Intimate Voix humaine provides a way forward

Review

How do you stage something that is so static in tableau and also has so few characters? And more to the point, how does a company stage it in a time when theaters are closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic?

Renée Fleming Brings A New Luster To Dumbarton Oaks

Review

Renée Fleming knows her audience, or in this case, the lack of one. Creating a sense of intimate occasion in the elegant music salon at Dumbarton Oaks, a Georgetown estate with a musical pedigree of its own, Fleming made her contribution to the Metropolitan Opera's MET Stars Live streaming concert series feel like a musical get-together.

The concessions we make for live opera: Tosca goes up at Northern Lights Music Festival

Review

With no performances scheduled in the United States scheduled for the next six months will there still be an audience? I think so, and I hope so. Cautious performances like those put on by Northern Lights are essential to keeping the spirit of opera alive in the United States. Let us hope for more innovation and live music making in the coming months.

Watch a George Crumb music video & meet the artists: Chordless launches new project

Review

Chordless has created an intriguing piece of art with this Crumb video, and it'll be a neat experience to view it, and then have an immediate face-to-face (or screen-to-screen) with the folks who made it.

Opera Atelier's Together/Apart a direct line to their great artists

Review

A total treat, though, was pianist Angela Hewitt's bit of Rameau. She was friendly and humble, and got right to the point with her camera angle, aimed at her energetic and nimble hands. Hewitt's contribution showed us how this whole thing can work well; it's solidified my hunch that finding the way to do this on-screen thing is uniquely difficult for opera singers.

Angel's Bone: I finally saw it and I'm never going to be the same

Review

Honestly, in that scene where Mr. X.E. takes a cleaver to the angels' wings, I think I had an "aha" moment. I thought I'd experienced that thing where the story is excellent and the music makes it even more excellent, but this moment was something else entirely.

Orlando: gender bending and the sound of androgyny in Vienna

Review

Instead, composer Olga Neuwirth chose Woolf’s Orlando, her often funny faux-autobiography about a young nobleman in the court of Elizabeth I who awakens one morning as a woman and proceeds to roam about time and space for the next 300 years.

A case for relatable Handel: ABOC's Rinaldo

Review

I felt like I was actually in a garden surrounded by drooping blossoms, or actually at the opening of a cavernous hole. Throughout I got the sense that this was a production that put a great deal of effort into engaging the senses all at once and imparting an aura of wonderment.

Marian's Song: a poignant, hopeful message

Review

Some variant of this sentence appears in many a history textbook at some point, but only rarely can it hope to make the sheer impact that Marian's Song did in Houston Grand Opera's world premiere performance.

An enduring Beethoven's Ninth with the Vancouver Academy of Music

Review

Under the assured baton of conductor emeritus Leslie Dala, the program brought together the young professional-level orchestra with the veteran vocals of amateur Vancouver Bach Choir, along with four professional soloists, and featured a delightful performance of Concerto No. 4 by Ian Parker at the keys