Festivities began no more obviously than with Copland’s three-minute Fanfare for the Common Man, one of ten declamatory works prompted by Eugene Goosens. His request to score the piece for brass…
Gaily Tripping Iolanthe at Young Victorian Theatre Company
This summer, Young Victorian Theatre Company offered as its production Iolanthe, the seventh of the fourteen operas written by W.S. Gilbert as librettist and Arthur Sullivan as composer. On opening…
Nail-Biting Susannah at Shakespeare Opera Theatre
For their first opera in this summer season of two, Shakespeare Opera Theatre opened with Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah, a tragedy based on the Biblical story of Susannah and the Elders.…
Wolf Trap Opera Salon Series With a Sweet Twist: Sophia Maekawa and Daniel O’Hearn
At the beginning of July, Wolf Trap Opera continued its Salon Series with a recital containing two very different presentations. Mezzo-soprano Sophia Maekawa began the program with a set of…
A Power Couple to Root For: Wayd and Aubrey Odle at The Barns at Wolf Trap
The second in Wolf Trap Opera’s series of recitals by Filene Artists, Wayd and Aubrey Odle’s presentation at the end of June proved to be another delightful evening of singing,…
Riotous comedy in Gerald Barry’s The Importance of Being Earnest at Garsington
Under the guiding hand of Jack Furness, this new production brings out all the surreal joy of Gerald Barry’s operatic adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s celebrated satire. It’s a first for…
Missa Papae Marcelli at the Tower of London (Spitalfields Festival)
This final concert from the 2026 Spitalfields Festival provided not only an excellent musical experience. It also offered the opportunity to visit one of the Tower of London’s two chapels,…
Exceptional Singing within an Unexceptional Staging of Macbeth from Longborough Festival Opera
The operas of Guiseppe Verdi have had an intermittent presence at Longborough over the last twenty-eight years with only Falstaff, La Traviata and Rigoletto making the cut. Now, Macbeth – the composer’s first foray into…
Britten’s Billy Budd Sails into Glyndebourne for a Magnificent Revival
If the English Channel is some dozen or so miles away from Glyndebourne, one can still sense the proximity of the sea in Britten’s nautical masterpiece that is Billy Budd. In…
Richard Wagner, Die Walküre from Munich
As a student in Berlin, Ludwig Feuerbach attended lectures from, among others, GWF Hegel and Friedrich Schleiermacher: far from an unusual combination, but prophetic for his subsequent development as the…
