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By Lev Bratishenko on November 22, 2016
Originally commissioned by the Vancouver City Opera in the 2010-12 season, "Fallujah" makes it's New York City premiere with an authentic, brutal realism exploring the emotional complexities of war.
(Continue reading)By Lev Bratishenko on November 23, 2015
A poem as a review for Opéra de Montréal, Elektra.
(Continue reading)By Lev Bratishenko on May 20, 2015
Opera de Montreal are ending their season with Kevin Puts’s Silent Night, a cinematically efficient opera about the Christmas truce of 1914.
(Continue reading)By Lev Bratishenko on April 14, 2015
Mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn and pianist Julius Drake perform a spring-like program of song at Pollack Hall.
(Continue reading)By Lev Bratishenko on March 23, 2015
The Ladies' Morning Musical Club is the most civilized thing you can do in Montreal on a Sunday afternoon. They’ve been in continuous operation since 1892 and I have no doubt they’ll find a way to keep putting on concerts through the coming ecological apocalypse. Perhaps they will sell distilled water...
(Continue reading)By Lev Bratishenko on February 23, 2015
Interview with Alexander Shelley, announced as NAC Orchestra Music Designate in October 2013.
(Continue reading)By Lev Bratishenko on February 10, 2015
Wear a down parka to the Met in winter for a Slavic double-bill like Iolanta and Bluebeard’s Castle and you feel like the only caveman too stupid to club a mink. A sweet Russian lady handed me her spare with maternal concern, but if I felt any embarrassment it vanished in the dead animal’s embrace, and people stopped staring...
(Continue reading)By Lev Bratishenko on December 7, 2014
How do you bring a 188-member orchestra and chorus, their equipment and a dozen soloists from Italy to North America? You buy a ship, crew it, and like the Ark, stock two of every musician. Half will be eaten on the journey. Though historical precedents suggest it may be unsustainable, such extravagance was worth it. To the families of the eaten: we salute you. William Tell was a triumph.
(Continue reading)By Lev Bratishenko on November 17, 2014
It is a mystery why Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is performed so rarely. This wild opera was written in 1932 and it only premiered at the Met in 1994 with a production by Graham Vick that returned last Monday. The production remains silly, the opera magnificent.
(Continue reading)By Lev Bratishenko on November 3, 2014
Seven seasons of Opéra de Montreal have trained me to read a season brochure cynically and only with chemical support. I must find satisfaction in the absence of disaster rather than the chance of a triumph. Objectively, of course, this is awful; I love opera but have to travel for interesting productions. But I am much calmer now.
(Continue reading)
