Opera Review: It Ain't Exactly Shakespeare

Loft Opera mounts the Rossini Otello.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A word before you go: Otello (Bernard Holcomb) assaults Desdemona (Cecilia Lopez) in Rossini's opera.
Photo by Robert Altman for LoftOpera.

LoftOpera opened its 2017 season last night, choosing LightSpace Studio, a high-ceilinged, white-walled warehouse on Flushing Avenue in Bushwick as the venue for the company's first staging of Rossini's Otello. Yes, you read that right. There's a (now mostly forgotten) Rossini version of this Shakespeare story, written back in 1816 and a pinnacle of the repertory before it was eclipsed by the Giuseppe Verdi opera from 1887. This performance marked the first New York staging in forty years.

Opera Review: Blood and Chocolate

LoftOpera mounts Verdi's Macbeth.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Uneasy lies the head: Macbeth (Craig Irvin, center)
sees Banco's ghost in Verdi's Macbeth. 
Photo by Robert Altman © 2016 LoftOpera.

LoftOpera, that entertaining and ambitious company co-founded by step-siblings Brianna Maury and Daniel Ellis-Ferris has capped their 2016 season with their first grand opera, a new production of Verdi's Macbeth. For this show, Loft made an inspired if chilly choice, a long, high, recently renovated industrial space located in the heart of Brooklyn Navy Yard. The building will soon to be home to the Mast Brothers' new chocolate factory.