional. Christophe Chaupin’s lighting accentuated the show’s overall darkness; Alain Blanchot’s handsome costumes nodded to the opera’s 15th-century setting without being too literal. An actor, Patrick Andrews, appeared as Zdeněk’s ghost, another reminder of Dalibor’s central motivation, and the onstage prop violin, which also plays a central role, was a vielle—a period-appropriate medieval instrument.