Written by DCist guest contributor Michael Lodico The Washington National Opera’s production of William Bolcom’s operatic adaptation of Arthur Miller’s earthy play (premiered by the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1999 and staged by Frank Galati) shows the company’s commitment to remounting new American operas after their premieres. The Chicago production, now being presented to D.C. area audiences by the WNO, also features three leads from the original production and the two arias added by…

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…

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…

The 2006-07 season of the Washington National Opera comes to a close next week, with a concert appearance by several of its singers at the Music Center at Strathmore (May 31, 8 p.m.) and the last performance of its final production, Macbeth (June 2, 7 p.m.). It is time to take stock of the company’s achievements this season and look forward to what it will offer the city next year. Four productions this season were…

Verdi’s Macbeth is the least worthy of the composer’s three settings of Shakespeare plays, but it is hardly fair to compare this homely little opera to the composer’s final masterpieces, Otello and Falstaff. Macbeth, the earliest of the three, has some beautiful melodies, some dramatic scenes, effective choral writing, and glimmers of what Verdi would eventually accomplish — the elimination of tired bel canto conventions or, short of that, the ingenious incorporation of those…

On Saturday night, the Washington National Opera opened its best production of the season, with David Alden’s modernized staging of Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa. Washington is the last of the three cities co-producing this version to see it on the stage, after a well-received 2004 premiere at Houston Grand Opera and an overwhelming critical success last fall at English National Opera, where it won the Laurence Olivier Award for best new opera production. Janáček adapted the…

After the success of the second part of its American Ring Cycle, with all performances long since sold out, Washington National Opera opened its second spring production on Saturday evening, Gaetano Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment. There is no reason to revive this rather silly comic opera, last mounted by WNO in 1993, unless you have a truly remarkable cast and perhaps a new and interesting production. That seemed to be the case with this…

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…

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….

For reasons that I understand but dislike, new operas are the hardest tickets for most American companies to sell. For Washington National Opera, whose audience is largely allergic to anything outside the familiar repertory, it must be difficult to reconcile what a major American opera company should be doing — performing recent operas and commissioning new ones — with the overwhelming concern for the bottom line. All the more reason, then, to praise WNO for…