INTERVIEW: Bob Neu on Skylark Opera Theatre’s Immersive Donny G. Arts Music Opera Theatre by Basil Considine - June 12, 2017June 12, 2017 Photo by Vera Mariner. This week, Skylark Opera Theatre opens a site-specific production of Don Giovanni at the Women's Club in Minneapolis. This performance, which will snake through different rooms in the venue, is the company's second outing since its financial and artistic reorganization last year. The Arts Reader's Basil Considine
DC REVIEW: Delectable Appetizers in Les Indes Galantes (Opera Lafayette) Arts Music Opera Theatre by Basil Considine - June 2, 2017July 5, 2017 The Opera Lafayette Orchestra. Ryan Brown leads with his violin (standing, center). Sketch by Basil Considine. The Twin Cities opera scene is blessed with several opera companies whose specialties range from the popular canon to new repertoire to site-specific and unusual spectacle. If your tastes run to Baroque operas, however, your odds of
INTERVIEW: Sharpening La Rondine: Boston Opera Collaborative and the Swallow’s Diet Arts Music Opera Theatre by Basil Considine - May 18, 2017May 18, 2017 Reworking or remixing opera classics is one of the hot current trends in American opera circles. Skylark Opera Theatre's production of The Tragedy of Carmen certainly caught local opera fans' attention with a heavily streamlined, 90-minute version of the classic opera by Bizet, with packed houses and fans clamoring to see this up-close-and-personal treatment. Transforming
REVIEW: Patchy La Bohème Shines Through (Minnesota Opera) Arts Dance Music Opera Theatre Visual Arts by Basil Considine - May 10, 2017June 24, 2018 Scott Quinn (Rodolfo) and Nicole Cabell (Mimì) in Minnesota Opera's production of La Bohème. Photo by Dan Norman. Minnesota Opera's new production of La Bohème is uneven. There are parts that are exceedingly beautiful and engaging, and there are some that are noticeably not on the same level as the others. Call it
INTERVIEW: Composer Ketty Nez on Writing Opera – Music, Words, and All Arts Music Opera by Basil Considine - April 29, 2017April 30, 2017 Last December, the Metropolitan Opera staged Kaija Saariaho's L'Amour de Loin, its first production of an opera written by a female composer since 1903. William Robin of the New York Times took the occasion to interview 10 female composers about their experience writing opera and working as composers; the headline read,
FEATURE: Double Casting / INTERVIEW: Soprano Miriam Khalil on Bohème and More (Minnesota Opera) Arts Music Opera Theatre by Basil Considine - April 23, 2017April 22, 2017 A photo collage of soprano Miriam Khalil. See the originals and more at MiriamKhalil.com. The economics and programming of opera during the so-called Golden Age of Opera – the mid-19th-century up to the start of the First World War – were very different than they are today. Most opera companies operated on
INTERVIEW: Soprano Nicole Cabell on Mimi, Bohème, and More (Minnesota Opera) Arts Music Opera Theatre by Basil Considine - April 22, 2017April 22, 2017 A photo collage of soprano Nicole Cabell on- and offstage. See the original photos and more at Nicole-Cabell.com. Two weeks from today, Minnesota Opera opens the last production in its 2016-2017 season: Giacomo Puccini's classic opera La Bohème. The opera's flowing, through-composed score and concise verismo narrative originally took audiences aback; within
REVIEW: Youthful West Side Story Runs Scared (Ordway) Arts Dance Music Opera Theatre by Basil Considine - April 6, 2017April 7, 2017 Desiree Davar as Anita (center) with the Shark Girls in the Ordway Center for the performing Arts production of West Side Story. Photo by Rich Ryan. Where should one begin with an iconic musical like West Side Story? Composer Leonard Bernstein began by saying, "I'd always thought of West Side Story in terms of teenagers." This focus is
NEWS: Walker Art Center Transforms into Giant Robot, Stops Monster Menace (April Fools) Arts Dance Dining Lifestyle Movies Music Opera Theatre Visual Arts by Basil Considine - April 1, 2017April 1, 2017 The W.A.L.K.E.R. giant robot prepares to deal a finishing blow to the monster that menaced Minneapolis this morning. The Minneapolis Monster Menace has come to an end. In a stunning development, the Walker Art Center transformed into a giant robot and defeated the monster menacing Uptown in a climactic battle on
REVIEW: Good Cider from Twisted Apples (Nautilus Music Theater) Arts Music Opera Theatre by Basil Considine - March 29, 2017March 29, 2017 Minnie Pearson (Norah Long), Ray Perason (Gary Briggle), and Hal Winters (Eric Morris) in Twisted Apples. If your life is missing opera and you can't wait until La Bohème arrives in May, see Twisted Apples. For that matter, if you like opera, period – or stories told with interesting, beautiful, and emotional turns of