| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 17-Apr-2013 Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts | David Alden's edgy Lucia di Lammermoor triumphs in Toronto |
 Everything about the opening scene of this production set me on edge: centre-stage a hybrid bed on wheels, part crib part hospital, and propped up on it, peering through the bars, a young female, presumably Lucia. The set is a high-walled room, dingy white, plaster stained, paper peeling, with a short door and elongated windows suggesting a surreal Alice-in-Wonderland distortion.Read full review... | |
| 17-Jun-2012 War Memorial Opera House | Nixon in China reaches San Francisco |
 It’s difficult to believe that the current run of John Adams’ Nixon in China at the San Francisco Opera marks the opera’s local premiere. Adams is not only one of the leading composers of his generation, but he is also a celebrated local hero. In 2005, his third opera Doctor Atomic was given its world premiere at San Francisco Opera, and decades earlier he was composer in residence at the San Francisco Symphony. How is it that Nixon in China, arguably the work that first brought him international acclaim, has never been mounted here?Read full review... | |
| 22-Oct-2011 Civic Opera House | A Dark and Stormy Night at the Lyric Opera of Chicago |
 "It was a dark and stormy night …." Chuckling whenever I hear these lines, I can see Charles Schultz’s beloved Snoopy staring intensely at his typewriter, vigorously typing away what he would consider his magnum opus novel. Not surprisingly, in countless titanic masterworks of literature and music, the foreboding stormy night setting serves as a metaphor and eloquent dropback for a stormy situation within the drama of the story. Such is the case with Gaetano Donzietti’s epic magnum opus, Lucia di Lammermoor.Read full review... | |
