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Oberlin Opera Theater: Secret Marriage, Public Hilarity (Mar. 26)

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by Daniel Hathaway

It’s been said that six is the magic number of guests to invite to a dinner party. Fewer than that reduces the likelihood of witty repartée, and more than that risks having the party break up into multiple conversations. That principle also applies to casts of comic operas that depend on scintillating conversations and wild misperceptions to fuel the plot.

Saturday evening’s Oberlin Opera Theatre performance of Cimarosa’s Il Matrimonio Segreto at Hall Auditorium brought exactly half a dozen talented singer-actors together in a tightly-woven plot that left its characters and relationships in a quandary right before intermission. [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera: Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Nov. 10)

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by Daniel Hathaway

It takes supreme self-confidence to turn a Shakespeare comedy into an opera, and even more daring to follow up someone else’s iconic music with a score of your own. Benjamin Britten is one of the few composers who could succeed on both counts. His version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, composed in 1960 and produced by Oberlin Opera Theater earlier this month, preserves the magic of Shakespeare’s verse with atmospheric writing that stands up well to Mendelssohn’s wonderful incidental music. Directed by Jonathon Field, with Christopher Larkin and the Oberlin Orchestra in the Hall Auditorium pit, the production, of which I saw the fourth and final performance on Sunday afternoon, November 10, boasted a uniformly superb cast of Athenians, Fairies, and Rude Mechanicals. [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera Theatre: “A Salute to Leonard Bernstein” (Nov. 7)

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by Daniel Hathaway

On November 7 in Hall Auditorium, Jonathon Field’s Oberlin Opera Theatre celebrated Leonard Bernstein’s centennial year with a professional-quality performance of his one-act opera, Trouble in Tahiti, and a revisiting of some of his Broadway triumphs in excerpts both brilliantly sung and crisply danced. [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera Theater: Britten’s The Turn of the Screw (Mar. 7)

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by Daniel Hathaway

TOS Quint BedroomAre the ghosts of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel in Benjamin Britten’s chamber opera The Turn of the Screw real, or just the product of the overactive imagination of the young governess who chronicled this “curious story” in her own hand? Stage director Jonathon Field thinks they’re for real.

[Read more…]

Oberlin Opera Theater: Du Yun’s Angel’s Bone at the Cat in the Cream Coffeehouse (Jan. 31)

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by Nicholas Stevens

Lexi Reed and Angels-PC Yevhen GulenkoThis month, a cast of students gave a genre-bending, violent new opera its Northeast Ohio premiere run at a coffee shop — and all five performances sold out in advance. The scenario may sound unlikely, but Angel’s Bone, a chamber work with music by Du Yun and a libretto by Royce Vavrek, has exceeded expectations since its 2016 premiere. On January 31, the Oberlin Opera Theatre debuted its production of Angel’s Bone, winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Music Composition, in the Cat in the Cream Coffeehouse. [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera Theater: Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (November 3)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Oberlin-Figaro-1What 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…]

Oberlin Opera Theater stages an enchanting Cendrillon (March 8)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cendrillon-Stepmother-StepsistersWhether you know her as Cendrillon, Aschenbrödel, La Cenerentola, La Cenicienta, Soluschka, or, most likely, Cinderella, the story of that downtrodden stepchild is an irresistible fairy tale. It’s been turned into many operas, but perhaps most magically by Jules Massenet in his Cendrillon, beautifully produced by Oberlin Opera Theater last Wednesday evening at its opening performance in Hall Auditorium. [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera Theater: double bill of Donizetti & Poulenc in Hall Auditorium (Nov. 2)

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by Daniel Hathaway

mama-groupJonathon Field’s Oberlin Opera Theater shows are always fresh and surprising, but his versions of Donizetti’s Viva la Mamma and Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tiresias burst onstage Wednesday evening in a laughfest of satire and surrealism. With casts that would put many professional companies to shame, these are must-see productions that will prick up your ears and kick-start your imagination. [Read more…]

Mozart’s La finta giardiniera at Baldwin Wallace (Feb. 26)

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by Daniel Hathaway

BW-Finta-1Last Thursday evening, Laura Carlson Tarantowski’s bright set design, beautiful in its classical symmetry, served as a perfect foil to the messy romantic tangles of Mozart’s La finta giardiniera, when Baldwin Wallace Opera’s engaging production opened for four performances in John Patrick Theater. “Welcome to a world of love, lust, disguise, joy, grief, and madness,” director Benjamin Wayne Smith wrote in his program note. “The plot can be confusing,” he added. No kidding! [Read more…]

Review: Baldwin Wallace Opera — Hansel and Gretel (February 20)

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by Daniel Hathaway

BW-H&G3There are paradoxes aplenty in Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera Hansel and Gretel — beyond the idea of an edible house. It’s a folk tale with roots in the dark days of the Plague years in medieval Europe collected by the Brothers Grimm but sanitized into a children’s story by the composer’s sister, Adelheid Wette, who wrote the libretto.

It’s a simple tale, but one that was set to complex and sophisticated music by a disciple of Wagner who adopted the technique of Leitmotiv to subliminally suggest characters and themes. The score interested Richard Strauss to the point that he agreed to conduct its premiere in 1893.

It’s a vocally demanding work that calls for experienced singers, but it’s frequently mounted by university and conservatory opera departments who have a bumper crop of women’s voices to cast (Hansel is routinely performed as a trouser role). It calls for a large orchestra — which can cause balance problems against younger singers. [Read more…]

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