Opera news, reviews, and related coverage.
Opera Theater of Pittsburgh is an American opera business based in Pittsburgh’s Cultural District. It is among 2 opera business in the city, the other being Pittsburgh Opera. Opera Theater of Pittsburgh carries out at The Twentieth Century Club in the Oakland area of Pittsburgh and at non-traditional locations around the city. Opera Theater of…
Could purist opera fans really be mean? Or they just don’t mind being direct and honest in providing feedback regarding productions that they see. The word “Eurotrash” still comes up occasionally despite the initial derogatory nature. You must have remembered the word Eurotrash when I wrote a review about stage director Willy Decker’s vision of Verdi’s…
What if I tell you that once in opera, somebody dared to shock the market and rock everyone on their seats with their revolutionary approach on opera? I am referring to Richard Strauss and 2 of his operatic masterpieces changed the opera industry forever. And I will discuss one of them here – Richard Strauss’s…
I have kept this link for quite some time now since some marquee names are not afraid to speak up whenever they see something wrong. In this commentary that we have at the moment, I would comment on some statements that retired soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa mentioned about Britain killing talent. Dame Kiri has…
Fascinated with the popularity of Natalie Dessay, I then decided to check out if she has done the role of Violetta in La Traviata. And I eventually discovered that she did at the Metropolitan Opera. I mentioned that in a previous article. Then again, the challenge usually lay in making an interesting version of one…
Remakes, reboots, revivals, reruns – why do we like recycling stories? Because not all versions get it right previously. And no matter how promising a story is, if a production falls flat in making the audience care about its characters, another production would try to get it right. No wonder some folks end up watching…
Opera in previous years made an effort to attract new audiences by modernizing its productions. It was a hit-or-miss thing since the purist crowd would still prefer seeing their favorite opera productions in period costumes and settings. But what if some folks went the Euro look? Some folks at the Opera Talk Facebook Group went…
Some composers like Giuseppe Verdi have instant material to work on once they turn to straight plays written by William Shakespeare. He may not have been the only composer to make an opera out of Shakespeare’s classic “Othello” but the bigger challenge is in trying to live up to such high expectations. Must be the…
Early spoiler for everyone – when Farinelli (real name: Carlo Broschi) thanked God for having a friend like Benedict (his employer’s paraplegic son), the young boy replied “God has nothing to do with it”. Even young folks like him are aware of the pain and suffering that performers like Farinelli go through in the quest of preserving…
I remember promising to write a review about the French opera Les Contes d’Hoffmann (Tales of Hoffman) in a previous article although I saw myself writing a review of another version of this classic French opera by Jacques Offenbach – a tale about how a writer’s creativity is motivated more by his passions. It spurns…
