| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 25-Feb-2013 Civic Opera House | Verdi's Rigoletto at Lyric Opera of Chicago |
 Of all the mischievous dramatic reversals that line Rigoletto’s plot – the hunchbacked jester tricked into abducting his own daughter, the daughter tricked into loving the brainless Duke (posing as a penniless student), and the terrifying reunion of father and daughter in a scene of murder – is not the most breathtaking, after all, the fact that the opera begins with a convincing display of the debauched status of romance but then confronts us, for the remainder of Act I, with all the innocence and conviction of Gilda’s first love?Read full review... | |
| 6-May-2012 Opéra Bastille | Rustic chivalry and clowns in Paris: Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci |
 In each case, you know the murder is coming. In each case the music is explosive and closes the opera: there is nothing left to say except Canio's simple words: "La commedia è finita." Thus ends opera's most celebrated double bill: Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, a pair of short operas that have been performed together almost exclusively since 1893, known affectionately as "Cav and Pag" to an older generation of operagoers.
Read full review... | |
