They being the opera we came to Chicago to see, and the New Restaurant for This Visit.

( the too-long-to-read version being we appreciated both )

....or Massenet's take on Cervantes's novel. Interesting! We didn't know much about this production besides the obvious "what's the thing based on", as Himself hadn't heard much of Massenet's work. This is one of the works which are, politely, not performed very often, so we weren't sure how we'd like it ( Read more... )

Saw this pretty much exactly ten years ago, for my first opera as an adult, and not surprisingly, enjoyed it quite a bit more this time around! For starters, I didn't get fussed about how I was dressed, and I did smuggle in my own water bottle, so on the whole rather more comfortable. My butt still hurts though. Four hours and change on those ( Read more... )

A long day. A good day, but a long one. The short answer is: loved the opera. Good set design, with a nice transition between Act 2 (Merry Widow's garden) and Act 3 (Chez Maxime). But perhaps more importantly for me: Thomas Hampson and Renee Fleming as the lead characters. Experienced performers, both, and gifted (to put it mildly) at what they do ( Read more... )

This year, the Lyric's WTF opera is Wozzeck, one of Berg's more dissonant creations. We'd seen Lulu a few years ago, and stephe was, at that time, somewhat surprised at the fact that I came away babbling at some length about the music, given that Berg uses the avowedly difficult twelve-tone/atonal musical style. So we decided to see this to, among other ( Read more... )

We'd seen this in the 2009-10 season, but this one's rather a different staging, to say the least ( Read more... )

Saw our first opera of the season--CinderellaIt was the first performance of this opera this season at the Lyric, so the first time this cast had performed together here. There were a few moments where the orchestra overplayed the performers, not surprisingly since there were several Ryan School students. (but how else would they learn?) But then ( Read more... )

Unfortunately, neither of us was particularly impressed with The Passenger1. Not bad, you understand, and the history of the book and radio play is fascinating. But when I'm coming out of the Lyric afterward commenting that the music was obvious, overwhelming and so on...you know it's not exactly subtle. The supratitle translations were more than a ( Read more... )

In the fleshpots of Chicago for the "weekend" (self-employed editor and retail monkey make their weekends when they can get them).

Opera #1 today: Tosca, and a very good production it was too!
We saw Tosca1 five years ago, more or less. And as with the other operas I've (re)seen recently, I quite appreciate this one the second time around, more ( Read more... )

Back from Opera #2 of 4: Il TrovatoreThis was the first opera of our first official season--we'd seen Rosenkavalier way back in March of 2006--so I'm a bit hazy on the details of the first performance. Except that I didn't laugh as hard this time. (Some operas have stupider tropes than others.) Mainly because a) I've had more experience in The ( Read more... )