Left wanting more: La traviata in Chicago

Review

Director Arin Arbus returns to re-mount her production of La traviata from LOC's 2013-14 season. Conductor Michael Christie, making his own LOC debut with this run, brings his expertise in new music to bear on this classic score, leading the LOC orchestra with urgency and dramatic sensitivity.

A delight for the senses: La traviata in Victoria

Review

The POV chorus deserves a huge shoutout for this production, the chorus numbers were incredibly precise, blended perfectly, and the choreography in the large number of dance routines they were given was brilliant.

Bel Canto Barbie & other gems: Opera Omaha's Elixir of Love

Review

While The Elixir of Love is a comedic masterpiece, Donizetti's music ranges from brilliant and bubbly to languid and lush. The orchestra, led by David Agler, showcased this mercurial ambiance with clarity and nuance.

Tweaking the Brothers Grimm in Oper Frankfurt's Hänsel und Gretel

Review

The schtick tightened up during the second half and the story leavened. The actors seemed to relax into their characters' inner lives once their outer circumstances had a discernible logic. Liberated from conceptual mumbo jumbo, the score and libretto timed better with the on-stage action. Finally, things made sense.

Chemistry sizzles onstage in Paride ed Elena

Review

Their voices pulled and pushed at Gluck’s music and Calzabigi's text, stretching and pulling and coloring every last note that made practically their entire run through the opera feel important.

A moving spectacle: Akhnaten

Review

Every bit of this production was beautifully and intricately crafted; from the dazzling, elaborate costumes, to the evocative colour palette, it was a fully immersive experience that was moving in the most unexpected ways.

Uncluttered magic in Carsen's Midsummer

Review

For those looking to escape into a Shakespearean fantasy world filled with fairies, comical misunderstandings, and top-notch singing, this production of Midsummer is not to be missed.

Majeski makes sensitive, subtle ROH debut in Kát'a Kabanova

Review

It is a piece that is so clearly a microcosm of a very specific place and time. Director Richard Jones has chosen to set it in the mid-60s in a repressive, religious Russian community where a life of domesticity, is a woman's only option.

Stemme's Elektra visible in every wild look and lurching step

Review

Every facet of this production is thoughtful and dramatic, so much so that even the actors aren't immune from its terrors. It was announced before curtain that Stemme sustained a knee injury during a rehearsal (one look at the steeply raked set and you'll wonder the whole cast isn't on crutches!).

All too rare: Hannigan takes the podium with the Cleveland Orchestra

Review

Hannigan's well received turn at the podium, met by an immediate and unanimous standing ovation, should serve to demonstrate to the Cleveland Orchestra, and to classical music institutions across the continent and around the globe, that making an effort to include and elevate marginalized perspectives holds significance well beyond meeting a quota or "catching up with the times."