Opera Warhorses

Giacomo Puccini, who had no fluency in English, was drawn to the stage business, sets and avant-garde lighting in two of David Belasco’s Broadway plays - “Madam Butterfly” and “The Girl of the Golden West”. Although the plays, whose dialogue is impossibly out of step with 21st century sensibilities, are irrevocably sows ears as plays [...]

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The detractors of Jules Massenet, who wish all of his operas would disappear once and for all, experienced a near-fatal blow when his most performed opera, “Manon”, was revived in a brilliant new Los Angeles Opera production at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. A quartet of celebrities assured that the endeavor would make a splash in [...]

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Having attended the Mariinsky Theatre’s “Kirov Ring” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center October 6 through 11, 2006 (see my reviews elsewhere on this website), I wondered what would be the impact of a United States opera company adopting the Gergiev/Mariinsky approach to casting. In the Kirov Ring, conductor and intendant Valery Gergiev cast [...]

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