Opera Review: Don't Lose Your Head

New Amsterdam Opera performs Massenet's Hérodiade.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The concert performance of Hérodiade (with mezzo Janara Kellerman in blue
in the title role) by New Amsterdam Opera on Friday night. Photo by the author.

Jules Massenet's 1881 opera Hérodiade return to the stage in New York on Friday night after an absence of 26 years. The work was staged in a concert version by the New Amsterdam Opera, Keith Chambers' small but ambitious project that offers concert performances of repertory that terrifies some larger companies. Here, Mr. Chambers and his forces were in the Center at West Park, a landmarked Presbyterian Church on the Upper West Side in the middle of a lengthy restoration project. The performance was umbrella'd under the ongoing New York Opera Fest, a two month coalition of smaller opera companies in and around New York.

Opera Review: There's Not a Lot of Money in Revenge

New Amsterdam Opera mounts La Forza del Destino.

by Paul J. Pelkonen 

Face-off: Tenor Errin Brooks (in profile) confronts baritone Stephen Gaertner
in La Forza del Destino at New Amsterdam Opera. Photo by Bidrum Vabish.

I have a confession to make. Up until yesterday, I had never heard of the New Amsterdam Opera. And then, on Friday afternoon on Facebook, a colleague and fellow critic mentioned that he was going to see their concert performance of Verdi’s La Forza del Destino ("The Force of Destiny") in the theater at Riverside church that very night. So it was my great pleasure to finds out that conductor Keith Chambers and his company were tackling Verdi’s most challenging opera in a concert performance.

What’s more, they did it with style.