By Márcio Bezerra A 15-year-old geisha is bought in marriage and later abandoned by an American naval officer in — of all places — Nagasaki. The storyline of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly is ripe with political and gender-related controversies. Yet, most traditional productions avoid tackling the problematic subjects head-on. That was the case with Palm Beach … [Read more...]
PB Opera’s ‘Carmen’ a study in strong women
By Rosie Rogers What kind of woman is Carmen? Since the premiere of Georges Bizet’s Carmen in 1875 she has been many different things. She can be a dangerous femme fatale, a proto feminist icon, or just another operatic woman doomed to die. In Palm Beach Opera’s Jan. 28 performance of Carmen, J’Nai Bridges’ Carmen fits none of these archetypes. She was fully human — … [Read more...]
Strong second cast in Verdi’s ‘Ballo’ closes FGO season
By Robert Croan Antonio Somma’s libretto for Verdi’s A Masked Ball was originally based on the assassination in 1792 of Swedish King Gustav III. The political situation in Europe in the 1850s, however, was too volatile for the censors to pass on such a sensitive subject, so by the time the opera had its premiere in Rome in 1859, the locale had been moved from Sweden to … [Read more...]