A timeless treat: Manitoba Opera's Barber of Seville

Review

The highly engaged audience was obviously enthralled with all elements of this production, laughing uproariously at onstage antics and giving hearty applause where appropriate (including at one especially effective lighting gag).

Disturbing & fascinating: Les enfants terribles in Omaha

Review

The dynamics between the siblings made me uncomfortable in a variety of ways. There were sexual undertones spliced in with disturbingly infantile antics. Clearly everyone in this opera needed to go to therapy.

Light and frothy Fledermaus brought new translation

Review

In this regard, this adaptation takes advantage of every possibility of its updated New York setting for jokes. Rosalinda, for instance, is a star on an obvious Real Housewives knock-off in New York, and thus her husband's arrest and trial is very high-profile.

A great spectacle: Kopernikus

Review

The only visibly identifiable ritual is partway through the show, we see Agni become "assimilated" and she's changed from her warm golden-orange, mid-century style dress into a dark charcoal version of the clothes in which the other denizens of the afterlife are dressed.

Beautiful people & vague torment: Idomeneo

Review

The end result of all these disconnects: it was difficult to care about the people in this opera. There seemed too little trust placed in Mozart to help us emote alongside his characters, instead encumbered by a style that seems to dig in its heels against the piece itself.

In review: Skylark Opera's Così fan tutte

Review

I felt that underneath the entertaining antics of the cast there was a message to be gleaned from the night, but it was never given the time to come to fruition.

BOC's Don Giovanni smart and relevant

Review

From the beginning, the production ensures that you do not forget this is about the Me Too movement: the show begins with a slideshow of people like Harvey Weinstein and others that is prefaced with Trump's now-infamous "grab them by the pussy" comments.

The powers of fate & great singing: La forza del destino

Review

This was a fairly standard production with a bit of a modern twist from designer Christian Schmidt, directed by Christof Loy. A star-studded production, it is currently enjoying a near sold out run at the Royal Opera.

Montezuma: long-lost baroque blueprints

Review

While Handel provides so many details about characterization in his arias which speak for themselves, especially in timbre, Vivaldi, precisely because of his compositional fluency, requires a constant level of onstage interpretation to allow his stylized and always virtuosic pieces to provide a stimulating background.

An American Dream: an opera that hits home

Review

With music by Jack Perla and libretto by Jessica Murphy Moo, An American Dream spotlights the lives of two families against the backdrop of Japanese internment by the U.S. government following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.