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  • Harvey Milk Reimagined

    Opera Parallele Co-Commission of Revision Hits the Mark

    By: Victor Cordell - Jun 02nd, 2025

    Harvey Milk became the first elected openly gay city official in the United States. Along with the notoriety, he became an icon and a victim of assassination. His story is told in a gripping revision of Stewart Wallace and Michael Korie's 1995 opera.

  • Guntram Performed by American Symphony Orchestra

    First opera of Richard Strauss

    By: Susan Hall - Jun 08th, 2025

    Leon Botstein, the ever-adventuresome conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra, brought Richard Strauss's first opera, Guntram, to Carnegie Hall. This early work by Strauss showcases a prolifically productive composer whose treasured operas and symphonic works would eventually become cornerstones of concert halls worldwide.

  • Fly by Night Dance Soars in New York

    Charming and Funny Extension of Dance Movement

    By: Susan Hall - Jun 08th, 2025

    Fly By Night Dance presented its annual New York Aerial Dance Festival at the Manhattan Movement and Arts Center. Founded by Julie Lutwick, the group is dedicated to pushing the boundaries of modern dance. This program demonstrated how storytelling can be enhanced through trapeze work, live music, and the recitation of poignant historic poems.

  • La Boheme

    San Francisco Opera's Record 46th Production

    By: Victor Cordell - Jun 09th, 2025

    In opera's most beloved work, Rodolfo and Mimi encounter love and tragedy, while Rodolfo and his three comrades share the Bohemian life of starving artists. Replete with memorable music, gentle comedy, and the inevitable death of the lead soprano, La Boheme, continues to deservedly fill opera houses almost in a class of its own.

  • Co-Founders

    ACT's Riveting World Premiere of a Bay Area Based Hip-Hop Musical

    By: Victor Cordell - Jun 14th, 2025

    Esata is an ace computer coder, and Conway has a high-tech innovation that lacks code. They join forces and aspire to develop the product at an incubator in San Francisco. The narrative follows this and several other subplots in an uplifting homage to the Bay Area, and especially, a love letter to Oakland.

  • Idomeneo

    San Francisco Opera Brings Out the Best of Mozart's Earliest Major Opera

    By: Victor Cordell - Jun 16th, 2025

    Drawn from classic Greek tragedy, the King of Crete begs an indulgence from Neptune to save him from raging waters. The price is that Idomeneo is to sacrifice the first person he sees on shore. That turns out to be his son. Idomeneo deals with internal conflict throughout.

  • Tartuffe

    Pocket Opera's Zany Production Based on the Classic Moliere Farce

    By: Victor Cordell - Jun 17th, 2025

    Orgon is taken in by the false piety of rapscallion Tartuffe. He wants his daughter to marry Tartuffe but arranges to make the fraudster his sole heir before the wedding occurs. Needless to say, this causes consternation and crisis to his blood family.

  • Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean: A New Musical

    This Cult Success as a Play and Movie Now a Musical

    By: Victor Cordell - Jun 23rd, 2025

    It is 1975. In the small west Texas town of McCarthy, unwed mother Mona leads a life in remembrance of the 1955 filming of "Giant" in nearby Marfa. Her claim to fame is that her son Jimmy Dean was fathered by the iconic actor James Dean while he was on location and shortly before his death. His "disciples" 20th reunion of his fatal car accident reveals friendship, conflict, and more denouement than you could shake a stick at.

  • Berkshire Festival Opera to Produce La Traviata

    Exciting Programs in Berkshires' Backyard

    By: Susan Hall - Jun 26th, 2025

    The Berkshire Opera Festival has restored world-class, fully-staged opera to the Berkshires.  Their  tenth anniversary season in Great Barrington features Giuseppe Verdi's masterpiece La Traviata at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center on August 23, 26, and 29.

  • About Time by Maltby and Shire

    At Goodspeed

    By: Karen Isaacs - Jul 05th, 2025

    About Time, the new Maltby and Shire revue that recently completed a run at About Time, the new Maltby and Shire seems inevitable, given that the pair previously composed the revues Starting Here, Starting Now (1976) and Closer Than Ever (1989).While Starting Here’s songs dealt with starting out in a big city and finding romance, Closer Than Ever’s songs dealt with subjects related to mid-life.

  • Jurassiq Parq: A Musiqal Parody

    A Fun Time with Raucous Theater at Oasis, San Francisco's LGBTQ Nightclub

    By: Victor Cordell - Jul 12th, 2025

    A spoof of the popular movie, this jukebox-musical-plus offers a great catalog of singalong pop and rock hits from the '80s and '90s along with broad and racy humor. The production values are impressive as Dr. Laura Dern and Dr. Jeff Goldblum try to save the world from the re-birth of dinosaurs.

  • Opera Comes to the Williamstown Festival

    Samuel Barber's Vanessa in a New Take by Heartbeat Opera

    By: Susan Hall - Jul 12th, 2025

    Vanessa is the first opera to be performed at the Williamstown Festival, running from July 17 through August 3. It will be produced by Heartbeat Opera, a company known for revitalizing underperformed masterpieces and breathing new life into opera’s  staples.

  • fuzzy at Barrington Stage Company

    A World Premiere Musical

    By: Charles Giuliano - Jul 13th, 2025

    The musical fuzzy is a puppet show for adults. This inventive production breaks all the rules. The one act play has been written, it seems, by the main character. The charm of this production is that the audience comes to believe that.

  • The Rake's Progress

    Glimmerglass Festival's Production of Stravinsky's Opera Sparkles

    By: Victor Cordell - Jul 21st, 2025

    Tom Rakewell shuns regular work. His desire to make it on his wits alone plays into the hands of Nick Shadow, alias, The Devil. Willing to leave his betrothed, Anne Trulove, behind, and seduced by the attractions of London, Tom falls deeper and deeper into despair.

  • The House on Mango Street

    Glimmerglass's Compelling World Premiere Opera

    By: Victor Cordell - Jul 20th, 2025

    Forty years ago, Sandra Cisneros authored one of the world's best-selling and most influential young adult novels. Together with composer Derek Bermel, they have created an opera based on that work, telling about coming of age in a Mexican-American community in Chicago.

  • All Shook UP

    At Goodspeed

    By: Karen Isaacs - Jul 23rd, 2025

    The list of things All Shook Up does well is long, from the show itself to the outstanding Goodspeed production and the talented cast.

  • The Turn of the Screw

    Santa Fe's Excellent Production of the Ghost Story

    By: Victor Cordell - Jul 24th, 2025

    In this Gothic ghost tale, a young governess is charged with caring for two orphans under the guardianship of an absentee uncle. Two employees on the estate whom the governess encounters are deceased. Is she dreaming, or is their presence real? And are the children innocents, or are they possessed by the ghosts? Benjamin Britten's eerie music fits the ghost story.

  • Rigoletto

    Verdi's Tragic Masterpiece at Santa Fe Opera

    By: Victor Cordell - Jul 27th, 2025

    The jester Rigoletto vows to protect his daughter from lascivious men. Not only does he fail, but he suffers tragic consequences as a result of his attempted revenge after her abduction and abuse.

  • Die Walküre

    A Tale of Conflicts and Betrayals

    By: Victor Cordell - Jul 28th, 2025

    Brünhilde's empathy for illicit lovers Siegmund and Sieglinde induces her to betray the orders of her father Wotan, the king of gods. His punishment is to reduce her to becoming a mortal. Santa Fe Opera's production excels.

  • Das Rheingold in Munich

    Prelude to a Stunning New Ring Cycle by Tobias Kratzger

    By: Susan Hall - Jul 29th, 2025

    The Munich Opera celebrates summer with an annual festival. This year, the prelude to the Ring Cycle by Richard Wagner, Das Rheingold, provided novel and thrilling music and drama.

  • Annie the Musical

    At Sharon Playhouse

    By: Karen Isaacs - Jul 30th, 2025

    Annie has a strong connection to Connecticut. It started life at Goodspeed in 1976, before heading to Broadway, where it not only won multiple Tony Awards but played until 1983. While the inspiration was the comic strip, Little Orphan Annie, the musical’s plot by Thomas Meehan, is completely original. Charles Strouse wrote the music with lyrics by Martin Charnin.

  • Mundruczó's Lohengrin in Munich

    Munich Opera Festival Mounts Wagner's Most Frequentlyly Performed Work

    By: Susan Hall - Jul 31st, 2025

    No opera company today rivals the Munich Opera when it comes to innovative yet deeply respectful productions of the classic repertoire. While it’s tempting—and often rewarding—to look beyond the traditional opera circuit for new creative voices, few choices are as effective as Hungarian filmmaker and theater director Kornél Mundruczó.

  • Faure's Penelope at Munich Opera

    Karkacheva and Jovanovich Star

    By: Susan Hall - Aug 01st, 2025

    As part of its 150th anniversary celebration, the Munich Opera Festival presented Pénélope by Gabriel Fauré—a bold and welcome choice. To champion this rarely performed work, the company brought in Andrea Breth, one of Germany’s most accomplished theater directors. The cast clearly responded to her direction with commitment and nuance.

  • Le Comte Ory

    Rossini's Comedy Done Right at Merola

    By: Victor Cordell - Aug 02nd, 2025

    The hedonistic and opportunistic Comte Ory takes advantage of men being away at the Crusades to pursue women. Knowing that the Comtesse Adele seeks spiritual guidance, his first gambit is to disguise as a hermit, but his own page gets in the way.

  • Dolores

    World Premiere at West Edge Opera Honors Distinguished Labor Leader

    By: Victor Cordell - Aug 03rd, 2025

    Dolores Huerta made her mark as Cesar Chavez's most trusted associate in the California grape pickers strike and boycott starting in 1965 that would result in major protections for agricultural workers. Independently, she led strikes and boycotts elsewhere, and she negotiated the contract that would end the unrest.

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