Reviews

Wendy Bryn Harmer Leads Sensitive, Inspirational Fidelio

Wendy Bryn Harmer Leads Sensitive, Inspirational Fidelio

It is a great thing, then, that Boston Baroque has mostly found the right cast with which to lead this reading of the opera, especially with Wendy Bryn Harmer. By the end of it, I felt as inspired by Harmer's portrayal of Leonore as the other characters on the stage: and really, is that not the most important feeling one should have coming out of an opera where good triumphs over evil?

Arturo Fernandez
Confusing & creepy: Proving Up

Confusing & creepy: Proving Up

Personally, I felt like The Sodbuster was more of a symbolic spectre of death. Death must have been a powerful presence among settlers. It was an extremely perilous way of life, and people died frequently, often isolated and unknown.

Meghan Klinkenborg
Heartfelt and intimate: Manitoba Opera's La Traviata

Heartfelt and intimate: Manitoba Opera's La Traviata

What I found really interesting and different, was that in the second act, and even more in his final duet with Violetta, Ms. Blue had to bring her powerful voice down in volume to his, to match the fact that he was crooning, not full-out blasting as you usually have to do to be heard over an orchestra. As a result, their tender final scene, as she lay dying, was amazingly touching and intimate.

Neil Weisensel
Intimate Brewery Room La Bohème A Revelatory Triumph

Intimate Brewery Room La Bohème A Revelatory Triumph

But actually, this is the big revelation of the production: the show works better when the cast is allowed to treat the show's lighter moments like a comedy, because it only highlights how truly tragic their situation is when reality comes crashing back in.

Arturo Fernandez
Big Jim and the Small-time Investors: a story often told

Big Jim and the Small-time Investors: a story often told

If the title sounds more like a riff on Dion and the Belmonts or Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, in a way, it is. Big Jim sings, or more precisely, croons, about getting rich by investing in his interactive "reality" fantasy goggles. His small-time investors hum along. Big Jim appears live to the audience but only on suggested video screens to his investors. They are the ultimate back-up singers.

John Hohmann
Susannah is topical relevance, like it or not

Susannah is topical relevance, like it or not

Susannah is the all-too-common story of a woman, accused and ostracized by her community, raped, and left with more questions than answers, and even less justice. Floyd's music, at once both modern and nostalgic, presents a challenge to its musicians that Nashville Opera's singers took on and largely conquered.

Tracy Monaghan
Out of Darkness: Two Remain is perfect for its time

Out of Darkness: Two Remain is perfect for its time

The second act follows the story of Gad Beck, performed by actor Tom Key. Gad, an older man, is preparing for bed when the ghost of his lover, Manfred Lewin, appears to remind Gad of the horrors, though Gad, who has held on to Manfred's book of poetry and his picture, had spent years just trying to forget it.

Daniel Weisman
Odyssey Opera's Giovanna D'Arco Bold and Flawed

Odyssey Opera's Giovanna D'Arco Bold and Flawed

Of course, Verdi also uses park-and-bark arias and ensembles throughout the score (what opera of that time would be complete without them?), but there is enough musically interesting material going on throughout the whole that it becomes almost criminal that the music serves the libretto it does.

Arturo Fernandez
Classic for good reason: The Marriage of Figaro

Classic for good reason: The Marriage of Figaro

It was most heartwarming to see the relationship between Lois and Thomas Oliemans as Susanna and Figaro. Oliemans seemed to go for a more casual Figaro, not quite the charismatic showman that one sees in other productions (or in The Barber of Seville for that matter). His was an unobtrusive Figaro, more content to go along with the schemes of others than to make up his own.

John Beckett
Opera Technology: Hither and Yon

Opera Technology: Hither and Yon

While I was not in attendance at the recent Maria Callas presentation in New York, neither was she. Within limits then, I can write about what is loosely termed a demonstration of holographic inspired illusion, as this consideration kicks off.

John Hohmann

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