By Anne Midgette December 4 at 4:11 PM I don’t mean to, but I often come to the Virginia Opera with low expectations. It’s a regional company, and its performances in the Washington area are at a university performing arts center, about a 45-minute...
By ANDREW GARRIGUE Celebrating its bicentennial, Rossini’s masterpiece “The Barber of Seville” is a staple of opera companies around the world. Presented by Virginia Opera on Friday in the Carpenter Theatre at Dominion Arts Center, this “Barber of Seville” is a...
By M.D. Ridge Correspondent Virginia Opera’s new production of Gioachino Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville,” which opened Friday at the Harrison Opera House, has it all: truly gorgeous singing, John Baril’s crisp conducting, Michael Shell’s inventive direction and, not...
When the verismo style hit stages in Italy, people took notice. BY RICH GRISETStyle Weekly For the first time, opera left the realm of fairy tales and historical figures, focusing instead on the problems of normal people. And one of the most well-known verismo...
A cabaret singer with an operatic voice — or is it an opera singer who does cabaret? — is using both talents to help Virginia Opera get its season off to a doubly good start. By KATHERINE CALOSRichmond Times-Dispatch The season opener is a double bill of two short...
For over a hundred years, Ruggero Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci” has been an opera in search of a mate. Too short to stand alone(though some companies have economically tried to do just that), it is frequently paired with another Italian work, “Cavalleria Rusticana.” For...
