Author: Daniel Vasquez

With the ethereal afterglow of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream still lingering in the air, Atlanta opera goers prepared for the operatic event of the past…well, four decades. The unveiling of the company’s first production of the second opera in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, the cycle’s most popular work and a premiere that may surely expand the company’s artistic ambitions, loomed at the end of April.…

Heading towards the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center last Saturday to attend the opening of Atlanta Opera’s production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, my anticipation mixed with a shade of dread. With the company’s recent designation as a Budget One company by Opera America last year, there has been (allegedly) renewed enthusiasm among local opera goers, alongside the occasional eye roll from neighboring regional hubs (again, allegedly).…

February 9, 2024

My love for Terence Blanchard goes back a long time, to a nervous young college kid hesitantly using his ID to enter a club for the first time. I was new to New York, and the Village Vanguard was showcasing a trumpeter whose name I recognized from his score for Malcolm X and his work on Cedar Walton’s Roots album.…

Absent from the Atlanta Opera’s repertoire for nine years, Giacomo Puccini’s eternal La Boheme graced the stage of the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center once again on Saturday, January 20^th. Though well received by the nearly sold-out audience, the opening night performance inspired a disparate and puzzling reaction in me, ultimately demanding my attendance to the presentation held the following Friday.…

Missing from the Atlanta Opera repertoire for almost a decade, Verdi’s Rigoletto returned the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center this past Saturday, opening the Atlanta Opera’s 2023-24 season of mainstage productions. As in the case with the previous presentation of Verdi’s middle period masterpiece which took place in March of 2015, this production of Rigoletto (a co-production between the Atlanta Opera, Houston Grand Opera and the Dallas Opera) is conceptual, though this time around it goes further than its predecessor in its attempt to recreate some of the effects that the composer may have originally had in mind. …

Following the success of Moravec’s The Shining, The Atlanta Opera unveiled the next offering in its dark and moody 2023-24 season this past Saturday at the Cobb Energy Center’s stage with the premiere of Michael Shapiro’s Frankenstein: The Movie Opera. Unlike the case of Moravec’s uneven offering, Mr.…

As the brutal summer of 2023 comes to a close, the Atlanta Opera rolls out the red carpet and welcomes autumn with the first offering of its 2023-2024 season: The southeastern premiere of Paul Moravec’s opera, The Shining, as part of its acclaimed Discoveries Series.…

Frequent readers of this blog may have noted a certain “pandemic induced anxiety,” shall we call it, which more often than not limited this writer from dabbling beyond the local opera company’s offerings. Comfort zone, accessibility and the safety of familiarity has kept me mostly state bound ever since we got sent home back in March of 2020, but vibrant performance art schedules becomes a feature of the post-lockdown world once again, I hearby declare a newfound hunger to venture outside self-inflicted isolation (reassured by official reports of the pandemic’s diminishing threat of course,) and vow to make a concerted effort to once again cover the great regional opera companies that grace our country.…

This past Saturday evening, the Atlanta Opera company bid farewell to its 2022-2023 season this past with a performance of historic significance. For the first time in its history, before a sold out audience, the company unveiled Wagner’s Das Rheingold in a production designed to showcase the opera within its context as the first installment of Wagner’s monumental tetralogy.…

Absent from the stage of the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center since 2012, Atlanta Opera audiences welcomed back Mozart’s Don Giovanni this past Saturday with open arms, and for good reason. Mozart’s version of Don Juan, a perennial classic in the repertoire, has a guaranteed home in the operatic stages the world over, and Atlanta is no exception.…