News & Reviews

By Rich Griset Ron Daniels has a unique connection with the musical “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”: It probably wouldn’t exist without him. More than 40 years ago, it was Daniels who found the old penny dreadful tale and decided to turn it into a...

Stephen Sondheim said of Sweeney Todd, “If you do it in a theatre, it’s a musical. If you do it in an opera house, it’s an opera.”  Presented Sept. 26 at the Harrison Opera House as Virginia Opera’s 40th season opener, Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street,...

By Mal Vincent An opera opening in Norfolk is a life-affirming experience - celebratory. Even routinely, it's about as close as the arts get to an event that mixes real pearls with dipped pearls. "Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street" | Handout photo....

By Teresa Annas NORFOLK Ron Daniels looked almost parental last week as he worked through some scenes from Stephen Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd." The director stood in Virginia Opera's rehearsal hall, low-key and inconspicuous in his black slacks and shirt, hands in pants...

By Teresa Annas The Virginian-Pilot©April 29, 2014 NORFOLK Virginia Opera has promoted two of its artistic staff members to lead positions, effective immediately. Adam Turner, formerly resident conductor, has been bumped up to principal conductor and artistic adviser....

Posted by Mike Paarlberg on Apr. 12, 2014 at 3:31 pm Louis C.K. has a bit in which he notes how incredible it is that women continue to go out with men, given that the number one threat to women, and chief cause of injury and mayhem to them is, well, men. The number...

By Charles T. Downey, Published: April 13 An opera company is unlikely to have a triumph, in the critical sense, by staging “Carmen,” but Georges Bizet’s story of passion and murder will fill a house. It worked for Virginia Opera, which staged the opera on Friday...

By Emily Cao on April 13, 2014 Things were very fiery this past Friday night at the GMU Center for the Arts as the Virginia Opera brings a new and exciting full-scale production of Bizet’s Carmen, one of the most renowned and certainly most dramatic operas in history,...

Bizet classic comes to George Mason by Samantha Schmieder Special to the Gazette The famous opera “Carmen” will finish its four-city trip around Virginia with a final performance in Fairfax at George Mason University’s Center for the Arts on Friday, April 11, and...

Virginia Opera moves the classic seduction of “Carmen” to 1950s Spain. by Rich Griset No matter how hard she tries, Ginger Costa-Jackson can't get away from "Carmen." It isn't that she's ungrateful — getting cast in the title role is a dream for most mezzo-sopranos....