Opera Review: We Don't Have To Take Our Shoes Off

Juilliard Opera lifts off with Jonathan Dove's Flight.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Stuck in the aurport with you: the Refugee (Jakub Józef Orliński, left) and anunhappy couple in a scene from Flight. Photo by Rosalie O'Connor for The Juilliard School. 

It is rare to encounter a contemporary opera that is, at once musically rich, dramatically moving and funny as hell. Such an opera is Jonathan Davis' 1998 opus Flight, which landed on the stage of Juilliard's Peter Jay Sharp Theater on Wednesday night. This is the second New York production of this contemporary masterpiece, with a witty libretto owing something to Lorenzo Da Ponte. Flight is a comedy for our modern age, chronicling the travails of anonymous travelers trapped in an airport terminal overnight, their trips delayed by an electrical storm.