Opera Philadelphia

Review: ‘From the Diary of Sally Hemings’ at Unison Media

The New York premiere of William Bolcom’s composition, From the Diary of Sally Hemings, could not be more timely. With so much news focused on racial tensions, as well as the recent uproar over sexual...

A Look Back at Opera Philadelphia’s O17 Festival and ‘The Magic Flute’

When Opera Philadelphia’s O17 Festival was announced in October of 2015, the company headlined its importation of the Berlin’s Komische Oper (Comic Opera) production of The Magic Flute. That...

Review: ‘We Shall Not Be Moved’ by Opera Philadelphia

The sole Philadelphia-based offering in Opera Philadelphia’s O17 Festival is We Shall Not Be Moved. Its powerful message is that the city’s children, and particularly its black children, are deprived...

Review: ‘War Stories’ by Opera Philadelphia

War Stories is a clever pairing of two music dramas dealing with battles, presented by Opera Philadelphia as part of its O17 Festival. The two separate compositions are staged in adjacent areas of the...

Review: World Premiere of ‘The Wake World’ by Opera Philadelphia

Inside a museum dedicated to art from the past, the O17 Festival has brought a new opera which celebrates musical and literary styles from the past. Composer/librettist David Hertzberg built upon...

Review: Sondra Radvanovsky in Recital at Opera Philadelphia

Sondra Radvanovsky’s recital as part of Opera Philadelphia’s O17 Festival was a spectacular event. That may seem like an oxymoron to some readers, who expect singer/pianist recitals to be intimate...

Review: ‘Die Fledermaus’ at the Santa Fe Opera, and What We’ve Learned

This Santa Fe production of Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus was the least Viennese of any I’ve ever seen. No, director Ned Canty did not set it in the American Southwest — which might have been an...

Review: ‘Alcina’ at Santa Fe Opera

Editor’s Note: Our Steve Cohen is in Santa Fe, New Mexico this week, where he’s enjoying the local arts scene and seeing the work of Santa Fe Opera, a company with a close connection to Opera...

Review: ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ at Opera Philadelphia by Corey Cohen

Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro) is such a perfect amalgam of comedy and pathos that audiences will cheer even a flawed performance of it. It’s hard to get everything right, with...

Review: ‘Tancredi’ at Opera Philadelphia

A company premiere and part of its Opera at the Academy series presented in the historic Academy of Music, Opera Philadelphia’s production of Tancredi, from Opéra de Lausanne and Teatro Municipal de...

Review: ‘Turandot’ at Opera Philadelphia in Philadelphia, PA.

Danger and darkness lurk around every corner of Opera Philadelphia’s stunning new production of Turandot, a co-production with Minnesota Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Utah Opera, and...

2016 Philadelphia Fringe Festival Review: ‘Macbeth’ at Third World Bunfight

I’ve long felt that if someone is going to cut down a Shakespeare text, they should take the responsibility of claiming co-authorship, since any editing becomes interpretation. This year’s Fringe...

Review: ‘The Elixir of Love’ at Opera Philadelphia

Unrequited longing for a capricious woman of a higher social class can only be cured by a magic potion, or so thinks the lovesick Nemorino when he overhears Adina, the object of his affection, reading...

Review: ‘Capriccio’ at The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia

What’s a countess to do? Should the young widow, Countess Madeleine, marry the poet Olivier or the composer Flamand? Such is the dilemma of Richard Strauss’s final opera, Capriccio–a clever allegory...

Review: ‘Cold Mountain’ at The Academy of Music in Philadelphia

Charles Frazier’s 1997 award-winning best-selling debut novel, adapted into an Oscar-winning feature film starring Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, and Renée Zellweger in 2003, is now a new American opera....

Philadelphia Fringe Festival: ‘Andy: ‘A Popera’ at Opera Philadelphia and the Bearded Ladies

What’s art? The characters in Andy: A Popera, a new piece based on the life of the pop art pioneer Andy Warhol, get asked that question many times, and they have many answers. “An opportunity,” says...