Results tagged “dongiovanni”

Before the curtain of the second performance of Washington National Opera's new production of Mozart's Don Giovanni on Monday night, conductor Plácido Domingo made an announcement. Happily, it was not to announce a cast change, but to draw the audience's attention to the fact that it was the 220th anniversary of the opera's first performance in Prague (October 29, 1787). This production is not likely to rank high on anyone's list of noteworthy versions of...

There are ways to attend an opera in Washington at a ticket price that will not make you cry. The easiest way is to go to a performance from one of the smaller or collegiate companies, where the reasonable ticket price will translate into hearing lesser singers or a piano or small instrumental ensemble instead of a full orchestra. If you want the true experience of opera, however — that "exotic and irrational entertainment" described...

If you are wondering what mysterious something seems to be missing from your life this winter, it could be opera. While we wait for the Washington National Opera's spring season to start in late March, there are a few operas on the schedule to tide us over, presented by visiting companies like the Kirov Opera and the smaller Washington companies like Opera Lafayette and Virginia Opera. Still, opera addicts will not be satisfied until WNO finally kicks back into gear.

After several feverish weeks of wall-to-wall concerts, the approach of Thanksgiving puts the Classical Music Agenda into a temporary lull this week. Not to worry: we have some concerts for you even this week, and next week we will come back out swinging.

You've probably heard us going on about how Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born 250 years ago. Yesterday, to be exact. And where else would you have found us last night but listening to Mozart's music? As we recommended in last week's Classical Music Agenda, we spent the big night with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. This week, they are presenting a semi-staged performance of Mozart's early opera, The Abduction from the Seraglio (1782), with television personality Sam Donaldson in the non-singing role of the Pasha Selim. Abduction is the first Viennese example of the operatic genius that the composer would later develop, reaching its full flower in The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte. The story was set in a pasha's harem in Turkey, a country with whom the Austrian empire was increasingly in conflict politically, leading up to a disastrous war toward the end of Mozart's life. Two Spanish women are enslaved by the pasha, and the men who love them come from Spain to help them escape.

We have been plugging the excellent production of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess all week, and it is worth your time and effort to see it, as we did this past Wednesday. However, all remaining performances have apparently been sold out. This means that your best and only remaining chance to experience this great American opera will be later today, when a live simulcast from the Kennedy Center Opera House will be shown on a huge...