Past Production Reviews
4Musically, the performance rarely disappointed. Mark Ermler, music director of the Bolshoi Opera, knows this work intimately and proved it. His conducting caught the shadings of the first act and did what could be done to disguise the blatancy of the second. Sheri Greenawald was a more healthy and obvious Natasha than the role ideally requires, but she sang with her usual professionalism. The Soviet baritone Vladimir Chernov delivered Andrei's tortured monologues in clear-toned, almost tenorial upper tones and was believable as the gentle humanist and war-hater. Peter Kazaras as the perfect gentleman Pierre and James Hoback as that nasty little seducer Anatol also were persuasive.
Seattle Opera’s opening night performance brought the house to its feet even before the final orchestral cadences sounded, and Seattle critics doled out generous praise in the following day’s newspapers.
The new staging of "Madama Butterfly" offered by Pittsburgh Opera for the first time on Saturday night employs some unusual musical and dramatic turns on the path to the excruciating pathos composer Giacomo Puccini created in this popular opera. The production features an effective cast led by soprano Maria Luigia Borsi, who gave a stunningly dramatic and well sung performance of the title role, Cio-Cio San. While the production originated with Boston Lyric Opera and the costumes were designed for Utah Symphony and Opera, Crystal Manich's new stage direction had great impact and was mostly convincing.Mika Shigematsu was superb as Cio-Cio San's servant Suzuki, a fine singer with personality who showed surprising spunkiness in her first interactions with Pinkerton and Sharpless, the U.S. Consul in Nagasaki, Japan, where the opera takes place in the late 19th century. Tenor Bryan Hymel as Pinkerton showed his vocal strength most impressively at the end of the opera in the brief passage after Cio-Cio San has committed suicide. Secondary roles were generally well handled, including Joseph Gaines' colorful marriage broker Goro and Dwayne Croft's agonized Sharpless. Manich was masterly in presenting the dramatic confrontation between Cio-Cio San and her community after she renounces Japanese culture to become an American wife. She was imaginative in using the minimalist set and achieved strong character definition and interactions throughout. Cindy Limauro's lighting design was exceptionally creative, adding many looks through geometrically highlighted areas of the stage and changes of lighting angle and tint.
It doesn't matter whether “Rigoletto” is a father-daughter story, an intrigue of political decay, a tale of unrequited love or a costumed affair with beautiful music, Giuseppe Verdi's 1851 masterpiece doesn't grow old. The varied elements came together almost seamlessly Friday night at downtown's Municipal Auditorium in the San Antonio Opera's final production of its 2009-10 season. Talent flowed from the stage at every turn of this emotionally complex opera. A great deal of the credit should go to Sam Mungo's well-paced stage direction and Enrique Patrón de Rueda's baton. The pit orchestra absolutely glowed and glittered throughout. The cast members won the evening, however, as they ignited their characters through the inflections of their singing instead of relying on acting, the costumes or the set, although all of those added to the opera's success. The most striking stage presence came from baritone Daniel Sutin as the court's jester and title character. His singing effectively articulated his ardent overprotectiveness, as his daughter's father, and his obsession with a curse placed upon him in the first scene.Soprano Audrey Elizabeth Luna, as Rigoletto's daughter, Gilda, delivered the best singing. Luna hit all her high notes in her big aria, “Caro nome,” which launches the opera's doomed love affair. Tenor Michael Wade Lee, as the duke of Mantua, executed the role of the despicable villain to the hilt. The story wouldn't work without the duke's shameless attitude toward women. Yet, Lee effortlessly tossed off, wonderfully, what may be opera's most famous aria, “La donna è mobile,” without making it sound like a cliché. Minor characters held up their end. The assassin Sparafucile, sung by Matthew Trevino, and Sparafucile's overly senuous sister, Maddalena, portrayed by Dana Beth Miller, stood out in the stormy final act.
