Opera Review: Just a Small Town Girl

Emmeline takes off at Manhattan School of Music.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Living in her lonely world: Blair Cagney as Emmeline.
Photo by Carol Rosegg for the Manhattan School of Music.

Composer Tobias Picker returned to his alma mater,  the Manhattan School of Music last week bringing a new staging of his first opera, Emmeline. A searing re-telling of the Oedipus myth among the hardscrabble folks of a small New England town, this opera helped put the Santa Fe Opera Festival on the map. Here, the work received a new staging from director Thaddeus Strassberger, and an update to the libretto to better reflect the troubled 21st century. Touches like home shopping channel footage and even texting (used brilliantly in the projected titles at one point made the whole show a reflection on the current screwed-up state of affairs in this country.

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.