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.

Appropriately strange: Frida at FGO

Review

Frida Kahlo was Mexican, an artist, a woman, disabled, queer, Communist. Though the pacing of the opera was choppy and piecemeal, resembling a biopic in its sweeping depiction of her teenage romance, her life-altering bus accident, her revolutionary politics, and her turbulent marriage, the format was well suited to highlight the many intersecting facets of Kahlo's complex and richly lived biography.

Overstaying its welcome: WNO's Faust

Review

It doesn't help that Gounod's setting is about as dusty as operas get, focusing more on the downfall (and ultimate redemption in death, of course) of Marguerite, than on Faust's own psychological struggle, this opera always comes off like a parody of a 19th-century morality play, which was only emphasized by Staley's design which could have been pulled straight out of a European theater from 150 years ago.

Greater than the sum of its parts: Sarah Connolly at Wigmore Hall

Review

Connolly, whose prolific contribution to classical performance over the course of her career - a career that has now made her a household name - garnered palpable excitement from the audience from the moment she walked on stage. She carries a sense of poise and authority as a performer, yet showed great vulnerability.

BLO's electrifying Rape of Lucretia a revelation

Review

This production of The Rape of Lucretia was presented as one of BLO's now-signature installation operas: in this case, much of the action was concentrated on a relatively small circle in the center of the Arts for Humanity Epicenter building.