News & Reviews

Funny, light, and lively, loaded with energy and crackling with wit, the Virginia Opera’s current production of Wolfgang Mozart’s comic opera The Marriage of Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro) turns this beloved old warhorse into a comic confection that’s refreshingly new....

The brilliant Lillian Groag has been a favorite stage director for the Virginia Opera for the past 20 years. When former VO Artistic Director Peter Mark convinced her that her pristine reputation as a theater director, playwright and actor was an ideal requisite for...

What a week for Mozart!—beginning with The Marriage of Figaro at the Harrison Opera House April 6, followed by the powerful Requiem April 13. The Marriage of Figaro is, of course, built on the bones of a satire by noble-wannabe Pierre Beaumarchais, in which the clever...

Ah, sweet lunacy composed by a musical genius is coming this way. It is full of rascally, randy men and quietly patient, shrewd women who want a love that will last beyond the first “whoosh” of courtship. The score soars from the very first beat of the overture. On...

The Virginia Opera scored a home run Saturday evening when it brought back Mozart's always-popular "The Marriage of Figaro." Acknowledged as one of opera's supreme masterpieces, "Figaro" is the ultimate ensemble work. While any of the characters can steal the show, it...

In Mozart's comic opera "The Marriage of Figaro," the title character and his betrothed, Susanna, go to great lengths to remove obstacles to their love. By contrast, when bass-baritone Matthew Burns and soprano Anne-Carolyn Bird first played those roles together...

The Mozart opera that runs just four performances at the Harrison Opera House really shouldn’t be called The Marriage of Figaro, stage director Lillian Groag points out. “Figaro’s Wedding Day” would be a better translation of Le nozze di Figaro. The full name of the...

The word "genius" gets tossed around a lot in the music world, but most agree that Wolfgang A. Mozart deserves the accolade. Conductor Steven Smith and stage director Lillian Groag, who are collaborating on Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro," have no trouble citing...

“I think ‘Streetcar’ is an opera already, except that it doesn’t have music,” composer André Previn once said in sizing up Tennessee Williams’ play “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Virginia Opera’s powerhouse production of Previn’s three-hour 1998 opera, “A Streetcar Named...

"Hey Stelllaaa! Hey Stelllaaa!"  Marlon Brando's bellow in the film of "A Streetcar Named Desire" is one of the most memorable moments in cinema history. Drunk and soaked, Brando's Stanley Kowalski is a brutish animal calling for his mate, and Stella doesn't...