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Opera Performance Essays
Opera Guild of Rochester writes short articles about the operas and publishes them before local performances, such as MET HD Broadcasts. Click on the PDF icon link to read, download and print.
Verdi's La Traviata - The Original Traviata: The True Story of Marie Duplessis
By Art Axelrod
Heavenly Lunacy: La Bohème and Moonstruck
By Carol Crocca
Verdi's Aida
By Art Axelrod
Puccini's Madama Butterfly
By Art Axelrod
Surrealism at the Opera: Thomas Adès The Exterminating Angel
By Art Axelrod
Dvořák's Rusalka
By Art Axelrod
Puccini's Turandot - The Story of the Story
By Art Axelrod
Puccini's Girl of the Golden West (La Fanciulla del West)
By Art Axelrod
L'Elisir d'Amore - Mixing an Elixir: A Bubbly Cocktail of "Upper-Attic" Fun
By Rachel Stuhlman
Tosca - Tosca and Napoleon
By Carol Crocca
Die Zauberflöte - Mozart's Magic
By Carol Crocca
Bellini's Norma Words Set to Music: The Inspired Collaboration of Bellini & Romano
By Rachel Stuhlman
Pushkin, Tchaikovsky and Eugene Onegin
By Rachel Stuhlman
Mozart's Idomeneo - Idomeneo's Vow
By Carol Crocca
Dvořák's Rusalka
By Art Axelrod and Carol Crocca
Gounod's Roméo et Juliette - Religious and Romantic Sensibility
By Carol Crocca
Verdi's Nabucco
By Art Axelrod
Don Giovanni - Mozart: The Man and the Myth
By Carol Crocca
Tristan und Isolde
By Peter Dundas
Elektra - Richard Strauss, Hugo von Hofmannstahl, and a Change of Style
By Peter Dundas
Donizetti's Roberto Devereux - The Myth of Donizetti’s Three Queens
By Rachel Stuhlman
Puccini's Madama Butterfly
By Carol Crocca
Giacomo Puccini and Giulio Ricordi: An Opera Partnership
By Carol Crocca
Puccini’s Turandot - The Persecuted Servant Girl & the Opera That Didn’t Get Finished By Art Axelrod
The Pearl Fishers - Georges Bizet - Independent But Troubled Spirit
By Carol Crocca
Alban Berg's Lulu
By Carol Crocca
Wagner's Tannhäuser
By Peter Dundas
Verdi's Il Trovatore
By Art Axelrod
Verdi's Otello - Iago: Portrait of Deception
By Carol Crocca
Rossini's La Donna del Lago - Isabella Colbran: Rossini's Muse
By Rachel Stuhlman
Tchaikovsky's Iolanta and Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle
By Carol Crocca
Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann
By Peter Dundas
Lehar's The Merry Widow - A Night at the Operetta
La Mogador - Was “La Mogador” Carmen?
By Carol Crocca
Verdi's Macbeth - Verdi Sets Shakespeare’s Play
By Carol Crocca
Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg - Background to the Composition of the Opera By Peter Dundas,
Rossini's The Barber of Seville - Evviva l’opera buffa! (Hurray for buffa!)
By Carol Crocca
