Opera Review – Canadian Opera Company Winter Season – A Tale of Two Visions (Mozart’s Così fan tutte and Verdi’s A Masked Ball)

Posted on February 21, 2014, updated on February 23, 2014 by pcitron

This is the age of the auteur opera director. With the endlessly repeating standard repertoire a fact of opera life, companies are now searching for productions that give a fresh take on the classics. New opera, of course, is always going to be fresh. Thus, directors and their visions are what drive opera productions these days. The […]

Opera Review – Canadian Opera Company’s The Tales of Hoffmann

Posted on April 12, 2012, updated on April 20, 2012 by pcitron

The first act of the COC’s production of The Tales of Hoffmann is worth the price of admission. English director Lee Blakeley has done such a brilliant job with Olympia (Andriana Chuchman), that we can forgive the messy Guilietta (Keri Alkema) act, and puzzling Prologue and Epilogue. His Antonia (Erin Wall) act falls somewhere in between […]