Opera

‘…(Iphigenia)’ opera at Kennedy Center pushes musical boundaries

The creators have thrown away the rulebook. It’s not jazz exactly and certainly not classical contemporary.

IN Series reimagines ‘A Fairy Queen’ as an old-time radio program

In Artistic Director Timothy Nelson’s knowledgeable hands, the device comes off not like a gimmick but as a doorway into discovery.

CUA’s ‘Orlofsky’s Gala’ showcases operetta faves and top-tier talent

The Catholic University of America greets audiences with gusto in this charming operetta revue.

Enjoying supernatural thrills with Baltimore Concert Opera’s ‘The Medium’

This local gem of an opera company continues to attract top-tier talent.

‘Black Flute’ from IN Series to screen free Friday on National Mall

Mozart’s ‘Magic Flute’ reconceived with Black voices central to performance and production.

Opera for everybody: Catching up with Baltimore Concert Opera’s Julia Cooke

The Artistic and General Director on BCO’s appeal to people who are new to opera and to aficionados who have been fans their entire lives.

Dispatch from Glimmerglass on the Grass: ‘Songbird’ and ‘Il Trovatore’

The famous opera festival in Cooperstown, New York, now in its 46th year, has been reimagined as a whole new adventure.

Opera Lafayette takes a French comic classic to the Old West

Take any decent road trip through the American West and you’re bound to pass half a dozen old opera houses in varying states of disrepair, or repair — if there happens to be a local renaissance...

IN Series’s emotional ‘Orphée et Eurydice’ evokes loss of a loved one

Orphée et Eurydice, a streaming production of the IN Series online program Invision, The Logan Operahouse Without Walls, is a cleverly updated version of Gluck’s classic 1762 opera. It features...

IN Series’s ‘Orphée et Eurydice’ strikes chord of COVID love and loss

IN Series returns to the original revolutionary opera, Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice, for an intimate film experience exploring love, loss, and grief during a global pandemic in which millions have...

Urban Arias’ ‘The Roost’ takes a steamy look at a couple in quarantine

The Decameron Opera Coalition, a collection of different opera companies throughout the United States, has created a unique event, inspired by classic literature and modern necessity. Their Tales from...

The future of opera in the time of pandemic: A Q&A with Adam Turner

I spoke with Adam Turner, Artistic Director of the Virginia Opera, on Tuesday, September 15, about how a regional opera company weathers COVID and the shutdown of most live performance. Virginia Opera...

Virginia Opera is all about Stayin’ Alive

With live performances shut down since March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, artists unemployed, and income streams disrupted, performing arts organizations continue to face the hardest of times....

IN Series to build a digital opera house without walls

If the COVID-19 pandemic has a lesson for the arts community, it’s that what’s small can still be mighty. Without a house to fill and lavish sets and costumes to maintain, Washington’s tiny itinerant...

IN Series produces first ever fully digital opera performance season

As performing arts organizations worldwide struggle to schedule live performance seasons in the midst of a global pandemic, DC’s IN Series leads the charge onto the digital stage by programming an...

Ancient mysteries astonish and delight at IN Series’ Women Composers Festival

‘Here Be Sirens’ is the phrase cartographers used for many centuries to warn sailors of marine dangers. Composer Kate Soper borrowed the name for her musically complex, theatrically rich opera, her...

WNO’s ‘Don Giovanni’ signals the cultural and healing power of Washington’s arts scene

The Washington National Opera’s current production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni confirms two important ideas. The first is that while opera is most effective when it entertains, its intrinsic value is...

J’Nai Bridges’ debut in ‘Samson and Delilah’ is a dream come true

When J’Nai Bridges made her triumphant debut in Camille Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah Sunday night, it was the fulfillment of a dream. The young mezzo-soprano’s star has been rapidly rising — this...

Opera Lafayette debuts sophisticated recreation of Beethoven’s ‘Leonore (1805)’

Thanks in part to the bold addition of a missing tenor aria, Opera Lafayette’s elegant production of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Leonore (1805), last night at The Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater,...

‘Cinderella’ (La Cenerentola): Well-sung Rossini at Virginia Opera

Spoiler alert: Cinderella and the Prince live happily ever after. Of course, since Virginia Opera, like all opera companies of any size, prints a detailed synopsis in the program each patron receives,...

WNO’s American Opera Initiative 2020 is an essential take on opera in America

“It’s a ridiculous thing to sing at the top of your lungs about your vulnerability,” American composer Laura Kaminsky observed to this year’s Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative...

Review: ‘Butterfly’ by the IN Series Presents a Radical Restructuring of the Original Puccini

While considered one of the classics in opera’s storied canon, Madame Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini is simultaneously acknowledged to be one of the most problematic for its depictions of race and...

Review: ‘The Juliet Letters’ by UrbanArias

UrbanArias delivers a physical, aural, and emotional journey in their brilliant interpretation of Elvis Costello and the Brodsky Quartet’s The Juliet Letters. Based upon imagined love letters written...

WNO’s ‘Tosca’ Serves Up Classic Opera Comfort Food Done Right

The Washington National Opera’s (WNO) fine opening night performance of Puccini’s Tosca provided an opportunity for catharsis and reflection, two things our overwrought city needs right now. My...

Review: Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s ‘Porgy and Bess’ a Crowd-Pleaser

Let’s get the persnickety stuff out of the way first. Then we can get to why the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s second Porgy and Bess in concert at the Strathmore Music Center in three years is...

Review: ‘La Paloma at the Wall’ by The In Series

The In Series at GALA Theatre has succeeded in brilliantly breathing life into a treasured zarzuela – a blend of song and dance – which was written in 1894 and originally titled La Verbena de la...

Review: ‘Carmen’ by Annapolis Opera

There was a moment in the first act of Annapolis Opera’s Carmen in which Director Fenlon Lamb assembled her cast in a colorful tableau that enthralled me and impressed itself on my mind. This Carmen...

Review: ‘An Evening Of Mozart: The Da Ponte Operas’ by Maryland Lyric Opera’s Young Artist Institute

The Maryland Lyric Opera (MDLO) presented an evening of an assortment of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s musical excerpts from three of his most esteemed operas–The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and...

Review: ‘Faust’ by Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center

It’s been a quarter of a century since Satan came to call on the Kennedy Center, but the Washington National Opera’s production of Faust (with music by Charles Gounod and libretto by Jules Barbier and...

Review: ‘Eugene Onegin’ at Washington National Opera

Of all the grand tear-jerkers, those epic romances that make you want to tear your heart out and roast it on the barbecue, Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece Eugene Onegin stands out. Packed with beautiful...

American Opera Is Becoming Its Own Genre and It’s Happening Here in DC

Opera in America has had the stink of death upon it for some time now. Lavish productions of period piece love stories and power struggles set largely during the time of kings and courtesans in Europe...

Soloman Howard: Southeast’s Operatic Superstar Reprises ‘The Lion, the Unicorn, and Me’ at the Kennedy Center

Growing up in Southeast DC, Soloman Howard had a godfather who saw to it that the young singer’s obvious basso gift did not languish for lack of training and opportunity. “My godfather, Thomas Dixon...

Review: ‘Silent Night’ at the Kennedy Center Washington National Opera

The Washington National Opera’s current production of the opera Silent Night is a shattering indictment of the futility and waste of war set during the historical truce that occurred during World War...