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.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Dialogues des Carmélites

Francis Poulenc's dark opera combines religion, politics and history to devastating effect.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Isabel Leonard is Sister Blanche de la Force in Dialogues des Carmélites.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2019 The Metropolitan Opera. 

The Met ends its season with this grim and brilliant 20th century opera, in its justifiably famous staging by John Dexter. Three performances only.

Concert Review: The Bigger Bang Theory

The New York Philharmonic premieres Thomas Larcher's Kenotaph.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

A bigger bang: Semyon Bychkov, on podium leads the New York Philharmonic.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2019 The New York Philharmonic.

In his Symphony No. 2, "Kenotaph", the Austrian composer Thomas Larcher employs a bewildering variety of percussion instruments. Ranging from conventional drums to items found in kitchens and garages, this battery serves as the harsh and unyielding reminder of the cruelty and misery running rampant on our globe in this still-young century. On Thursday night at the New York Philharmonic, this young work was paired with a symphony of great intellectual rigor, the Fourth by Johannes Brahms. This was the second of four scheduled performances this week at David Geffen Hall.

Opera Review: He Sleeps With the Fishes (and Everyone Else)

The Juilliard Opera mounts Don Giovanni.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Take my wife, please. Masetto (Gregory Feldman, right) looks on as the Don (Hubert Zapiór)
woos Zerlina (Jessica Niles) in a scene from Act I of Don Giovanni.
Photo by Richard Termine.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's music is timeless. But are the ribald, sexist opera libretti of Lorenzo da Ponte still workable on the stage in this era of #metoo? That is the question asked by the Juilliard Opera and director Emma Griffin. Her new staging of Don Giovanni bowed Wednesday night at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater. In its two acts, Ms. Griffin sought to turn this opera, the story of a rabid sexual predator at play in the streets of Seville, Spain on its head and deliver a message about today's sexual ethics.

She partly succeeded.