| Date and venue | Title | Submitted by |
|---|---|---|
| 2-May-2013 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | Götterdämmerung at the Met | Meg Wilhoite |
 The word Götterdämmerung contextually translated becomes “twilight of the gods”, and Thursday night’s story was indeed full of endings: the conclusion of the saga of the ring and the end of several lives, human and god alike.
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| 29-Apr-2013 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | Flashes of brilliance in the Met's Siegfried | David Karlin |
 Each of Wagner's Ring Cycle operas offers conductor and performers a continual stream of opportunities for "wow" moments. There are moments of humour, bars of intense power in the music, crises in the drama or passages of intense vocal lyricism - there are so many possibilities that it's impossible for any one performance to capture them all. One way of evaluating a Ring Cycle opera is to consider how many of these fleeting instances were seized upon by orchestra and cast with enough impact to make a lasting impression in your memory.
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| 25-Apr-2013 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | The Met's Ring Cycle begins with an impressive Das Rheingold | David Karlin |
 Quite simply, it’s the largest scale event in all of opera. With 18 hours of music in a 3,800 seat house, Wagner’s Ring Cycle at the Met is a giant, lavish undertaking – all starting with that famous E flat chord: starting from the quietest of pianissimo double bass notes and building for nearly four minutes before it explodes into the melody of the Rhinemaidens.
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| 13-Mar-2013 Lincoln Center: Avery Fisher Hall | NY Philharmonic and Choral Artists blaze through Bach's culminating masterwork | Joseph Pfender |
 Under conductor Alan Gilbert, the New York Philharmonic and the New York Choral Artists gave an inspired but slightly uneven performance of J.S. Bach’s Mass in B minor on Wednesday night. Playing with great panache as well as a mindful sense of the historical weight of the piece, the vocalists and musicians gave bristling and glistening life to a timeless work. Slight hiccups in vocal performance included, the music came across brilliantly. If the decisive blow is always struck left-handed, then Gilbert and the full choral-symphonic ensemble struck with both.
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| 16-Feb-2013 The Music Center at Strathmore | An all-Wagner program from Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony | Simon Chin |
 It’s Richard Wagner’s bicentennial year, and everyone is getting in on the act. 22 different productions, by one count, of the complete Ring cycle will be seen worldwide, not to mention countless other celebratory evenings put on by sundry ensembles. Among the latter was last Saturday’s concert at the Music Center at Strathmore, with Marin Alsop leading the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra – a conductor and an ensemble not known for their Wagnerian chops.
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| 10-Feb-2013 UC Berkeley: Hertz Hall | Pathos and power: Eric Owens recital in Berkeley | Jeffery S McMillan |
 Bass-baritone Eric Owens is no stranger to Bay Area voice aficionados. After making his local debut as Lodovico in Otello with San Francisco Opera in 2002, Owens memorably created the diet-regiment-reciting General Leslie Groves there in the world première of John Adams’ Doctor Atomic in 2005. Most recently he did yeoman's work with a smaller role in Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi in October.Read full review... | ||
| 3-Oct-2012 War Memorial Opera House | Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi in San Francisco | Jeffery S McMillan |
 In the last few decades, Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi has flirted with standard repertory status, but it has not sufficiently won the hearts of opera-goers to warrant more than the occasional production. Though blessed with some of the composer’s finest melodies, the opera has problems for modern audiences. Firstly, the tale does not follow Shakespeare’s version of the star-cross’d lovers’ story; the protagonists are already in love when the opera begins, which means no ball, no love at first sight, no balcony scene.Read full review... | ||
| 4-Aug-2012 Alice Busch Opera Theater | Glimmerglass' little Aida makes a huge impact | Gale Martin, operatoonity.com |
 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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| 3-Aug-2012 Alice Busch Opera Theater | Stellar Lost in the Stars at Glimmerglass Festival | Gale Martin, operatoonity.com |
 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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| 24-May-2012 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | Nina Stemme comes out ahead in Cleveland Orchestra's Salome | Zerbinetta |
 “When I looked at you, I heard secret music,” says Salome in her monologue to the severed head of John the Baptist. Richard Strauss’s opera trades in the unseeable and the unknowable—from the range of metaphors applied to the moon to the nearly impossible staging of a ten-minute striptease performed by a dramatic soprano—which makes it unusually well suited to concert presentation. Strauss’ high-octane, atmospheric music can seem all the more lurid and mysterious when its subjective visualization is left to the imagination.Read full review... | ||
| 13-Mar-2011 Civic Opera House | A Hero's Tale | Kristina Powers |
 Ancient Greek superheroes – irresistible. Half god, half man, incredible deeds leave Perseus, Theseus, and of course Hercules enough to rival Superman, Spiderman, and The Incredible Hulk. Small wonder then why these demigods and precursor of the modern comic book superhero have captivated the hearts and minds of many of the world’s greatest writers, dramatists and composers. During the Baroque Era classical mythology served as a favorite subject in the world of opera, with such compositional giants from Lully to Handel penning the scores to librettos based on famous myths.Read full review... | ||
