By Robert Croan Florida Grand Opera has a real winner in its revival of Kevin Puts’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Silent Night, which opened at Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center on Nov. 15, and will be repeated in Fort Lauderdale’s Broward Center on Dec. 4 and 6. Commissioned and premiered by Minnesota Opera in 2011, Puts’s opera is based on a real World War I event that inspired … [Read more...]
‘Giovanni’ opens FGO’s 79th season in distinctive style
Although Lorenzo Da Ponte’s reading of the character best known as Don Juan is that he is an unrepentant rake who deserves perdition with a capital P, today’s opera directors have a dilemma on their hands: How exactly are we to understand Don Giovanni? As the focus of one of Mozart’s finest operas, it’s a crucial question. I’ve seen him depicted as a Las Vegas crime lord in … [Read more...]
FGO’s ‘Before Night Falls’ an important work, strongly cast
The life of Cuba after the Revolution of 1959 has been the subject of endless amounts of prose and heated arguments, but it also makes a good subject for an opera. In May 2010, the Cuban-American composer Jorge Martín saw his opera on this subject, Before Night Falls, take the stage for the first time at the Fort Worth Opera in Texas. On Saturday night, he was on hand again … [Read more...]
Season Preview 2016-17: Opera
The coming season at the three regional opera companies has no milestones like last season did, with the wrap up of Sarasota Opera’s 28-year Verdi Cycle project or Florida Grand Opera’s staging of Mieczysaw Weinberg’s The Passenger, but the season has some very interesting events nonetheless, and savvy operagoers will find much to enjoy. Palm Beach Opera: The company enters … [Read more...]