Manon is not my favorite opera. A statement that is praising with faint damns, since I like almost all opera. Continue reading
We had a real sense of “being there” this morning, April 9 at the Cinemark Theatre in Palo Alto. At approximately five minutes after ten a. m., hostess RenÉe Fleming informed us that half an hour ago (i. e. about 12:30 pm Eastern Daylight Time) tenor Juan Diego Flé³rez had been at his wife’s side as she had given birth to a baby boy – and in a couple of minutes he would be on stage in the title role of today’s opera, Le Comte Ory. Continue reading
What a fantastic 31 hours! Lucia di Lammermoor in Met HD starting at 10 am Saturday March 19 2011, continuing with the Gunn High School performance of Kiss Me, Kate Saturday evening, and ending at 5 pm Sunday when the curtain came down on Man of La Mancha performed by Symphony Silicon Valley as the final 2010-2011 Broadway in Concert series. Continue reading
The music, singing, acting, and story are all so good that I want to get one of my pet peeves out of the way before I start reviewing the opera. My peeve is not with any aspect of this Met HD production, but with Christoph Willibald Gluck and his librettist Nicolas-Frané§ois Guillard. The story is about a bunch of Greeks, so what business has a Roman goddess got interfering in their affairs? It should be Artemis! But Gluck says Diana, and since I’m reviewing Gluck’s opera, I’ll have to go along with it. But under protest, mind you. Continue reading
What is the world coming to on Saturday, April 2 2011? Here I am, the self-named Opera Nut writing about a ballet. And my previous two performances had been classical Broadway musicals – one by a Symphony orchestra and the other a high school production. Continue reading
Two years ago I saw the MetHD performance of the Mary Zimmerman production of Lucia di Lammermoor starring Anna Netrebko in the title role. This was before I knew about SPLASH, but I was so impressed that I wrote about the opera afterwards just to express my own reactions. Continue reading
I suppose in theory that I could eventually get tired of seeing and hearing Verdi’s La Traviata – but it would take more than the seven performances I have seen of four different productions of it during the past year. Continue reading
If you enjoy light-hearted opera by such composers as Offenbach, Lehar, Gilbert and Sullivan, you are bound to like Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love. Particularly when it is sung in English with Donald Pippin’s libretto. And enjoy it, I did – but not quite as much as I expected to. Continue reading
I love West Bay Opera and was thrilled to find that their production of Turandot by Puccini more than held its own in comparison to the Met HD’s performance.
You may not necessarily enjoy Nixon in China by John Adams but you may be in danger of being ensnared or seduced by it.
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