Soprano Cristina Nassif is a 20-something native of the Maryland suburbs. The daughter of an opera singer mother and a pianist father, Nassif received a music degree at the University of Maryland and got her start on the stage in the Virginia Opera Young Artist Program. Last season, she triumphed with Virginia Opera as Violetta in La Traviata, which brought her to the attention of the hungry eye of Plácido Domingo, ever watchful for…

You have a few more performances this month before the Washington National Opera season ends. We have reviewed both productions for you at DCist and I recommend them both. On Monday (May 22, 7 p.m.) and Saturday (May 27, 7 p.m.) are the final two performances of Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito, an opera that is not all that well known but that has some great music — Mozart at the height of his compositional…

Washington National Opera has two more operas scheduled for this season, and DCist went to the prima of the first of them Saturday night, Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito. Michael Hampe’s handsome production, created for the Teatro Municipal de Santiago in Chile, places characters in 18th-century Napoleonic costumes (designed by Germán Droghetti) — Tito’s imperial robes in the final scene appear to be derived from Ingres’s coronation portrait of Napoleon I — in sets clearly…

Well, the classical music season is drawing to its end. Yes, there will be things to hear over the summer, but many of the major organizations will be shutting down at the end of May, or going into their reduced summer schedules. If you wanted to take in a production at Washington National Opera, for example, you had better do it soon. If you like the spectacle of musicals, opera should be right up your…

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…