I arrived in San Francisco on Thursday just in time to make a 7:30 curtain of Verdi’s rarely produced opera ATTILA. The cast was headed up by veteran bass Ferruccio Furlanetto in the title role and conducted by Nicola Luisotti, San Francisco Opera’s music director. I know the piece is problematic, having seen a few [...]
A shot of the interior of Berlin’s Komische Oper with a sold out house for Handel’s XERXES I am heading for the airport in a few minutes for my flight back to Dallas, but I wanted to report on yesterday while it was still fresh in my mind. Yesterday afternoon I met with a colleague [...]
End of Act I of Mozart’s IDOMENEO at Berlin’s Komische Oper Last night was a performance of Mozart’s IDOMENEO at Berlin’s Komische Oper. It was sad to see so few people in the audience—I would guess that there were only around 250 people in attendance. It was a stark, modern production with a unit set [...]
Today was the final day of auditions in Berlin, and the quality was consistently higher than the previous two, with one outstanding Korean bass named Jongmin Park. There were several other interesting singers today (an Australian mezzo, a Polish bass-baritone, a Finnish soprano and two Romanian sopranos) so all in all, this was well worth [...]
Today I heard auditions from another 36 singers, representing 9 more nationalities, bringing the grand total to singers from 30 different countries in just two days. The singers today were from some of the same countries I mentioned yesterday, but also included people from Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cuba, Mexico, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Switzerland. No [...]
I arrived in Berlin at 7:30 this morning on an overnight flight from New York and went straight into a full day of auditions that started at 10:30. Even with a few cancellations, I still managed to hear 41 singers from 21 countries, only two of whom I had heard before. The list of places [...]
I made it back from Saint Louis on Sunday, and leave tomorrow for the Opera America Conference in Philadelphia. One of the promising highlights should be the Opera Company of Philadelphia production of Nico Muhly’s new opera Dark Sisters, which debuted earlier this year at New York’s Gotham Chamber Opera, and which will star Caitlyn [...]
Last night’s COSI was a pleasant surprise with some excellent singing. I say it was a surprise because it started off with a frenetic (and noisy) staging of the overture, which usually sends a signal that I am in for a long, tedious night, but once the action began, the audience and I enjoyed a [...]
Yesterday afternoon was the first orchestra dress rehearsal for the American premiere of Unsuk Chin’s ALICE IN WONDERLAND, in a very imaginative and clever production by OTSL’s artistic director James Robinson. Particularly considering the fact that this was the first time all the elements were coming together (orchestra, singers, sets and costumes) it went amazingly [...]
I have been coming to Saint Louis every summer for nearly thirty years to see the festival at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. I always enjoy coming here, but I have to confess the humidity can be almost unbearable. Well not this year—the weather has been glorious! Last night’s performance of Stephen Sondheim’s SWEENEY TODD [...]
