Opera Performance Essays

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