“[T]o have a piece of my true self onstage”
Some thoughts for “The Podium” on equity and diversity in current US opera and orchestral music:
Category: Opera articles
Pacific Opera Project’s “Madam Butterfly” in Japanese
Some thoughts for “OperaWire” on Pacific Opera Project’s “Madam Butterfly”, sung in the languages the characters would have spoken:
Stravinsky’s “Orpheus” and “Persephone”
Some thoughts for OperaWire on two Stravinsky theater pieces:
The Clemency of Titus
My review for “Opera Wire” of Los Angeles Opera’s “Clemency of Titus” –
Some thoughts on The Magic Flute
My review of Pacific Opera Project’s “Magic Flute” for “OperaWire” [photo: Martha Benedict] – Pacific Opera Project 2018-19 Review: The Magic Flute
What’s to love?’- Alban Berg’s Wozzeck and the latent lyricism of the Second Viennese School
‘ Even now, so many decades after the composers of the Second Viennese School were active, the music of Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) and his pupils Alban Berg (1885-1935), the creator of Wozzeck, and Anton von Webern (1883-1945) is difficult for many audiences to understand and not strikingly popular. The Twelve-Tone Technique which Schoenberg invented in […]
Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel”
When it seemed that Wagner’s music-dramas were un-toppable, his one-time assistant Engelbert Humperdinck showed that the way forward lay in going back to folk-tunes and fairytales, a world delightfully captured in Richard Sparks’ new English translation of Adelheid Wette’s libretto. But for World War I, he might have ended up in Australia. These were among […]
Satyagraha – Los Angeles Opera
I love explicit drama but I also love the perceptible processes of musical minimalism. These two emotions weighed on my mind as I reviewed LA Opera’s recent production of Philip Glass’s “Satyagraha” for OperaWire.
Don Carlo – LA Opera
Dark and unremitting and politically astute, I think “Don Carlo” may be Verdi’s greatest opera. My review of LA Opera’s recent “Don Carlo” in OperaWire.
“Tosca”
Musicologist critics of Puccini’s “Tosca” may be discounting its theatrical viability, as I argued in my article for San Francisco Opera’s August production.