| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 8-May-2013 The Haverford School: Centennial Hall | Big, beautiful voices power AVA's Ballo |
 “For some operas,” famed conductor Carlo Maria Giulini once said, “you can accept a voice of not absolute beauty – if it is well used and he is an artist and interpreter, it will work. But for Verdi you need all this plus the essential sound.”
The Academy of Vocal Arts’ final production of the 2012/13 season, Verdi’s Un Ballo In Maschera, delivered a cadre of beautiful dramatic voices also capable of producing that “essential sound” critical to the opera’s success.
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| 4-May-2013 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | The Met's soul-searing Dialogues des Carmélites can't be missed |
 Of all the surprising backdrops for grand opera in the universe of operas, surely the prayers of a contemplative order of nuns top any list. Yet, this three-act opera was so riveting, soul-searing, and utterly shocking that audience members were bereft of their senses by the final act, and bereft is no exaggeration. The Carmelite convent of Compiègne during the French Revolution provides the most gripping setting imaginable for Francis Poulenc’s opera Dialogues des Carmélites.
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| 2-Mar-2013 The Academy of Vocal Arts: Warden Theater | Don Quichotte victorious at Philadelphia Academy |
 As the legend goes, a noble cavalier loses his battle with giant windmills. But the Academy of Vocal Arts wins big with their latest production, Jules Massenet’s melodic Don Quichotte.
It was a first-rate evening of opera at the Helen Corning Warden Theater in Philadelphia, the home of the City of Brotherly Love’s world-renowned opera training academy that, year in and year out, prepares its alumni to succeed at the world’s greatest opera houses.
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| 10-Feb-2013 Academy of Music | Opera Philadelphia's Silent Night a resounding showcase |
 A work crucial to the development and appreciation of opera as a relevant modern art form premièred on the East Coast to well-deserved acclaim at a legendary Philadelphia venue. From the first note out of the pit orchestra to the final strains of the last act, Silent Night, presented by Opera Philadelphia at the Academy of Music, was a tour de force – from conception to execution.
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| 13-Nov-2012 The Haverford School: Centennial Hall | AVA's frothy Barber a showcase for rising stars |
 Never has the expression “A good time was had by all” been more accurate than at Tuesday night’s performance Il Barbiere di Siviglia at Centennial Hall in Haverford, Pennsylvania. Almost from the moment the overture concluded (and what a splendid overture it was!), chuckles and chortles and belly-laughs erupted from the audience because of the onstage antics of the resident artists of the Academy of Vocal Arts (AVA), a premier opera training academy based in Philadelphia.
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| 4-Aug-2012 Alice Busch Opera Theater | Glimmerglass' little Aida makes a huge impact |
 You won’t see plumed horses, a procession of camels, or a hundred supernumeraries as standard bearers parading across the Glimmerglass stage. In fact, you have to step outside the Alice Busch Opera Theater to see any elephants at all, the animal most commonly associated with Aida, Verdi’s greatest grand opera. Two brown pachyderms, a mother and a baby, made from grapevine boughs, mark the southernmost entrance to the Festival grounds this season. If you must have elephants in your Aida, you’d best enjoy this pair before settling into your seat to watch the show.
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| 4-Aug-2012 Alice Busch Opera Theater | The Music Man at Glimmerglass: Fun, American style |
 Want to know what small-town America looks and feels like in the thick of summertime, circa 1940? The Glimmerglass Festival’s purest musical theater offering, The Music Man, is festive, frolicsome Americana, brimming with spectacular sets, clever staging, and a sensational ensemble showcasing Olympic-sized talent.
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| 3-Aug-2012 Alice Busch Opera Theater | Stellar Lost in the Stars at Glimmerglass Festival |
 The seldom-seen opera musical Lost in the Stars found prominence Friday night, enrapturing a full house at Glimmerglass Festival in New York, moving some of the actors themselves to tears, and stirring the audience to its feet for curtain call.
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| 17-Jun-2012 The Academy of Vocal Arts: Warden Theater | Slaying the Dragon in Philadelphia: Center City Opera Tackles Racism |
 Most Americans are ashamed of the legacy of the Ku Klux Klan in this country and their lawless persecution of non-whites. Racism in America is not a pretty subject, and it doesn’t make for pretty opera. It does, however, make for a thought-provoking and even disturbing piece in the hands of Philadelphia’s Center City Opera Theater (CCOT). Their world premiere Slaying the Dragon composed by Michael Ching with a libretto by Ellen Frankel was inspired by a true-life event set in the early 1990s in Nebraska.Read full review... | |
| 10-Jun-2012 Kimmel Center, Perelman Theater | Opera Phila's Dark Sisters powerfully illuminates female suffering |
 The plight of women trapped in plural marriage—one husband with multiple wives—glowed like a firebrand on the Perelman Theater stage on Sunday. Opera Company of Philadelphia’s Dark Sisters, in co-production with Gotham Chamber Opera and the Music-Theatre Group, is OCP’s final offering of the 2011-12 season.Read full review... | |
| 8-May-2012 The Haverford School: Centennial Hall | AVA’s memorable "L'Elisir d'Amore" with outstanding tenor Diego Silva |
 Though most of Gaetano Donizetti’s operas are not well known, Donizetti wrote dozens of them – many of the silly variety. L’Elisir d’Amore is one frothy work that not only survived, but continues to be performed around the world – frequently. L’Elisir d’Amore has a formulaic storyline: it’s war time (pick a war, any war). A lonely boy falls for a very pretty girl. The pretty girl plays hard to get. The boy drinks a love potion. Circumstances and a soldier in a snappy uniform keep boy and girl apart until the boy inherits a fortune.Read full review... | |
| 22-Apr-2012 Academy of Music | Luscious Manon Lescaut lights up Philadelphia |
 For the first time in twenty-five years, the Opera Company of Philadelphia has mounted a production of Puccini’s first great opera, Manon Lescaut. The result was an inspired testament to thoughtful direction by Michael Cavanagh, gorgeous sets and costumes by John Pascoe, and several winning performances.
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| 18-Mar-2012 John Jay College: The Gerald W Lynch Theater | NYC Opera’s Così a Sardonic Stunner |
 It 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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| 3-Mar-2012 The Academy of Vocal Arts: Warden Theater | AVA Scales Artistic Heights with Debussy's Operatic Masterpiece |
 In his program notes for Pelléas et Mélisande, director K. James McDowell refers to the only opera Claude Debussy ever completed as "a towering masterpiece in the operatic repertoire."
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| 19-Feb-2012 Academy of Music | Opera Phila’s Abduction Nabs Loads of Laughs |
 Combine a pleasing production, in a stunning venue (The Academy of Music), located on one of the most picturesque streets in Philadelphia – the Avenue of the Arts – with the marvelous music of Mozart, and you have the makings of a lovely winter afternoon.
As I stepped into the street, I remember wishing more February days could have been like this one. Opera Company of Philadelphia’s international cast was solid if not spectacular, the production values strong, and the audience was friendly and generous.
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| 12-Feb-2012 Brooklyn Academy of Music: Howard Gilman Opera House | New York City Opera Back on the Boards |
 The 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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| 31-Jan-2012 The Haverford School: Centennial Hall | Verdi's Oberto: a Showcase for Future Opera Stars |
 The Academy of Vocal Arts (AVA) in Philadelphia presented a concert version of a rarely performed Verdi opera, Oberto, at the Haverford School's Centennial Hall. This is, in fact, the celebrated Italian composer’s first opera, and a work that took him four years to write. The evening proved a showcase for the AVA’s talented resident artists and the many musicians supporting them.
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| 22-Nov-2011 The Haverford School: Centennial Hall | AVA’s 'Les Contes d’Hoffmann' defines opéra fantastique |
 Tucked away on Spruce Street, Philadelphia, many blocks off the glittering Avenue of the Arts is a stellar training academy with the mission of preparing world-class opera singers. It’s called the Academy of Vocal Arts (AVA), and it offers resident artists from throughout the United States and all over the world a chance to study and perform in its four-year program.
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| 5-Oct-2011 Academy of Music | Opera Phila’s ‘Carmen’ Easy to Love |
 Some operagoers contend that Carmen, the fatalistic gypsy doomed to die, is unlikable. She antagonizes other women at the cigarette factory. She seduces men with abandon. She makes an inexperienced corporal of the guard fall for her, manipulates him into abandoning his military career for a life of smuggling, and then heartlessly turns him out like a pesky stray.
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| 6-Aug-2011 Alice Busch Opera Theater | 'Medea' at Glimmerglass a summer scorcher! |
 The opera is way too dark. It runs far too long. It’s requires a soprano with vocal cords of amalgamated steel to sing the title role. No wonder Cherubini’s Medea is rarely performed. According to OPERA America records, the opera hasn’t been performed in the United States in nearly 20 years.
That’s why if you are remotely close to the Glimmerglass Festival in Central New York this summer, you need to drop everything and buy yourself a ticket—right now. If you’re across the pond and have a private jet, start fueling it.
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| 5-Aug-2011 Alice Busch Opera Theater | Well Sung ‘Carmen’ Triumphs at Glimmerglass |
 Sultry and brassy, calculating and cruel, the character Carmen is, well, hard to like. By contrast, Bizet’s opéra comique of the same name playing in repertory at Glimmerglass Festival this summer is resoundingly popular, bringing audiences to standing ovations.
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| 12-Jun-2011 Kimmel Center, Perelman Theater | Stunning Outcome for OCP with Challenging 'Phaedra' |
 One great advantage of premiering an opera in the United States is that audiences can’t compare productions and casts of past performances and find you lacking. One major disadvantage is that the audience has little or no fluency with the work and may struggle to comprehend its meaning and significance. With the U.S. premiere of Hans Werner Henze’s Phaedra, which made its world premiere in 2007, the Opera Company of Philadelphia (OCP) capitalized on its single greatest advantage while minimizing the potential disadvantages of showcasing an unfamiliar opera.
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| 7-May-2011 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | Wacky Ariadne Marvels But Isn't Marvelous |
 Tumblers and fire jugglers in rainbow colors. Singing nymphs soaring for stories into the air. Arias deeply dramatic and broadly comic. The Metropolitan Opera’s interpretation of Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss is a magical mashup of modern and classic, seria and buffa, technique and technology that pleases but falls short of terrific for this reviewer.
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| 23-Apr-2011 Lincoln Center: David H Koch Theater | NYC Opera’s ‘Séance’ A Thrilling, Chilling Afternoon |
 Goosebumps, 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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| 9-Apr-2011 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | Met’s ‘Ory’ Bubbles Like Champagne |
 When Franz Liszt conducted Le Comte Ory in Weimar, he said it “bubbled like champagne,” according to the Metropolitan Opera’s program note. It also noted that Liszt arranged for the audience to be served champagne in Act II. Met operagoers didn’t require champagne to feel bubbly, not even during intermission of the New York house’s first-ever production of Le Comte Ory when hundreds of flutes were likely consumed. Like champagne froth spilling over a too-full glass, laughter rippled out of the audience from the opening notes of the overture.
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| 26-Mar-2011 Lincoln Center: David H Koch Theater | NYC ‘Elixir’ Cures Opera Ho-Hum |
 When 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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| 26-Feb-2011 The Academy of Vocal Arts: Warden Theater | Stellar Production Values in AVA's 'Arabella' |
 While recordings of Arabella abound, operagoers could conceivably go years without actually seeing the piece performed. Compared to the frequency with which companies present Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos, and Salome, Richard Strauss’s Arabella is an infrequently seen gem. In the hands of the Academy of Vocal Arts (AVA) in Philadelphia, Strauss’s lyrical comedy of manners was polished to a gleam.
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| 20-Feb-2011 Academy of Music | Philly’s R&J Makeover is Haute Stuff |
 Opera Company of Philadelphia (OCP) reached into the Philadelphia community with its remake of Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet, the second of five shows in the 2010-11 season. In his OCP debut, Italian director Manfred Schweigkofler gave the company a chance to recast a Renaissance-era tale of two Italian families bearing ancient and deadly grudges as warring fashion houses in 21st century Verona.
OCP worked the fashion motif like top models taking to the catwalk.
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| 29-Jan-2011 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | Success of new Tosca hangs on performance |
 If the painstaking recreation of Rome during the Napoleonic Wars is stripped away from the setting of Tosca. If choral numbers, sparing to begin with, are muted as distant drumbeats. If the title character is reinterpreted as a country girl with little artifice rather than a grand diva whose sheer confidence and sexuality prove irresistible to men. If the pageantry and pomp is limited to but one number, then all that’s left to savor watching Puccini’s fifth opera is the music itself.Read full review... | |
| 17-Dec-2010 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | Pelléas et Mélisande: an opera that demands the audience enter in |
 Some in the audience stormed to their feet at curtain call with exuberant bravos for the cast and conductor. Others walked out at the first intermission. “A monumental success,” one claimed. “The worst opera I’ve ever seen,” another said leaving the theater.
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| 2-Oct-2010 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | Met's 'Hoffmann' is Satisfying Fare |
 Those who like their opera off-kilter will revel in the Metropolitan Opera’s Les Contes d'Hoffmann, an opera in three acts (with prologue and epilogue) by Jacques Offenbach. The Met production was heavily operetta à la Offenbach—risqué, and at times, erotic.
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| 11-Jul-2010 McCarter Theater | Opera New Jersey Launches Summer Series with Don Giovanni |
 When an ensemble of strong voices extends and nearly expends themselves, pouring out their artistry in tribute to Mozart’s genius, operagoers will stand during bows—eagerly. That is precisely what occurred during Opera New Jersey's July 11 performance of Don Giovanni. The cast received a standing ovation from a packed house, deservedly so. On many counts that count when performing Mozart's greatest work, Opera New Jersey succeeded.
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