Washington Concert Opera presented the first half of their new season on Sunday night at an admirably full Lisner Auditorium. Rather than a more typical rarity, it was one of the gems of the bel canto repertoire, Vincenzo Bellini’s late opera I Puritani, or as bad-girl soprano Anna Netrebko memorably put it, “crap.” No one should ever mistake I Puritani for a dramatic masterpiece, but it does have some of the best, most polished, and…

On Saturday night, Washington National Opera opened its fall season with an oh-so-edgy rendition of a tired old chestnut, Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème. It is the fifth mounting of this opera by WNO since 1984, which works out to a production every four or five years on average. Film director Mariusz Treliński created this new production for the Teatr Wielki in Warsaw, which also gave Washington his Butterfly and Andrea Chénier. The aim, laudable…

This Saturday evening, the Washington National Opera opens its highly anticipated production of Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa. This is only the second Janáček opera in the history of the WNO, with one Cunning Little Vixen done in English translation in 1993. This new production directed by David Alden premiered at Houston Grand Opera in 2004: after it played to critical success last fall at English National Opera, it won the Laurence Olivier Award for best new…

At the end of the first installment of Francesca Zambello’s American Ring Cycle, last year’s Das Rheingold premiered at Washington National Opera, the gods went into Valhalla on what looked like the gang plank of a cruise liner, clinking their champagne flutes. Richard Wagner adapted the libretti of his four-opera cycle from German mythology, and Zambello’s idea was to exchange the German myths in the operas for American ones. The gold-hungry Alberich became a…

As reportedly happened during the Kirov Opera’s visit to Washington last year, the best performance of the group’s residency this week at the Kennedy Center was saved for last. On Sunday afternoon, conductor Valery Gergiev led a concert performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s modern opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk that was an incendiary triumph. Combined with the three evenings of Shostakovich’s chamber music from the Emerson Quartet on my schedule this week, the Russian composer’s…

The Shakespeare in Washington festival continues this week with the visit of the Kirov Ballet to the Kennedy Center Opera House. This year, the resident troupe of St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater has brought its traveling production of Leonid Lavrovsky’s choreography of Romeo and Juliet. Sergei Prokofiev wanted to premiere the sublime music of this ballet (op. 64) at the Mariinsky in the 1930s, but the theater ultimately balked. The Bolshoi Theater in Moscow also accepted…

The opening night of Washington National Opera’s final production of the fall, Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, offers yet another opportunity to wonder why in the world this opera remains so popular with American audiences. Most opera fans, myself included, love this opera because the music, especially for the title character, is some of the most memorable that Puccini penned. However, the libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica tells a story that should inspire disgust….

The classical music world of Washington seems to have Baroque music on its mind. After plugging the Washington Early Music Festival in this week’s Classical Music Agenda, it is time to tell you about the two Baroque operas that were staged over the weekend. For its first production this summer, the Wolf Trap Opera Company is staging Telemann’s Orpheus, which I heard on Friday night. This opera, rediscovered only in the 1970s, combines a mostly…

You probably know by now, because we won’t shut up about it, that the Kirov Opera is visiting the Kennedy Center this week. We have already recommended their production of Puccini’s Turandot. Last night, we were in the Opera House again, to see the Kirov perform Wagner’s Parsifal, which the composer insisted was not an opera but a “stage-consecrating festival drama.” (This reminds me that what you are reading is not a post, but a…

Written by DCist Contributor Jacques Ntonme. Iron and Wine and Calexico should not be mistaken for isolated entities; if anything, they displayed at their show last night at the 9:30 Club that they are as one band with many names. Combined, their personas (and ambitions) are legion, encompassing lover, killer, mariachi, cowboy, horse, and stars. We’re not fans of the word synergy, but if it applies and must be used, then we’ll get it over…