By Rosie Rogers Florida Grand Opera’s production of Gregory Spears’s 2016 opera Fellow Travelers told a Lavender Scare love story with a sweetly melancholic score. With direction from Peter Rothstein, the smooth set changes produced a constant motion well-matched to the minimalism of the orchestra. Starring Hadleigh Adams and Andres Acosta as the two romantic leads, … [Read more...]
Thomas’s towering performance leads strong ‘Rigoletto’ at FGO
By Rosie Rogers Directed by Kathleen Belcher, Florida Grand Opera’s most recent production of Verdi’s Rigoletto -- seen at the Broward Center in Fort Lauderdale on March 31 -- was enjoyable overall, with experienced baritone Todd Thomas in the title role elevating the show. Placed in its traditional setting, long trains of dresses, towering stone walls, and a multicolored … [Read more...]
Season Preview 2021-22: The season in opera
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...]
FGO offers short contemporary operas, special concerts for season
By Robert Croan “Even in this time of COVID and other calamities, our need for music and art is ever present,” says Susan T. Danis, Florida Grand Opera’s general director and CEO. “We are excited to be performing in intimate yet socially distanced spaces that are perfect for a unique storytelling experience." In the time of COVID-19, an opera set during the AIDS crisis … [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...]
Arts buzz: Norton director Davis resigns; Morikiami to reopen grounds
WEST PALM BEACH — Elliot Bostwick Davis, CEO and director of the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach since March 2019, has resigned. “The events of the past months have impressed upon me the importance of being closer to my family and I’m looking forward to returning to Boston and beginning the next chapter of my life,” she said in a prepared statement. She declined to … [Read more...]
Soprano Lopez scores triumph in FGO’s ‘Butterfly’
By Robert Croan The title role in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly is one of the pinnacles for every opera soprano. Sandra Lopez has performed this arduous role more than 50 times in nine productions, and in her Broward Center performance Jan. 30 (the fifth of six in Florida Grand Opera’s current run; the last one is tonight) she came through the hurdles unscathed and victorious. … [Read more...]
Soprano returns to familiar turmoil for FGO’s ‘Butterfly’
By Robert Croan Puccini’s Madama Butterfly is one of the most popular operas in today’s repertory. It wasn’t always. The world premiere at Milan’s La Scala Opera, on Feb. 7, 1904, was met with hissing and boos, and had to be withdrawn after a single performance. In May of that year, for a production in Brescia, Puccini made some alterations, dividing the 90-minute Act 2 … [Read more...]
Singer searches for man inside the myth of Don Giovanni
By Robert Croan Mozart’s Don Giovanni was special from the time of its premiere in Prague in 1787: a great drama told in great music, with the combination amounting to something more than either would be on its own. Balancing comic and tragic elements in equal proportions, Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte called the opera a dramma giocoso (playful drama), … [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...]