News & Reviews

Opera, like theater, is often overlooked among audiences in today’s culture as boring, long and incomprehensible. With the popularity of film, television and video games, it is more important than ever to choose a piece that audiences can connect with.   PHOTO BY...

Posted: Thursday, April 21, 2016 12:00 am BY EMILY JENNINGS/FOR THE FREE LANCE-STAR Not long ago during the “Pirates of the Caribbean” craze, teenage girls everywhere obsessed over the character of Capt. Jack Sparrow, adorning bedroom walls with posters and even...

Posted: Saturday, April 16, 2016 6:00 pm By ROY PROCTOR Special correspondent - Richmond Times Dispatch From its opening storm at sea to its heaven-bound finale, Richard Wagner’s early opera “The Flying Dutchman” is several shows rolled into one in the...

Voix Des Arts 18 April 2016 PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Richard Wagner — DER FLIEGENDE HOLLÄNDER (W. Tigges, C. Pier, P. Volpe, C. Bix, R. Pike, D. Blalock; Virginia Opera, 17 April 2016)         RICHARD WAGNER (1813 – 1883): Der fliegende...

Saturday, February 27, 2016I What if a high school student doing a report on a historic opera star had the singer appear to him? Radford High School students got to explore that possibility on Thursday through a performance by the Virginia Opera Company. The company...

FEBRUARY 24, 2016 Following on the heels of the Richmond Ballet's triumphant presentation of "Romeo & Juliet" last weekend, the Virginia Opera offered Charles Gounod's lyrical take on the tale of the star-crossed lovers in an emotionally sensitive production in...

BY RICH GRISET Directing Charles Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette” for his first time in 1987, Bernard Uzan acknowledged that the casting of opera legend Alfredo Kraus as the male lead didn’t make the most sense. Though the Spanish tenor’s pipes were still in fighting...

By Joan Reinthaler February 14 at 2:19 PM The Virginia Opera brought Charles Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet” to the George Mason University’s Center for the Arts this past weekend just in time for Valentine’s Day, and if the “eternal” in the Valentine promise of eternal...

DC Metro Theatre Arts Few stories have been as revised, re-told and reconstructed as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. But a rendition that is not as performed as it should be is the 19th century opera by French Romantic composer Charles Gounod. Luckily for local...

La Bohème FAIRFAX, VA Virginia Opera 11/14/15 VIRGINIA OPERA'S NOVEMBER 14 performance of La Bohème at George Mason University’s Center for the Arts—dedicated to the memory of victims of the terror attacks that had occurred the night before in Paris—could not help but...