News & Reviews

By David Adam Beloff - The Virginian-Pilot Time to go to the opera! "La Traviata" opens on Friday night. Dust off your best tux/dress and enjoy this classic opera at the Harrison Opera House. Purchase tickets here. From the promoter:  Virginia Opera...

By Montague Gammon III What can you say about a beautiful young courtesan who dies? : The exceptional party scene from La Traviata. Photo courtesy of Des Moines Metro Opera in a co-production with Virginia Opera Well, oodles of folks have been saying – and singing and...

By Grace Jean - Washington Post   Virginia Opera's cinematic production of Richard Strauss's "Salome" was a passionate tour de force that etched love and death in vivid bas-relief Saturday evening at George Mason University's Center for the Arts. Setting the...

By Roy Proctor Special correspondent In 100 riveting minutes, Virginia Opera is serving up Richard Strauss’ biblically inspired kinkfest “Salome” with all the efficiency its bloodied executioner brings to serving up John the Baptist’s severed head to the willful...

By Rich Griset - Style Weekly Few operas have generated as much controversy as “Salome.” London banned all performances until 1910. Gustav Mahler’s attempt to conduct it in Vienna was thwarted after the Catholic archbishop deemed it immoral. The Metropolitan Opera’s...

By Mal Vincent Virginian-Pilot correspondent January 29, 2015 She was a bad, bad girl. Even by biblical standards, Salome was a seductress of the first rank. After all, Delilah only gave Samson a haircut. Salome got the entire head of John the Baptist, served on a...

The Virginian-Pilot January 29, 2015 Art: In classical painting, Salome has been presented both as a naive, innocent teenager and as a seductress by such masters as Titian, Caravaggio and Gustave Moreau. Book: Oscar Wilde's 1891 play, which is the origin of the...

Virginia Opera presents An Operatic Visit to  The Santa Fe Opera NOW ON SALE Click here for details

By Terry Ponick FAIRFAX, Va., December 6, 2014 – The Virginia Opera finally got the full house they deserved last weekend. The Norfolk-based company sailed into the George Mason University Center for the Arts last weekend, docking, alas, for a brief two days to...

By Michael Poandl Strictly speaking, I really shouldn’t like Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore. I like theatre that is dark, shocking, provocative… I’m more comfortable at Capital Fringe than Disney on Ice. So no one was more surprised than I when I found myself...