The first production by Benevolence Opera Project took place on Friday evening at the Redwood Theatre. It was a benefit for the Redwood Shelter for women and children fleeing abuse. One could argue that the choice of Mozart’s Don Giovanni was a bit odd in the circumstances but it certainly got conversation going around the issues!
Opera Sustenida was started during the pandemic and came to my attention because of a couple of well produced on-line shows. Feeling very strongly that it’s time to move back to live performance, and not seeing much yet from the smaller opera companies, I could hardly overlook Opera Sustenida’s show, even if I might not have chosen Verdi’s Il Trovatore for my first go at a live production.
The Lion Heart is a new opera by Corey Arnold and Kyle McDonald. Their aim, as described in an interview on barczablog, was to create an opera that was more accessible to modern audiences than “most modern opera”. I’m not sure how much “modern opera” they have actually seen/heard but what they seem to mean by accessible is a heavily scored neo-Romanticism supporting a through sung vocal line with nothing much in the way of an aria or any way for their singers to display their chops but we’ll come back to that. Continue reading
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