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Find reviews of New York City Opera

Date and venueTitleSubmitted by
21-Apr-2013
New York City Center
New York City Opera closes season with Alden's riotous La PéricholeZerbinetta
Image credit: La Périchole © Carol RoseggHenri Bergson famously defined comedy as “something mechanical encrusted on the living”. One suspects that Jacques Offenbach would have been a fan of this definition, and that Christopher Alden most certainly is. Alden’s new production of La Périchole, which closes the New York City Opera’s season, is strange, abrasive, and also extremely funny, careening past the everyday to end up somewhere deeply bizarre.
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14-Apr-2013
New York City Center
New York City Opera's Moses in Egypt thinks bigZerbinetta
Image credit: © Carol RoseggIn recent seasons, the New York City Opera has largely limited itself to chamber operas. Its newest production marks a renewed ambition: Rossini’s Mosè in Egitto, a proto grand opera that ends with nothing less than the parting of the Red Sea. Fortunately this scrappy but worthwhile performance showed that the company can tackle large-scale works on its own terms, albeit with a few stumbles along the way.
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24-Feb-2013
Brooklyn Academy of Music: Howard Gilman Opera House
New York City Opera's Turn of the Screw says too muchZerbinetta
Image credit: Turn of the Screw, Sara Jakubiak and Benjamin Wenzelberg © Richard TermineBenjamin Britten’s 1954 opera The Turn of the Screw is a sensible choice for the New York City Opera: its chamber orchestration and emotional intimacy make it unsuitable for production by the Met Opera (against which every other company in town must define itself), and its claustrophobia would seem to offer a great opportunity for one of the company’s more innovative directors to create something creepy and unexpected. It also enjoys the name recognition to fill seats – which has, unfortunately, been an issue for the company’s more adventurous recent efforts.
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15-Feb-2013
Brooklyn Academy of Music: Howard Gilman Opera House
New York City Opera's Powder Her Face at BAM is a must-seeRebecca Lentjes
Image credit: Allison Cook and William Ferguson © Carol RoseggThe chamber opera Powder Her Face has acquired a reputation as a “Don Giovanni for the Monica Lewinsky generation”, a tagline of which I was initially quite skeptical. In college I took a semester-long “Don Giovanni class” that was devoted in its entirety to Mozart’s opera, which inspired countless essays, criticisms, racy productions for both film and the stage, and even a 1987 spin-off opera by Elodie Lauten.
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12-May-2012
El Museo del Barrio
New York City Opera brings Telemann's Orpheus back from the deadZerbinetta
Image credit: © Carol RoseggThe New York City Opera has spent the season reinventing itself from a large company with a large theater to a peripatetic one presenting small works. Perhaps it was apt that they closed their season with Telemann’s Orpheus. Not only was it one of the first stagings of any Telemann opera in the United States: it also presents a radically reworking of a familiar story that seems unwilling to confine itself to one geographic location.
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18-Mar-2012
John Jay College: The Gerald W Lynch Theater
NYC Opera’s Così a Sardonic StunnerGale Martin, operatoonity.com
Image credit: Sara Jakubiak (Fiordiligi), Philip Cutlip (Guglielmo), Jennifer Holloway (Dorabella), Allan Clayton (Ferrando), © Carol RoseggIt was a glass-smashing, balloon-popping, bearskin-wearing, strip-out-of-your-swimsuit-onstage kind of afternoon at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater for the opening of New York City Opera’s second production of the 2012 season, Mozart’s Così fan tutte.
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12-Feb-2012
Brooklyn Academy of Music: Howard Gilman Opera House
New York City Opera Back on the BoardsGale Martin, operatoonity.com
Image credit: © Carol RoseggThe Howard Gilman Opera House was filled from the orchestra to the balcony. Every seat sold for New York City Opera’s season opener La Traviata, on the occasion of their reinvention from an opera company in the city to an opera company going out into the city. La Traviata was their first production since their controversial move out of their time-honored Lincoln Center home.
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23-Apr-2011
Lincoln Center: David H Koch Theater
NYC Opera’s ‘Séance’ A Thrilling, Chilling AfternoonGale Martin, operatoonity.com
Image credit: Michael Kepler, Lauren Flanigan and Bailey Grey © Carol RoseggGoosebumps, gasps of horror, sobs and tears. That's what operagoers will experience at the East Coast premiere of Séance on a Wet Afternoon presented by New York City Opera. It is an eerie, emotional roller coaster of a show that grips you with the force of demon possession and doesn’t let go. In fact, it captures your rapt attention with such totality, it scarcely allows the audience to breathe until the final curtain descends.
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26-Mar-2011
Lincoln Center: David H Koch Theater
NYC ‘Elixir’ Cures Opera Ho-HumGale Martin, operatoonity.com
Image credit: David Lomeli as Nemorino, a lovestruck mechanic © Carol RoseggWhen attending professional opera, patrons can and should expect to see a solid production, strong singing, and elevated production values—a well-rounded show that leaves them more satisfied than not. At the professional level, opera is a commercial transaction around an artistic product. But deep down, we're all hoping for something beyond sheer transaction—a glimmer of greatness—a moment to remember.
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