by Daniel Hathaway
What does it take to create a sparkling production of Mozart’s opera buffa The Marriage of Figaro? The music, of course, comes first, and you need a fine group of vocalists to put the composer’s engaging arias and brilliant finales across, a flexible conductor and orchestra in the pit, and a sure hand at the keyboard for recitatives. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
“I could not make this opera stranger than it already is,” Oberlin Opera Theater director Jonathon Field told ClevelandClassical in a recent interview. After witnessing the opening night of Oberlin’s production of La finta giardiniera, with its jumbo-sized rabbits that march in slow motion across the stage, I have to disagree. If this opera was strange to begin with, Field didn’t hold back in giving it an extra nudge off the deep end. [Read more…]