Pique Dame (The Queen of Spades) Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky West Bay Opera Woodwinds and strings sing in gentle, back-and-forth conversation before other instruments begin to join, building into rolling climaxes of commanding brass and timpani and all leading to a sense of foreboding as projected on the walls before us are splashed, red blotches mingled in a flurried mix … [Read more...] about Pique Dame
West Bay Opera
Macbeth
Woodwinds creep together in soft, low measures before intertwining in higher registers and giving way to announcing brass that awaken spirits from the underworld. Those dark figures manipulate wood puppets to tell the agonized history of a royal, childless marriage. From foggy mists, faceless sisters of the night emerge in every sort of torn and draped rag, roving about while … [Read more...] about Macbeth
Nabucco
How relevant can a near one-hundred-eighty-year opera be to modern audiences when there is an autocratic, egotistic ruler who subjugates people of a different ethnicity and nationality to imprisonment and relocation from their homeland and who begins to act and think of himself as a god? Unfortunately in 2019, a story that originates in biblical times and is the subject of … [Read more...] about Nabucco
“Falstaff”
FalstaffGiuseppe Verdi, with Libretto by Arigo BoitoWest Bay OperaMichael Orlinsky, Kiril Havezov & Richard Zeller“In this great abdomen are a thousand tongues that proclaim my name ... This is my kingdom.” With a measure of self-worth and a confidence in his own attraction to the fairer sex that are almost as mammoth as his rotund belly, Falstaff sings with from his … [Read more...] about “Falstaff”
