By Robert Croan For her first production as general director and CEO of Florida Grand Opera, Maria Todaro came up with an original, innovative concept of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) by Jeffrey Marc Buchman, in which the protagonists were present-day teenagers playing immersive fantasy role-playing board games --- something like Dungeons and Dragons, according … [Read more...]
FGO’s ‘Agrippina’ has fascinating staging, recitative-heavy editing
By Rosie Rogers Florida Grand Opera closed out its season this month with an ambitious production of Handel’s Agrippina. First performed in 1709, the 313-year-old Agrippina is a tongue-in-cheek tale of political ambition and sexual competition. This production made an admirable musical effort inside of an interesting, if somewhat confusing, framing device. This Agrippina … [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...]
PB Opera scores with stylish, fast-moving ‘Giovanni’
Mozart called his opera Don Giovanni an opera buffa, and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte called it a “dramma giocoso” (playful drama), but the work’s ending, with its protagonist being swallowed by the earth after the statue of a man he killed comes to dinner and implores him to repent, has seemed to many stage directors of the past two centuries to define the opera as a piece … [Read more...]
Superb singing, direction make South Florida SO’s ‘Porgy’ a triumph
By Robert Croan It’s an admirable and ambitious undertaking for a regional orchestra to put on a staged production of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. It’s also expensive ($350,000 budget in this case) and risky. South Florida Symphony took those risks, went all the way and offered Porgy and Bess as its featured production this season, with performances – led by music director … [Read more...]
PB Opera offers nights of song and fun for the summer
By Dale King Summers are usually fairly quiet for the Palm Beach Opera, much less hectic than the regular season that will launch in December with a rising-stars concert followed after with three mainstage opera productions of works by Verdi, Mozart and Johann Strauss II. But this summer, the company is making its presence felt with a new series called Summer Opera … [Read more...]
Ebony Chorale, PB Opera’s Young Artists unite in electrifying crossover
By Dale King As genres go, opera and African-American spirituals can easily stand on their own. But what would happen if performers of both long-established styles were to join voices in a single, combined program? The Palm Beach Opera and The Ebony Chorale of the Palm Beaches put that supposition to the test Thursday night in an epic collaboration, a show called … [Read more...]