Don Carlo
|
Photo by Robert Millard
|
By Michael Van Duzer
Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlo is an opera with an identity crisis. Originally written for the Paris Opera in the preferred French epic style, the opera was originally seen as somewhat of a disappointment from the composer of Traviata, Rigoletto and Trovatore. Verdi re-wrote the opera for its Italian premiere, cutting the first act and generally tightening the drama as a whole. A third version attempted a compromise by reinstating the first act while maintaining the other revisions. However, the opera remained a rarity...
FULL STORY
Le Nozze di Figaro
|
Bonney, Abdrazakov
Photo by Robert Millard
|
By Michael Van Duzer
For their contribution to the Mozart anniversary, Los Angeles Opera revived its 2004 production of LE NOZZE DI FIGARO. Mozart’s bittersweet masterpiece proved an extraordinarily apt choice as it was the final production conducted by Kent Nagano in his role as principal conductor and music director for the company. His guiding hand will be greatly missed.
Director Ian Judge’s production rightly focuses on the brilliance of the Mozart/Da Ponte collaboration, eschewing the heavy-handed political overtones directors often bring in from the Beaumarchais source material. This is not to say...
FULL STORY
The Ring of The Nibelung
|
Cast
Photo by Keith Ian Polakoff
|
By Michael Van Duzer
Like it or not, reduction is a key concept in live performance today. In the heyday of the Broadway musical, shows employed principals along with both a singing and a dancing chorus. The current revival of Sweeney Todd drastically reduces the size of the cast while handing them instruments so they can double as their own orchestra. Of course, this is an extreme case and apparently a successful concept, but many masterpieces are routinely cut and re-shaped to fit...
FULL STORY
Parsifal
|
Domingo, Salminen
Photo by Robert Millard
|
By Michael Van Duzer
The unspoken bonus to attending a Robert Wilson production of an opera is overhearing the frequently heated discussions of audience members during intermission. Wilson’s spare, deliberate, Noh-inspired stagings are a magnet for controversy.
At Los Angeles Opera’s opening of Wagner’s Parsifal, the positive comments from those surrendering to Wilson’s visionary stagecraft seemed to have a slight edge over the complaints of people puzzling over why the spectacle onstage seemed out of sync with the plot synopsis they’d read in the program. But, love it or hate it, Wilson’s production had the crowd passionately arguing the pros and cons of the opera they were witnessing. Something you don’t hear in most theatre...
FULL STORY
Opera Pacific's Tosca
By Michael Van Duzer
What is it that makes Puccini’s Tosca so popular? After all, many critics are completely immune to the opera’s charms (Shaw called it a “shabby little shocker”). But audiences adore its pungent blend of romance, melodrama, and top-drawer Puccini music. And there is, of course, the schadenfreude factor. Only Macbeth boasts more stories of theatrical disaster than Tosca. And it is, admittedly, difficult to completely banish apocryphal Tosca tales...
FULL STORY
Tosca L.A.
|
Urmana, Licitra
Photo by Ken Howard
|
By Michael Van Duzer
Divas of the operatic persuasion love to play the title role in Puccini’s Tosca. The passion, the pathos, the chance to play a glamorous diva while singing a memorable score is incredibly seductive. But not every diva is up to the challenge. Many a fine singing-actress has found herself unable to convincingly pull off Tosca’s mercurial moods or conquer the score’s rangy vocal requirements. But Los Angeles Opera had nothing to worry about with their choice...
FULL STORY
Pagliacci
|
Photo by Robert Millard
|
By Michael Van Duzer
Franco Zeffirelli’s overstuffed production of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci returned to LA Opera as the second opera in the company’s 20th Anniversary Season. Director Marco Gandini fills the stage with extras who convincingly populate an Italian urban setting right out of I Vitelloni or another early Fellini film. But, if adding vespas, acrobats, and an intermission don’t exactly turn a one-act opera into a full-length evening...
FULL STORY
|
