Opera
Although there is room for improvement, the singers engage each other, as well as the orchestra, with vigor and skill, making for a satisfying “Snegurochka” in Russian.
Read MoreAside from the intrinsic entertainment value of these operas, they show Ravel in quite a different light than we are used to from his chamber and other orchestral music.
Read MoreThis is shorter, no-frills Opera as Cinema than the Met HD supplies: without long intermissions, star interviews and audience preludes and postludes from Lincoln Center, it’s almost an hour shorter.
Read MoreThe Boston Lyric Opera’s new production of “Macbeth,” with sets designed by John Conklin, is based on elements of a New York City Opera production and plays up the macabre elements of the story, which are many.
Read MoreMany musicians know Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) as a somewhat dry composer who wrote a few operas as well as sonatas for every instrument and some half dozen for viola (he played both violin and viola extremely well). But real Hindemith has a cutting lyrical gift, much of it is on display in his kinky opera…
Read MoreAn exciting month, and that isn’t hyperbole. A couple of North American premieres: a futuristic opera from MIT’s Tod Machover and poet Robert Pinsky and a drama tweaking The New Testament from Howard Brenton. Toss in iconic director Peter Brook staging Beckett, F. Murray Abraham as Shylock, and Car Talk:The Musical and you are talking about taking out the smelling salts
Read MoreAlthough its interior says 21st century, the Shalin Liu Performance Center has a homespun, American 19th-century facade that made me think of Mark Twain and the provincial opera houses of the California Gold Rush. Care was taken to reference the original Haskins Building that once housed a clothing store called Madras and the local yacht…
Read MoreBEMF’s Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs have, once again, produced a work of impeccable and imaginative scholarship for a production that’s not only historically informed, but musically, dramatically, and visually entertaining. Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell and Nahum Tate. Presented by the Boston Early Music Festival. At New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA,…
Read MoreThe Boston Lyric Opera’s current production, adapted from the Scottish Opera, is updated, but this does no real damage. The three locales are properly preserved. And the three principal characters—opera diva Floria Tosca, her lover Mario Cavaradossi, and the lusting and villainous Baron Scarpia—hit their mark solidly. By Caldwell Titcomb. Some years ago the noted…
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