News & Reviews

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...

By Roy Proctor So what can audiences expect of a mid-Victorian operetta populated by characters with penny dreadful names such as Dick Deadeye, Ralph Rackstraw and Little Buttercup? Quite a charming bit, as Virginia Opera proved in the rollicking production of Gilbert...

By Brian Bochicchio The Sondheim masterwork Sweeney Todd slashed its way into George Mason University this weekend, as Virginia Opera presented its version of the darkly enthralling musical experience. Stephen Powell (Sweeney Todd) and Phyllis Pancella (Mrs. Lovett)....

By Tim Smith For its fortieth anniversary, Virginia Opera slid into Broadway repertoire to deliver a highly satisfying account of Stephen Sondheim’s ever-chilling Sweeney Todd, one of the organizations strongest ventures of the past decade or so. Several companies...

By Roy Proctor Special correspondent So who says Broadway is Broadway and opera is opera and never the twain should meet? Obviously someone who has never looked and listened long and hard at Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd,” a powerhouse rendering of which is...