It may be that the biggest news of the American operatic world has been the drama over at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, which has only just settled things with its crews after 18 months of COVID hiatus. But local opera companies have stayed in the game, too, perhaps none more so than Palm Beach Opera, which mounted an outdoor festival in February at the iThink Financial … [Read more...]
Arts buzz: Kravis posts classical lineup; Buffett in Delray; PB Opera announces season
WEST PALM BEACH — Major performers and ensembles in the classical music world have been scheduled for the coming Regional Arts season at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, in the expectation that vaccinated audiences can return to the West Palm Beach venue. The season, announced April 6, will feature a dozen programs, and include appearances by the much-beloved … [Read more...]
Dozen young singers make for a beautiful PB Opera Liederabend
Another night when Palm Beach Opera beats the virus with an outdoor song recital. This time the venue was the spacious veranda of the well-groomed National Croquet Center. Twelve singers, six each from the Benenson Young Artist and Apprentice Artist programs, were accompanied by the distinguished pianist Ksenia Leletkina, whose doctorate is from the Eastman School of Music … [Read more...]
Amid happy innovations, PB Opera mounts beautiful ‘Bohème’
The pundits tells us life will be different after the pandemic. By switching to outdoor performances Palm Beach Opera may have stumbled on a panoply of new ideas for its future. Using the iThink Financial Amphitheatre at the South Florida Fairgrounds, with singers’s voices slightly enhanced, made for a reproductive quality not usually heard in smaller houses. Also, having … [Read more...]
Superb singers make PB Opera’s ‘Flute’ magical amid pandemic
It was different because of COVID: Palm Beach Opera held its season outdoors at the 6,000-seat iThink Financial Anphitheatre at the Fairgrounds (just one mile from the Florida Turnpike at the Southern Boulevard exit). The first of the major American opera companies to bravely adapt to an untested venue, the troupe’s general director, David Walker, thanked the people who made … [Read more...]
PB Opera ready for outdoor festival, with Met-style casts
By Robert Croan “And then the pandemic punched us in the face.” That’s how it felt to David Walker, in his first season as Palm Beach Opera’s general director – a post he took over after Daniel Biaggi resigned in 2019. “It was going so well,” says Walker, 54. “Puccini’s 'Turandot' [the opening production in January 2020] was our highest-grossing show in 12 years. … [Read more...]
Season Preview 2020-21: Area’s opera companies move to outdoor festivals, concerts
New York’s Metropolitan Opera announced in September that it would be canceling all its shows for the 2020-21 season, but plans to reopen in September 2021 with American composer and jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, the first opera by a Black composer the Met has presented in its 140-year history. The area’s opera companies face the same … [Read more...]
PB Opera’s ‘Hansel’ makes deft use of small Crest surroundings
By Dennis D. Rooney Those of us who as children read the Grimm Fairy Tales, or better yet, had them read to us, know all about creepy castles, evil forests, wicked stepmothers, wily foxes and sanguinary wolves, ungrateful kings, scheming dwarfs, and other bad actors we came to know from the folk tales collected by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm in the early 19th century. There … [Read more...]
Season Preview 2019-20: Opera companies playing it mostly safe for coming season
The three major opera companies in the South Florida region are sticking to the mostly tried-and-true this season, but there are enough surprises to make it a good few months for the opera veteran, too. Palm Beach Opera: Over the summer, General Director Daniel Biaggi stepped down from his post in search of new challenges, but will stick around for a little while to allow … [Read more...]
At PB Opera, a fun ‘Fledermaus’ with an aria surprise
A little Italian magic came as the most unexpected surprise Saturday night during the Palm Beach Opera’s presentation of Johann Strauss II’s operetta Die Fledermaus. Playing Prince Orlofsky en travesti was the celebrated mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, resplendent in Russian battle dress and a white beard. Pressed in Act II to sing something (itself an interpolation into the … [Read more...]