| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 20-Apr-2013 San Diego Civic Theatre | San Diego Opera's flashy Aida features standout soprano Latonia Moore |
 Aida typifies all that is grand about opera. Its exotic setting, majestic music, and dramatic love triangle can make for an evening unique among performing arts events. It’s not a bad way to close an opera season either. San Diego Opera did so on Saturday, capping a uniformly satisfying season with Zandra Rhodes’ vibrant production that was refreshing and at times thrilling.
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| 30-Mar-2013 San Diego Civic Theatre | Ferrucio Furlanetto triumphs in San Diego Opera's Murder in the Cathedral |
 An internationally acclaimed singer with a career spanning well over 30 years should be granted almost whatever role he’d like to do. It would also be understandable if the singer chose a well-known, crowd-pleasing piece, but, as is quite evident by now, Ferruccio Furlanetto is not a typical singer. The elder statesman of Italian basses, who has made Massenet’s Don Quichotte a staple of his repertoire, requested and received from San Diego Opera a new production of Ildebrando Pizzetti’s rarely performed Murder in the Cathedral (1958).Read full review... | |
| 9-Mar-2013 Dorothy Chandler Pavilion | LA Opera's Flying Dutchman sails past the point |
 While the term “Eurotrash” gets thrown around more often than it should, it is one that has unfortunately become synonymous with many of the Wagner opera productions that take a non-traditional approach. As opera-goers go, I tend to sympathize with the directors and find that this approach can work fantastically well in bringing Wagner’s logistically impossible scenarios to life. Los Angeles audiences are all too acutely familiar with such controversial productions, having experienced Achim Freyer’s polarizing telling of The Ring just a few years ago.Read full review... | |
| 16-Feb-2013 San Diego Civic Theatre | San Diego Opera's Samson and Delilah excels with strong cast and provoking production |
 To Camille Saint-Saëns, the operatic appeal of the biblical subject of Samson is perfectly understandable. Theoretically, the story contains the dramatic trappings of exciting grand opera: a romance, tragedy, larger-than-life setting, a ballet. But for current operatic audiences, it is easy for the subject to appear stale. With a lack of dramatic dynamism, staging this piece can be a challenge. Saint-Saëns’ sweeping score leaves a lot of freedom for dramatic interpretation and the results can be ineffective.
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| 26-Jan-2013 San Diego Civic Theatre | San Diego Opera's season opening Daughter of the Regiment is a crowd-pleaser |
 Chicks dig the high notes. The enduring popularity of Donizetti’s The Daughter of the Regiment seems to indicate as much. The plot is silly (even by opera’s standards) and much of the music is not as memorable as some of Donizetti’s more popular works. Yet even without the notorious Ah! mes amis and its nine high C’s, the charming work can be a crowd-pleaser as evidenced by San Diego Opera’s season opening performance Saturday evening.
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| 19-Jan-2013 Walt Disney Concert Hall | Susan Graham and Renée Fleming stunning at Disney Hall |
 One would think that either Renée Fleming or Susan Graham alone would be reason enough to sell out a large venue such as Disney Hall. But everything is bigger in Hollywood, and the LA Phil brought both artists together for a one-night recital of French art song. But even that wasn’t enough. This was not an ordinary recital with neatly arranged sets of the typical repertoire finished off with a few predictable encores, concluded in two hours’ time. No, this was a thoughtful survey of French mélodies and their English-speaking muses, with slideshows, anecdotes, and stories.
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| 1-Dec-2012 Walt Disney Concert Hall | Salonen and the LA Phil outstanding in the music of Lutosławski |
 Sharing a concert with Beethoven can be a tough assignment. The old stalwart is, with good reason, still a popular draw to the concert hall. As part of its centenary celebration of Witold Lutosławski, the LA Phil chose to pair music of Beethoven with that of the Polish composer. While such a technique would commonly be used to draw a crowd for a concert featuring “modern” music, in this case it was a much more insightful move with surprising results.Read full review... | |
| 19-Nov-2012 Segerstrom Center for the Arts: Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall | John Eliot Gardiner enlightens with Beethoven's Missa Solemnis in Orange County |
 Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis is an odd piece. Despite having a rich recorded legacy, it is not a piece that one encounters often in the concert hall. The technical challenges of this music are up there with virtually any other piece of combined music for choir and orchestra. As performed by the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir last night, its difficulty was dispatched with an awe-inspiring fervor.Read full review... | |
| 29-Sep-2012 Dorothy Chandler Pavilion | Domingo's latest turn as baritone proves triumphant for LA Opera and Verdi |
 Almost any singer with Plácido Domingo’s résumé would be happily retired from the stage at age 71, but Domingo is obviously not any singer. With over 140 roles performed, the Spanish tenor’s legacy is unparalleled, and that legacy is still growing. Domingo’s addition of the baritone role Francesco Foscari in Verdi’s I due Foscari will undoubtedly cause cynics to roll their eyes. Hopefully there were some in the audience for this performance, as their skepticism proved to be unwarranted.Read full review... | |
| 22-Sep-2012 Dorothy Chandler Pavilion | LA Opera's Don Giovanni showcases some impressive singing but falls short |
| What makes for a good performance of Don Giovanni? Some have called it the greatest drama in opera, and with music by Mozart at the height of his compositional powers, its status as a masterpiece of Classical music is undisputed. Los Angeles Opera’s opening night production had elements both outstanding and troubled. Some distinguished singing proved to be among the highlights, but a trivial production never really came together for an exceptional evening.
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