Opera Review: Lips Inc.

The New York City Opera resurrects L'Amore di Tre Re.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Skirt thing: tenor Raffaele Abete engages in some unlikely fetishism in L'Amore di Tre Re.
Photo © 2018 The New York City Opera.

The New York City Opera exists now through a strange disguise, as a kind of hybrid company presenting a few shows each year at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater and a few others at smaller spaces around New York. This week featured the company's first production in decades of Italo Montemezzi's  L'Amore di Tre Re, in a new staging by company general manager Michael Capasso. This opera is like a collision between every great love story: Tristan, Otello and Pelleas et Melisande packed into a lean ninety-minute score.

Opera Review: We're Sending Our Love Down the Well

The City Opera interrogates Dolores Claiborne.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

This job is murder: Vera Donovan (Jessica Tyler Wright, left) lectures the title character (Lisa Chavez) in
a scene from Dolores Claiborne. Photo by Sarah Shatz © 2017 New York City Opera.

In its heyday, the stage of the New York City Opera was a laboratory for experimentation and the presentation of operas on the cutting edge. Depending on the season, said experiments included dusty works of the high Baroque, long-forgotten bel canto treasures or, most frequently, the unloved bastard child of Europe: American modern opera. This week, Michael Capasso's reborn City Opera chose the latter: the long-overdue New York premiere of Tobias Picker's 2013 opera Dolores Claiborne.

Opera Review: Ding, Dong, Ditch

New York City Opera dredges up La Campana Sommersa.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Ring-a-ding-ding. The titular La Campana sommersa (left) with L'Ondino (Michael Chiodi,
Rautandelein (Brandie Sutton, center) and Fauno (Glenn Seven Allen, in leggings) at New York City Opera.
Photo by Sarah Shatz for New York City Opera © 2017.

This week, the New York City Opera offered La Campana Sommersa ("The Sunken Bell") by Ottorino Respighi. This is an opera that has lain neglected at the bottom of the repertory for many years. A sensation in Hamburg, Germany when it premiered in 1927, La Campana made it as far as New York and the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. There, it sunk to the bottom of the repertory where it has lain undisturbed since 1929.

Opera Review: A Tale of Two Opera Companies

The resuscitated City Opera offers a verismo double bill.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

That's show biz: Canio (Francesco Anile) menaces his unfaithful Nedda (Jessica Rose Cambio)
in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. Photo by Sarah Shatz © 2016 New York City Opera

Those who have followed the New York City Opera through its recent cycle of death, rebirth and reincarnation know that the man at the helm of this new version of New York's "other" opera company is Michael Capasso. For many years, Mr. Capasso helmed Dicapo Opera, a boutique company on the Upper East Side that provided a welcome alternative to New Yorkers not wanting to make the pilgrimage to Lincoln Center. His company folded in 2013, around the same time that City Opera did, and it makes a kind of sense that he is the head of that larger company's revival effort.

City Opera Resurrection Enters Next Stage

"Renaissance" dropped from name as company announces spring season.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

"It's alive!" As Baron von FRONK-en-steen, Gene Wilder exults in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein.
Image from Young Frankenstein © 1975 Universal Pictures.

Today, the New York City Opera took the next steps toward regaining its place in the city's operatic community. The company, which sputtered back to life with a new production of Tosca last month, has announced a slate of a concert and two operas for the spring season, and dropped the word "Renaissance" from its name.

Opera Review: Night at the Museum

New York City Opera Renaissance presents Tosca.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Painted set design depicting the Church of Sant'Andrea della Valle in Rome.
Painting by Adolfo Hohenstein, © 2016 New York City Opera Renaissance.

This week, at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater, located at the north bastion of the Time Warner Center, the New York City Opera officially came back to life. Now dubbed New York City Opera Renaissance, the company's first offering since coming out of Chapter 11 is the same opera it started with way back in 1944: Puccini's Tosca. With its painted trompe l'oeil flats and discount rococo furniture, this was a very traditional, somewhat stodgy production, using the set and costume designs by Adolfo Hohenstein that date from the opera's world premiere in 1900.

They're Back From the Dead

And they're ready for Tosca: The New York City Opera Renaissance.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Original art from Iron Maiden's No Prayer for the Dying.
Painting by Derek Riggs © 1990 Iron Maiden/CBS Records.

The above headline suits the giddy anticipation that some opera lovers in New York have regarding the resurrection of the New York City Opera, the long-running company that bit the dust in 2013. In stories reported yesterday in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, it was announced this week that the New York City Opera Renaissance will move forward with its plans to bring the historic company out of bankruptcy and get back to the business of putting operas on the stage.