Opera the Way It Was Meant to Be

Madison Opera opens its 59th season with a spot-on La Traviata   Call me old-fashioned—or if you prefer, an old-school conservative—but when it comes to the way an opera should look, I generally want operas such as Carmen to look the way they did when the creative teams created them. Thus I came away from…

Madison Opera Goes Old School

Some great singing and a traditional approach revive “Cavalleria Rusticana” and “Pagliacci”   It has been more than 30 years since Madison Opera staged that once-ubiquitous double bill of one-act operas, “Cavalleria Rusticana” and “Pagliacci.” That’s nothing—I’ve been attending and listening to opera for a little over half a century, and I never managed to…

Young Leads Win Hearts in Madison Opera’s “Romeo”

A tender Romeo et Juliette opens Madison Opera’s 56th season The timeless story of the bitter and deadly feud between the Montagues and Capulets might have been well-timed for the divisiveness of our current electoral state nationally, but the better news is that Madison Opera’s production of Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette was sweet salve for…

Making a Spectacle of Themselves

Madison Opera presents The Tales of Hoffman illuminated by flashes of brilliance   In making a list of shortcomings (and it is a short list) of Madison Opera’s production of The Tales of Hoffman Friday night at the Overture Center, an inevitable conclusion is reached: the fault lies not in their stars, but inevitably, in…