Heartfelt and intimate: Manitoba Opera's La Traviata

Review

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.

Intimate Brewery Room La Bohème A Revelatory Triumph

Review

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.

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

Review

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.

Susannah is topical relevance, like it or not

Review

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.

Out of Darkness: Two Remain is perfect for its time

Review

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.

Odyssey Opera's Giovanna D'Arco Bold and Flawed

Review

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.

Classic for good reason: The Marriage of Figaro

Review

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.

Opera Technology: Hither and Yon

Review

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.

A perfect fit: The Overcoat

Review

Throughout all the major demands on his body, never once did the character of Akakiy falter or weaken. We empathetically follow his journey from introverted, obsessive-complusive to local celebrity and back down again. We see in him our own need to be held in high regard by people we do, and don't, know.

What a long, strange trip it's been: Belladonna

Review

The two happen upon some berries and and with some coaxing, Cloth decides to join this new friend in tasting them. The berries take them on a psychotropic trip where they encounter Atrophy. Atrophy is personified in a dancer who leads them on a wild and destructive rampage of expression.