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.