Suggested reading: Silver Queen: The Fabulous Story of Baby Doe Tabor (1988), Caroline Bancroft The Legend of Baby Doe: The Life and Times of the Silver Queen of the West (1989), John Burk The ...
La Forza del Destino announces its intended theme forcefully in its title, but it really doesn't deliver. The libretto is a mess, a poorly structured story in which unbelievable coincidences, dead characters returning to duel again (in this production, ...
Seattle Opera took the kudos in 1998 for its production of Tristan und Isolde, gloriously cast with Ben Heppner and Jane Eaglen, who seem, by virtually unanimous worldwide critical acclaim, to be not only the ideal singers for these ...
All too often, theatrical works don't come alive on the stage or screen, due to a lack of dramatic tension. Dramatic tension requires conflict and conflict sets up an emotional need in the viewer for resolution. Verdi was adept ...
Is it interesting that what some consider the world most perfect opera, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, is about a consciousless cad? Mozart’s retelling of the Don Juan legend is a study in contrasts, light vs. dark and pure vs. evil. The ...
The assassination of a king at a masked ball is an event rife with dramatic possibilities, so it is no wonder that when King Gustavus III of Sweden was shot in the back at just such an event in ...
Online references on Mozart Countless dozens of Ph.D theses must be written about Mozart's The Magic Flute and yet it is so lively with elements of fantasy and free-flying imagination that it is often ...
Suggested reading: Reminiscences of Rimsky-Korsakov (1985), Vasilii Vasilevich Yastrebtsev The Literary Lorgnette: Attending Opera in Imperial Russia (2000), Julie A. Buckler Rimsky-Korsakov wrote a dozen or so full length operas, some of which ...
By Giacomo Puccini Libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica San Francisco Opera November 16-December 7, 2008 http://www.sfopera.com/ Paris, poverty and passion; they always seem to go together but never quite as beautifully as in Puccini’s “La Boheme.” A combination ...
It begins with murder and ends in damnation: Mozart’s rather bleak follow up to The Marriage of Figaro, and is, if anything, even more politically incendiary in its depiction of the licentiousness of the gentry than its more controversial predecessor. ...
