| Date and venue | Title | Submitted by |
|---|---|---|
| 10-May-2013 Kennedy Center: Opera House | Zambello's Show Boat at the Washington National Opera | Simon Chin |
 The arrival of Show Boat at the Washington National Opera this month, after stops in Chicago and Houston, has provoked a certain amount of consternation in operatic circles. Does Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s 1927 musical properly belong in the opera house, and should a precious slot in an opera company’s season be devoted to such popular and obviously commercial entertainment? Do the moneylenders need to be driven out of the temple?
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| 5-Jan-2013 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | The Met in HD: Hymel is the hero in Berlioz's epic Les Troyens | Katy S. Austin |
 It’s very difficult to write about Berlioz’s Les Troyens without mentioning its length. Tonight’s cinema screening of Fransesca Zambello’s lush production was billed at 341 minutes – that’s 5.6 hours. But beamed live from the Metropolitan Opera in New York, those 5.6 hours entailed spectacular operatic entertainment. Several times larger than life, even the indulgent or unnecessarily long episodes (of which there are many) were engrossing.
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| 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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| 15-Apr-2012 Handa Opera, Sydney Harbour | La Traviata performed by Opera Australia in Sydney Harbour | Oliver Brett |
 I could not have asked for a more magical setting in which to watch Verdi's La Traviata. In front of me was the floating stage, surrounded by gently rippling water glistening in the evening moonlight. On the left rose the buildings of Sydney's central business district, while on my right was the beautiful harbour bridge and opera house.
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| 31-Mar-2012 National Theatre | Otello in Munich: Everything Opera Should Be | Matthew Lynch |
 Wilfried Hösl IMG_6954.jpg) Otello is usually considered to be Verdi’s most mature opera. It was one of the last ones he wrote, the result of a plot by his publisher Riccordi and the conductor Franco Faccio to draw him out of early retirement. The result is a work which combines all the aspects of Verdi’s earlier operatic style with Wagner’s concept of Gesamtkunstwerk. Unlike the operas up to Aida, Otello does away with the strict “aria-recitative” division, moving towards the more fluid style of Wagner.Read full review... | ||
| 16-Feb-2012 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | Schrott thrills in a mixed Don Giovanni | David Karlin |
 It's the most spectacular entrance in opera: the giant stone statue bursts in to join Don Giovanni at the dinner table; a pair of sweeping downward octave swoops in D minor fills the audience (and the hapless Leporello) with terror at the rake's imminent descent into hell.
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| 8-Feb-2011 Sydney Opera House: Opera Theatre | Opera Australia’s scintillating production of Carmen | Alan Yu, alanayu.wordpress.com |
 In an opera of such popularity as Carmen by Georges Bizet, it wouldn’t be easy to please an audience likely to be inured to a variety of performances of arias such as Habanera and The Toreador’s Song. Yet Opera Australia made a thoughtfully constructed and well vindicated attempt.
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