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…

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…

Last night, we heard the National Symphony Orchestra give its first program of 2006, the second in the usual series of three concerts. This concert featured guest conductor James Conlon and three opera singers in the marquee work that really filled the hall, a concert performance of the first act of Richard Wagner’s opera Die Walküre. As we mentioned in last week’s Classical Music Agenda, Washington is getting ready for a much-anticipated encounter with Wagner’s…