Metro Weekly

Opera

  • Taking Flight

    By on March 28, 2007

    This is a drop everything moment. If you live for opera, if you occasionally go, if you have even a fledgling interest in it, you...

  • Taking Flight

    By on November 8, 2006

    ''See the sky, see the ocean!'' cry Butterfly's friends as they watch her boat approach with surreal slowness. Though they exclaim at the beauty surrounding...

  • Life Choice

    By on September 27, 2006

    It's a brave move to stage Sophie's Choice as an opera, considering the popular culture stature of both William Styron's original novel and 1982's star-filled...

  • The Tiers Have Eyes

    By on September 20, 2006

    It's always a good sign when audience members exclaim both ''Hideous!'' and ''Wonderful!'' as the lights come up at intermission. It means something has stirred...

  • Italian Delight

    By on May 17, 2006

    Captivating: Borodina(Photo by Karin Cooper) Bubbly buoyancy brings the Washington National Opera season to a close in a nicely-conceived high-energy production of Rossini's L'Italiana in...

  • Titus on the Potomac

    By on May 10, 2006

    Take a beautiful sunset as seen from the Kennedy Center balcony, add a warm wind off the Potomac, throw in a glass of bubbly, and...

  • The Perfect Tonic

    By on April 5, 2006

    Like many of life's little luxuries, from a great glass of wine or a beautifully made suit, the Washington National Opera's production of Donizetti's L'Eisir...

  • Brass Ring

    By on March 29, 2006

    If you haven't yet tired of the rampant pandering to the American myth present in every daily experience from the selling of cars to the...

  • Powerhouse

    By on November 2, 2005

    You know the songs. You've heard the story. But nothing will prepare you for the astounding power of this full operatic production of Gershwin's modern...

  • Three's a Crowd

    By on September 28, 2005

    Never look a gift horse in the mouth, or so the saying goes. Oh, well. In celebration of the Washington National Opera's 50th anniversary and...

  • Vocal Prowess

    By on September 21, 2005

    A rarely-staged tale of political and emotional rebellion, I Vespri Siciliani should be an operatic tour de force. Verdi takes us to one emotional crescendo...

  • Lost in the Crowd

    By on May 25, 2005

    There are times, unfortunately, when an exceptional and beauteous piece of art nonetheless finds itself dismissed as not quite good enough, simply because it finds...

  • Tosca Tops the Charts

    By on May 11, 2005

    How do you calculate the tenor X-factor? Let's take Salvatore Licitra. We saw him already this season in the title role of Andrea Chenier, where...

  • Lacking Magic

    By on April 13, 2005

    My advice to anyone who joined the ticket-purchasing frenzy when they saw the words ''magic'' and ''flute'' in the same sentence as Washington National Opera...

  • Operatic Wonder

    By on March 30, 2005

    As we all know, Joan of Arc died hard and Tchaikovsky's Maid of Orleans is for a different sort of die-hard -- the operatic kind....