Author Archives

  • Tosca

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    Pittsburgh Opera inaugurated its 79th season last night with an overall brilliant performance of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca. The opera is a perennial favorite, and deservedly so. Puccini penned possibly the last “grand opera” of the 19th century when he set… Read More ›

  • Intermezzo

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    Pittsburgh Festival Opera continues to make good on its promise of producing Richard Strauss rarities, and for the fourth consecutive summer has revived one of the composer’s lesser known works. The company last year set the bar as high as… Read More ›

  • Xerxes

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    Pittsburgh Festival Opera gave the first of three performances of Händel’s Xerxes last night, and it was a delightfully rare opportunity to hear this seldom performed “Baroque” music. The work premiered in London in 1738, and flopped after a handful… Read More ›

  • Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

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    Stephen Sondheim’s musical adaptation of Sweeney Todd has been entertaining audiences for nearly forty years, and last night’s performance of the work by Pittsburgh Festival Opera did much to explain the show’s enduring popularity. In Sondheim’s creation of the musical,… Read More ›

  • A Gathering of Sons – World Premiere

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    Last night was an auspicious collection of “firsts” – Pittsburgh Festival Opera presented its first performance of the summer under their re-branded company name, and the opera chosen for the occasion was the world premiere of the much anticipated A… Read More ›

  • Undercroft Opera Presents Puccini’s “La Rondine.”

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    Undercroft Opera is performing a Giacomo Puccini “rarity” this weekend at Carlow University’s Antonian Theatre – La Rondine (“The Swallow”), which hasn’t been heard locally since early 1982, when Pittsburgh Opera presented it here for the first time and the… Read More ›

  • Resonance Works Presents Verdi’s “Falstaff.”

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    Resonance Works, collaborating with the University of Pittsburgh Department of Theater Arts, gave the first of two performances of Giuseppe Verdi’s final opera, Falstaff, last night, at the Charity Randall Theater in Oakland. The ambitious project offers an opportunity to… Read More ›

  • The Summer King – The Josh Gibson Story

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    It was truly a “gala” occasion in the long history of Pittsburgh Opera, at the Benedum last evening, when the much publicized and widely heralded The Summer King – the company’s first ever “world premiere” – was performed for the… Read More ›

  • Turandot

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    Giacomo Puccini’s final opera, Turandot, was presented for the first time this season Saturday night at the Benedum, and a gratifyingly large crowd packed the auditorium to enjoy a truly resounding rendition of the composer’s swan song. The work is… Read More ›

  • As One

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    There was an elbow-to-elbow crowd on hand in the George R. White Opera Studio at Pittsburgh Opera Headquarters last night for the Pennsylvania premiere of As One, including the composer, Laura Kaminsky, and co-librettists, Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed. They… Read More ›

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