Festival Preview: New York Opera Festival 2019

The multi-borough opera festival is back, and bigger and better than ever.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

We will be swiping our way to the opera next month as the multi-borough
New York Opera Festival kicks into high gear.

This current opera season is in its endgame but that doesn't mean we're done yet. Starting Saturday, the New York Opera Festival  launches for its fourth year. featuring performances all around the city of familiar operas, oratorios, chamber operas and new contemporary works focusing on women's and LGBT issues. This exciting slat is bewildering to behold but Superconductor is here to walk you through it even though we're not going to plan your schedule for you.

Great Opera Performances: Spring 2018

Here's the best of the best from the second half of the season.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

This was an incredibly busy and fascinating few months in the New York opera community. Big houses like the Met sailed forth with good efforts even as they found themselves in a swirling sea of scandal. The Prototype Festival had a strong showing, and a performance of Tristan und Isolde gave compelling reasons to travel to Cleveland, Ohio. Here's the best of 2018 so far.

Opera Review: A Shooting in the Bronx

The Bronx Opera mounts Der Freischütz.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Kaspar (Michael Nansel) tempts Max (Michael Celentano) with magic bullets
and some sort of tipple in camping mugs in a scene from Der Freischütz.
Photo by John Bruno for the Bronx Opera Company.

Shots rang out Sunday afternoon on the campus of Lehman College, located next to the Jerome Avenue subway depot in the heart of the Bronx. The occasion though was entirely aboveboard: the last of four Bronx Opera performances of Weber's Der Freischütz. The 1821 opera by Carl Maria von Weber. Der Freischütz (the title translates to "The Free-Shooter") is a regular treat in German opera houses but a rarity in the United States. It is the most important German opera of the early 19th century, establishing what German opera was and could be and pointing the way toward the mid-century operatic revolution of Richard Wagner.

Festival Preview: They're All Over the Map

NY OperaFest 2018 brings music to the masses.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Bronx Opera staging of Sir John in Love. The company will mount Der Freischütz as part
of NY Opera Fest 2018. Photo © 2018 Bronx Opera courtesy Unison Media.

The Metropolitan Opera's spring 2018 season is in its last weeks but the opera season rolls ahead undaunted. This week marks the start of the annual NY Opera Fest, a coalition between a number of the exceptional small companies that dot New York, members all of the New York Opera Alliance.. From pyramids in South Brooklyn to a hunt through the wilderness of the North Bronx. the city resounds with a cornucopia of opera productions.