Viardot vs Grisi

The Atlanta Opera opened its 2015-16 season with warmly received, though uneven, performances of Puccini’s eternal masterpiece La Boheme. The new production, the  brainchild of General and Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun, promised to once again (his words) reimagine the work for the benefit of today’s audience, a most suspect practice that tends to elicit a great deal of scrutiny from your friends at newoutpost.…

“A highway, a Walmart, and one of the most exciting Summer Opera Festivals in United States.” It is the line I often use when questioning friends marvel at my travel plans as we fill our modest backpacks with all essentials and head to Indianola, Iowa, to attend another season at Des Moines Metro Opera.…

Moving past the tragedy of Verdi’s Rigoletto, the Atlanta Opera changed gears and delighted audiences with performances of Mozart’s masterpiece “Le nozze di Figaro”, and the company should pride itself in the big success that it proved to be. The dimensions of the piece, though a mainstay of the standard repertoire, are surely daunting for any company: It is a very long opera with a large cast, filled with sprawling dramatic complications and musical pitfalls.…

Before I embark in this review of Capitol City Opera’s presentation of Mozart’s Die Entfuhrung aud dem Serail, a story. This is not my first brush with Atlanta’s most notorious fringe opera company. For that we must go back to 1992, a time when I, a self-prescribed boy dramatic soprano, found one of the company’s audition flyers in suburban Dunwoody.…

Against the forecast of five snow flurries that threatened to subjugate the Olympic city, the Atlanta Opera braved on, and despite having cancelled an important orchestra rehearsal per the mandatory Mayoral city shutdown, Rigoletto opened to a full house this past Saturday February 28.…

The Atlanta Opera opened its 2014-15 season with an enthusiastically received presentation of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. The opening of the season marks the turning of a new leaf for the company, it being the first planned season by its new General Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun.…

This October, Opera Carolina inaugurated its 2014-15 season with a run of spectacular presentations of Verdi’s first hit, Nabucco. Encouraged by the promise of such inspired casting, your friends at Newoutpost made sure to be present for the event. In fact, the opening night presentation of October 18 proved to be such an artistic success, your editor was obliged to endure the horrors of Megabus in order to attend the opera’s final performance on October 26.…

With the recent uproar hovering over San Diego Opera’s unexpected closing and its subsequent backlash, the unquenchable thirst to support the efforts of regional companies which soldier on despite overwhelming odds took over your friends at newoutpost. Our attention was drawn towards Nashville Opera, a regional outfit which last year earned a Grammy Award through the strength of its premiere recording of Robert Aldridge’s opera Elmer Gantry.…

The Atlanta Opera’s take on Gounod’s Faust was warmly received on its opening presentation on March 8, and with good reason: Gounod’s popular masterpiece can be nothing other than a surefire success when the intentions of the composer are honored. Though the evening was not free of the inevitable glitches that keep this art form interesting, the southern company’s effort managed to carry off a spectacle for both the eyes and the ears.…

Minnesota Opera’s world-class production of Verdi’s Macbeth proved the perfect accessory to the harsh winter conditions that befell the Twin Cities at the time of its premiere on January 25^th. The icy precipitation that shut down the Minnesota public school system did not thwart attendance to the ShakesVerdian piece at St.…