Author: Daniel Vasquez

There’s a moment in Bellini’s Norma that never fails to punch me in the gut. As the opera reaches its final ensemble, the Druid High Priestess Norma, who by now has confessed her crimes to her people and has accepted her fate, turns to her father and tells him that she has borne children with the enemy and begs for their lives.…

Last weekend, the Minnesota Opera closed its 55th season with its first production of Massenet’s unjustly underperformed opera, Thais. Newoutpost’s ties with the mid-western company are strong (this blog, in fact, debuted with their production of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda back in the winter of 2011), and coupled with our desire to take part in this significant musical event, we embarked in yet another brief musical pilgrimage to beautiful St.…

To close the month of April and welcome May, the Atlanta Opera presented one of its most compelling casts and offered a memorable reading of Bizet’s immortal masterpiece, Carmen.

In a bold decision, the company handed the direction of this revival (the production premiered in our city in 2012,) to director Brenna Corner, a member of the Atlanta Opera Studio.…

Capitol City Opera, in its most ambitious production to date, presented Verdi’s La Traviata this past weekend. Your friends at newoutpost attended the final matinee performance on Sunday March 25, and though the overall impression of the performance was uneven, we can report that there were moments of lovely music making to be heard throughout the afternoon.…

Following the successful Parisian debut of his Lucie di Lammermoor at the Theatre de la Rennaissance in August of 1839, Gaetano Donizetti moved swiftly to establish himself in the nineteenth century’’s most prestigious musical capital by announcing four additional premieres in the city of lights.…

On Saturday November 4th, the Atlanta Opera opened its 38th season by unveiling a new production of Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman”. “The Flying Dutchman,” or “Der Fliegende Hollander,” is the only Wagnerian work that the Atlanta Opera has staged in its thirty eight year history, and as we walked out of the auditorium following Friday night’s performance, your friends at newoutpost could not contain the flood of thoughts that we humbly offer here as the introduction to our write up.…

Back in 2003, when scheduling issues forced the company to leave its home at the Fox Theater, the company was found itself moving to the nearby Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic center. Opera patrons of that period will recall a barn like venue, not constructed with the acoustics in mind to flatter the operatic genre.…

This past Sunday, Opera Carolina made a significant leap forward in the southeastern operatic scene by unveiling its staging Puccini’s unjustly neglected masterpiece, La Fanciulla del West. While the opera has enjoyed a healthy amount of attention at the major operatic hubs periodically, it has been considered a high gamble for regional companies, which routinely overlook it in favor of its assumingly less chancier siblings (Tosca, La Boheme and Madama Butterfly).…

Last Saturday night, as the audience readied itself for the Atlanta Opera’s opening performance of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale for the first time in the company’s history, the ante was unexpectedly raised. Following his customary salutations and the announcement of next season’s offerings, General Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun reported on the indisposition of the evening’s Ernesto, tenor Ji-Min Park, and confidently predicted an overwhelming success for his cover, Argentinian tenor Santiago Ballerini.…

Absent from its stage for 22 years, Verdi’s Macbeth returned to the New Orleans Opera this past weekend for two performances (November 11 and 13 to be exact). As it came to pass, your friends at newoutpost just happened to be in town on unrelated business and invariably asked “What better way to cap the most intense and distasteful presidential campaign in our lifetime than to simmer in the dark world of Macbeth?”…