REVIEWS


Reviews

Finn Phenom Takes on Schnittke and Mahler in Prague

May 19, 2023 | Clive Paget, Musical America
PRAGUE—Mahler’s First Symphony can be a tricky beast to program. Not quite long enough to stand alone, it’s capable of overshadowing a lightweight concerto, or worse, competing for attention with another showboat work. This May … » Read
 

Reviews

LA Opera's Otello Has All the Right Ingredients Save One

May 17, 2023 | Richard S. Ginell, Musical America
LOS ANGELES—Verdi’s great, penultimate opera Otello will always occupy a special place in the history of Los Angeles Opera. It was the company’s opening production in October 1986, an event that in hindsight shattered the … » Read
 

Reviews

Octogenarian Radicals Shine at Brooklyn's Long Play Fest

May 11, 2023 | David Patrick Stearns, Musical America
The 2023 Long Play Festival, May 5-7, emerged as a major event of the spring season, a 50-plus-performance cross-section of New York’s alt-classical sphere and its pioneers. Produced by Bang on a Can’s Julia Wolfe, David Lang, Michael … » Read
 

Reviews

At the Met: A Searing, Singular Don

May 7, 2023 | John Rockwell, Musical America
Ivo van Hove is controversial. Some love his overall work or individual productions. Others hate him/them. So even with interviews and some advance warning from his new staging of Don Giovanni in 2019 at the Paris Opera, the co-producer with the … » Read
 

Reviews

The World's Wife: Revenge of the Sidelined

May 5, 2023 | Clive Paget, Musical America
LONDON—Raw poetry doesn’t always make a coherent stage work, but Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife is a bracing exception. Her scabrous, thought-provoking, and frequently witty 1999 collection exploring women sidelined by … » Read
 

Reviews

Albert Herring, an Opera Ahead of Its Time

May 4, 2023 | Taylor Grant, Musical America
Until recently, gay characters in plays, motion pictures, novels, and even operas generally did not fare well. They were often the first to perish or to suffer unrequited love in more serious works—e.g., the plays of Tennessee Williams. … » Read
 

Reviews

At ENO: Górecki’s Sorrowful Songs, Beautifully Staged

May 3, 2023 | Mark Valencia, Musical America
LONDON—English National Opera’s conceptualization of Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 was dreamily beautiful to behold. In a work that deals in pain and anguish, that may not necessarily have been a good thing. And yet… … » Read
 

Reviews

Bohème Backwards: The Gimmick Doesn't Always Work

May 2, 2023 | Sarah Shay, Musical America
Puccini’s La bohème is a staple of the opera world, and it takes a very bold director to tinker around with it. Enter Yuval Sharon, a 2017 MacArthur Genius Grant awardee and current artistic director of the Detroit Opera who in  … » Read
 

Reviews

Wild Up Meets Julius Eastman in a True "Radical Adornment"

May 1, 2023 | David Patrick Stearns, Musical America
If Julius Eastman’s music seems to re-invent itself with every hearing, it’s partly because the late composer encouraged performers to make his music their own, sometimes in highly interventionist ways. At the three-concert event … » Read
 

Reviews

Van der Aa’s Blank Out: The Medium Befuddles the Message

May 2, 2023 | Steven Winn, Musical America
Michael van der Aa’s 70-minute chamber opera Blank Out is a case study in form trumping content. Presented by Cal Performances in its West Coast premiere April 28-29 at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, the Dutch auteur’s work employs … » Read
 
 

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