In Review
Pinned posts
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Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan Opera
Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan Opera
"The Met's new Don Giovanni, directed by Ivo van Hove, benefits from the work of a truly wonderful cast—though this is definitely a production for the #metoo era. We can no longer look at the protagonist’s behavior with ambivalence: his rapaciousness now seems unambiguously monstrous. The staging, a thoroughly grim affair, scants the work’s humor and its surges of amorous heat. There is nothing 'giocoso' in this presentation of Mozart and da Ponte’s 'dramma giocoso.'"
In review posts
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Rhiannon Giddens & Silkroad Ensemble at Zankel Hall
Rhiannon Giddens & Silkroad Ensemble at Zankel Hall
"Six virtuoso performers joined her for the program, titled Indigenous Connections, contributing compositions that tapped into ancestries as diverse as Celtic, Armenian, Ghanian and Chinese. If there was a unifying concept, it was the American Railroad and the multinational laborers called upon to lay the transcontinental track in the mid-nineteenth century."
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Die Zauberflöte at the Metropolitan Opera
Die Zauberflöte at the Metropolitan Opera
"If Simon McBurney hasn’t quite succeeded in making the Met's new staging of Die Zauberflöte cohesive, he and his design team have certainly delivered plenty of invention. The zauber of this opera, of course, lies in the music itself. But Nathalie Stutzmann’s ineffective leadership seldom inspired the clarity necessary for embodying Mozart’s luminous sound world."
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Don Giovanni at Glyndebourne
Don Giovanni at Glyndebourne
"Opening the 2023 Glyndebourne Festival, Mariame Clément’s new Don Giovanni staging did not represent a significant improvement over its predecessor, Jonathan Kent's unsatisfactory production, which lasted from 2010 to 2016. There was a lack of clarity to most of the characterizations, and Andrey Zhilikhovsky requires more vocal and physical star-quality to command the stage as the charismatic protagonist."
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Henry VIII at La Monnaie
Henry VIII at La Monnaie
"Despite the scandalous drama of Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, his marriage to Anne Boleyn and his consequent break with the Roman Catholic church, Saint-Saëns's opera lacks convincing theatrical pacing, but La Monnaie did the work proud. Alain Altinoglu, the company's music director, promoted the work’s considerable musical qualities with exceptionally fine orchestral playing."
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Otello at LA Opera
Otello at LA Opera
"Everything was aligned for LA Opera's recent revival of Otello, which offered an evening of near-matchless singing by Russell Thomas and Rachel Willis-Sørensen, and an orchestra, under James Conlon's baton, whose rendition ranged from truly apocalyptic to the profoundest intimacy of tragic loss."
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Overstory Overture at Alice Tully Hall
Overstory Overture at Alice Tully Hall
"Tod Machover's new piece—a thirty-five-minute monodrama for vocal soloist, string orchestra, marimba and electronics—presented a prevailing texture that was defined by its buzzing, clashing aural elements; but an elusive kind of order seemed to be struggling to break through. The first part of the program had included with Anton Webern’s early Langsamer Satz; whether through design or happenstance, parts of Overstory Overture echoed that work’s late-Romantic language, hinting at both a safe harbor and possible further dissolution."
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Nixon in China at Opéra National de Paris
Nixon in China at Opéra National de Paris
"Renée Fleming made a triumphant return to the Paris Opéra with a winning performance as a slipper-wearing, homespun Pat Nixon in the company premiere of John Adams's opera. The beauty of Fleming’s plangent, unchanging timbre was ideally suited to the character’s more reflective and naïve moments, and Gustavo Dudamel drew a fine performance from an orchestra not familiar with this repertoire."
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Les Mamelles de Tirésias and Le Rossignol at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées
Les Mamelles de Tirésias and Le Rossignol at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées
"The evening was a triumph for the entire cast, whose double roles in the two operas were skillfully defined. Above all, this was a showcase for soprano Sabine Devieilhe, as both Le Rossignol and Thérèse/Tirésias. The soaring lines of Stravinsky’s Nightingale could have been written for the soprano, with her diaphanous upper register and sweet-toned precision. More surprising was her performance as Thérèse/Tirésias, in which she showed a remarkable gift for comedy and stylish sensuality."
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Hamlet at Opéra National de Paris
Hamlet at Opéra National de Paris
"Singing the title role in the Paris Opéra's new production of Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet, Ludovic Tézier gave a career-crowning performance, singing with burnished baritone power and delivering a masterfully nuanced reading of the text. Director Krzysztof Warlikowski’s staging seemed to unleash a newfound dramatic presence in the baritone.