Opera

Opera Preview: “The Seasons” — A Fascinating and Disturbing Weather Report

March 8, 2025
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“I wanted, with this opera, to see if audiences and collaborators could feel something about our changing weather, in an artistic space.”

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Opera Album Review: Racine’s Tragedy “Andromaque” Finds New Life in Rossini’s Splendidly Serious “Ermione”

January 16, 2025
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Another excellent recording from the “Rossini in Wildbad” festival, with spellbinding vocal performances by Congolese tenor Patrick Kabongo and other powerful young singers.

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Opera Review: Conductor Frieder Bernius Continues to Strike Gold with “Der Taucher”

January 6, 2025
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Any opera lover will find much to admire and enjoy in this work, based on a famous 27-strophe poem by Friedrich Schiller that Schubert set in its entirety to music.

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Opera Album Review: A Splendidly Engaging New Opera — “The Leopard”

December 15, 2024
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 I encourage anybody interested in the current state of opera to get to know Michael Dellaira’s “The Leopard”.

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Locke’s 2024 List of Notable Operatic Recordings and a Few Non-Operatic Ones

December 3, 2024
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The opera repertory is so much richer than what gets staged nowadays; many of the most exciting recordings that came my way are of somewhat or entirely forgotten operas from past eras.

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Opera Review: Boston Lyric Opera’s “Aida” — Intimacy Rather than Excess

November 18, 2024
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The only serious flaw in Boston Lyric Opera’s stripped-down staging approach to Aida was that not all the participants were quite up to the organization’s usual standards.

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Opera Album Reviews: A Major Classical Label Arises — Four More Fine Baroque Operas

October 12, 2024
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Each of these four works has its own flavor, and lovers of Baroque and Classic-era music will happily scoop up one or more of the recordings.

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Opera Review: White Snake Projects’s “Is This America?” — A Moral Parable for Our Times

September 29, 2024
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By Aaron Keebaugh The opera’s libretto moves back and forth fluently between Fannie Lou Hamer’s childhood years to her later struggles serving the cause of racial justice. On June 1, 1865, in front of a large crowd gathered at New York’s Cooper Union, Frederick Douglass gave a eulogy for Abraham Lincoln. The president had been…

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Opera Album Review: Baroque Music Enlivens the Boston Music Scene and Two New French Recordings

September 17, 2024
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The Boston Early Music Festival announces its 2024-25 season, and our critic welcomes world-premiere recordings of operas by Mondonville and Destouches, splendidly sung and glitteringly played.

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Opera Album Review: The Music of Georg Philipp Telemann — Finally Getting Its Proper Recognition

September 8, 2024
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You want Baroque energy and Early Classic poise? Here’s a first-rate recording of a one-act, one-singer opera by Telemann along with some of his imaginative orchestral works.

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