Opera Review: The Start of Something Beautiful

Will Crutchfield's Teatro Nuovo tackles Tancredi.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Warrior woman: Tamara Mumford as Tancredi confronts the chorus.
Photo by Steven Pisano for Teatro Nuovo courtesy Unison Media.

For the past twenty years, Will Crutchfield brought the sound of bel canto opera to the Caramoor Festival. Now, in 2018, the conductor and musicologist has turned impresario, launching Teatro Nuovo, a new series of opera performances held in the less sylvan but more sturdy environs of the Arts Center at the State University of New York at Purchase. An ugly brick block-house on the outside, the Purchase venue is everything Caramoor is not: acoustically live, air conditioned and endowed with theatrical basics (like a proscenium arch and orchestra pit) that are not readily available at the Venetian Theater.

Opera Review: Journey's End In Lovers' Meeting

L'Amour de Loin at the Metropolitan Opera.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Susanna Philips (top) Tamara Mumford (left) and Eric Owens in L'Amour de Loin.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2016 The Metropolitan Opera.

Last night, the Metropolitan Opera played its last 2016 performance of Kaija Saariaho's opera L'Amour de Loin. This the first opera by a female composer mounted at the Met since 1903, and it served as a kind of manifesto for this company's mission in this uncertain new century.L'Amour de Loin (the title means "Love From Afar") is Ms. Saariaho's first opera, and it premiered at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris in 2000. This production featured Susanna Philips and Eric Owens, American stars who have risen to prominence in the last decade, as well as the stage direction of Robert Lepage, an artist whose successes at the Met are still overshadowed by the colossal failure of his staging of Wagner's Ring.

Opera Review: Figaro's Bigger Brother

Caramoor exhumes Rossini's Aureliano in Palmira.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Will Crutchfield (left) conducting the chorus at Caramoor.
The maestro led the Orchestra of St. Luke's in Rossini's Aureliano in Palmira on Saturday.
Photo by Gabe Palacios © 2016 Caramoor Festival for the Performing Arts.

Giachino Rossini was one of the most prolific and pragmatic opera composers of the nineteenth century. A master of melodious arias and rousing choral crescendoes, he composed opera naturally and easily, tossing off a string of thirty-eight operas before retiring from the stage at that same age. Aureliano in Palmira was written for La Scala, and was an ambitious work in the opera seria mode. However, it tanked on opening night and sunk into the mists of opera history.

Opera Review: The Young Poisoner's Handbook

Angela Meade's Lucrezia Borgia bows at Caramoor.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Pretty poison: Angela Meade is a deadly Lucrezia Borgia at Caramoor.
Photo by Dario Acosta © 2012 AngelaMeade.com

Although Gaetano Donizetti was one of the most prolific and popular composers of the 19th century, only a handful of his 71 operas have survived into the regular repertory of the world's opera houses. A recent revival of interest in bel canto repertory has led to a Donizetti revival, with operas like Anna Bolena and Maria Stuarda emerging from the fog of history.