Reviews theater and opera. Sings, mostly trouser roles. Dances in hoop skirts. Fights with swords.
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Articles by Ilana Walder-Biesanz
High and dry | Santa Fe Opera Review
Background: The Santa Fe Opera Chorus, Ya-Chung Huang (Goro), Darya Narymanava (Mother), Sophia Baete (Aunt); Foreground: Jarrett Ott (Sharpless), Karen Chia-ling Ho (Cio-Cio-San), Stephen Costello (B.F. Pinkerton), by Bronwen Sharp for the Santa Fe Opera The Santa Fe Opera has an enviable position. The stunning location provides built-in backdrops and serves as bait for talent, affording opportunities for luxury casting.
Of Floyd and Houston
Carlisle Floyd / Photo: Houston Grand Opera Houston Grand Opera is having a very American year. The 2025-26 season kicked off with Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, with American conductor James Gaffigan on the podium. During that run, HGO announced that Gaffigan would become HGO’s new Music Director, beginning in 2027. The company has been trumpeting their Grammy win for the recording of Jake Heggie’s Intelligence, an opera set during the U.S. Civil War.
The best thing I saw in 2025 was Breaking the Waves
Over the years, plenty of Parterre reviewers and commenters have praised Mazzoli’s score — tuneful but eerie, with an exciting, relentless momentum. This was the “big opera house” production it deserved: Patrick Summers leading the HGO orchestra, an A-list cast with unflinching dramatic commitment, and sets/productions/choreography of the highest caliber.
Everything is “and,” not “or”
James Gaffigan likes his wines like he likes his classical music: with the best of Europe meeting the best of America. He raves about Domaine Drouhin and Beaux Frères, Willamette Valley wineries that respect the traditions and expertise of Burgundy. “That’s what we should be doing in America,” he says of both winemaking and opera, “taking what they’ve done and making it better.” As Houston Grand Opera’s incoming music director, Gaffigan is something of a rarity: an American in, well, America.
Sex power god | Houston Opera Review
What do a 9-year-old opera adapted from a psychological film and a 170-year-old opera based on medieval legend have in common? One answer: Sex and miracles. Another: they’re both can’t miss productions at Houston Grand Opera (HGO) right now. In Missy Mazzoli’s 2016 opera Breaking the Waves, a young woman from a traditional religious community in Scotland (Bess) marries an outsider (Jan) who suffers a terrible accident that leaves him paralyzed.
Youthful Mozart Opera, With Some New Twists, Is Glittering Vocal Show
BOSTON — Articles about Mozart’s Mitridate, re di Ponto typically lead with quasi-apologies for the opera. Mozart was only 14 when he wrote it, dramaturgs hasten to remind audiences. As presented by Boston Lyric Opera on Sept. 13 at the Emerson Cutler Majestic Theatre, Mitridate needs no excuses. A starry cast, plus Mozart’s dazzling score, made for one of the finest operatic evenings I’ve ever experienced. Mozart followed the Baroque opera seria model for this work.
More gifted students need accelerated paths
This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters. I went to high school at age 11. Within two years, I had run out of math and Spanish classes there, so I walked from my public school campus to nearby Lewis and Clark College to study differential equations, symbolic logic, and the plays of 1830s Spain. People often ask me if it was strange to be a newly minted teenager in classrooms full of college upperclassmen.
After six years, Noble Schools CEO Constance Jones announces she’s passing the torch
Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest education news. The head of Chicago’s largest high school charter network is stepping down after six years on the job. Noble Schools CEO Constance Jones announced in an email to staff and families that she will “pass the torch to a new leader” and work with the network’s board and an outside consultant to find a new CEO.
An investigation found Michigan failed students with disabilities. The state wants the case dismissed. Original
Sign up for Chalkbeat Detroit’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system and Michigan education policy. Michigan education officials this month asked the U.S. Department of Education to dismiss all claims that the state violated the federal rights of students with disabilities during COVID-era school shutdowns.
I skipped three grades. More highly gifted students need accelerated classes.
First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others thinking and writing about public education. I went to high school at age 11. Within two years, I had run out of math and Spanish classes there, so I walked from my public school campus to nearby Lewis and Clark College to study differential equations, symbolic logic, and the plays of 1830s Spain.
Intelligence Makes History at Houston Grand Opera
Intelligence opens quietly, its only sound the flapping of laundry. Don’t be fooled — this new opera, which had its world premiere Friday night at Houston Grand Opera, is anything but subtle. A percussive score by Bay Area-based Jake Heggie, a grandiose libretto by Gene Scheer, exaggerated characters, and visceral physicality courtesy of director/choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and the Urban Bush Women dancers combine for a night of big sounds, big movements, and big emotions.
An interview with Danielle de Niese, “opera’s coolest soprano”
Danielle de Niese performs at opening night of Festival Napa Valley at the Meadowood. Ilana Walder-Biesanz sits down with “opera’s coolest soprano.” At 30, many opera singers are still finishing training programs and trying to get their careers off the ground. Danielle de Niese was being named “opera’s coolest soprano” by the New York Times.
Tenn. legislature dismisses gun bills, defying protests after school shooting
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for our free Tennessee newsletter to keep up with the Shelby County public school system and state education policy. Tennessee’s legislature raced Thursday to complete its business early for the year while refusing to take up gun reform legislation from Republican Gov. Bill Lee or Democratic lawmakers, three weeks after a mass shooting at a Nashville school.
Nashville school shooting prompts Capitol protest, and a fresh look at Tennessee gun policies
Hundreds of angry protesters, most of them high school students, flooded inside Tennessee’s Capitol Thursday calling for stricter gun laws after an armed intruder killed three children and three adults days earlier at a small private school in Nashville. Chanting “Save our kids!” and “Not one more!” protesters gathered outside of legislative chambers where lawmakers were in session and could hear the students’ shouts reverberating from the Capitol rotunda.
Embracing The Theater At The Heart Of Cilea’s ‘Adriana Lecouvreur’
SYDNEY — Theater about theater holds a special allure for directors and singers. Adriana Lecouvreur does not get performed often, but Opera Australia’s starry cast exuded enthusiasm for the piece in advance of their Sydney premiere on Feb. 20. Director Rosetta Cucchi calls Adriana “a dream for every stage director — an opera that talks about theater in all its shades.” Soprano Ermonela Jaho, no stranger to the title role, says it is one of her favorites.
What would it mean for kids if Tennessee rejects U.S. educaton funding?
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Subscribe to our free Tennessee newsletter to keep up with the Shelby County public school system and state education policy. When House Speaker Cameron Sexton recently floated the idea of Tennessee rejecting U.S. education dollars to free its schools from federal rules and restrictions, he made the pivot sound as simple as making up the difference with $1.8 billion in state funds.
A Bloody Valentine’s Macbeth From West Bay Opera
People laughed last year when the Metropolitan Opera offered Bluebeard’s Castle on Valentine’s Day. West Bay Opera is vying for the “least romantic” title with their Feb. 14 opening of Verdi’s Macbeth, an opera of cruel murders and boundless ambition. Their production proves thoroughly engrossing for three of the four acts. (The other might leave you wishing you’d booked a romantic dinner instead.) West Bay places Macbeth in a firmly historical setting.
“Da uomo”: Querying Gender and Sexuality in Mozart’s
The young mezzo-soprano Gaia Petrone is dressed all in black, with a mohawk and overdrawn eyebrows; she sings the male role of Sesto. Andrew Owens (tenor) kneels beside her in similarly monochrome garb, barely restraining tears as the emperor, Tito.
How the sushi gets made
My last big excursion in Okayama was the most important: a lesson in how to make sushi. Who knew it was so complicated? Kidoairaku chef Yasuo Namba first demonstrated advanced techniques that are only covered in his longer course: decorative cucumber-cutting and arranging sashimi to create edible flowers. Then we got down to business — the business of making nigiri. I’d made nigiri before, but apparently I had never followed the proper 14-step process.
Picking, pizza, painting
My favorite day of Okayama prefecture sightseeing so far (well, except for the days that involved cats, but of course nothing can compete with those) came as a surprise. It was listed on my schedule as “agriculture day,” an ominously vague term that conjured up visions of toiling in fields and milking cows. Part of which turned out to be true, actually. The first stop on my itinerary was a rice field.
Handel’s Orlando Is Riveting at S.F. Opera
When rumors swirled that San Francisco Opera’s summer season would include Vivaldi’s Orlando furioso, rare opera lovers rejoiced. The rumors turned out to be wrong — but Handel’s Orlando is nothing to sneeze at either. Widely acclaimed by critics and scholars as Handel’s musical masterpiece, Orlando doesn’t appear often on United States stages. Perhaps it’s the static plot: no one falls in love, no one goes on quests, and no one dies.
Musical Magic, Flawed Production in West Bay Opera’s Falstaff
The old theater saw is true: tragedy is easy, comedy is hard. Verdi’s Falstaff is pure comedy. Falstaff simultaneously woos two wealthy ladies (Meg and Alice). They discover the deception — as does Alice’s madly jealous husband, Ford. Multiple schemes of vengeance lead to chaos, but Falstaff accepts his just deserts with good humor. Such a farce demands impeccable timing, tight musical coordination, strong directorial vision, and balanced acting.
Why Tito? Mozart Masterpiece Makes Rousing Comeback
A scene from the LA Opera’s 2019 production of Mozart’s ‘La clemenza di Tito.’ (Photo by Cory Weaver / LA Opera) By Ilana Walder-Biesanz Static, written in 18 days, a flop at its premiere, filled with recitatives not by Mozart. Dismissals of La clemenza di Tito abound, despite a plot that is rich with conflict and a beautifully orchestrated score that includes intricate ensembles (rare for the opera seria genre), showpiece arias with clarinet, and celebratory choruses.
Portland Opera’s Trans-Affirming As One Triumphs
Before the violins scraped out the first notes of Portland Opera’s As One, two people appeared onstage with microphones. That’s usually a bad sign at the opera — but on Friday, no illnesses or cast changes were announced. Instead, Ella (a proudly trans young girl) and her mom Joy shared their life experiences, explained what this opera meant to them, and urged the audience to listen and learn. If that intro sounds dangerous to the tear ducts, the opera itself was even more so.
The Highs and Lows of Young Talent in Tamerlano
For Bay Area music fans who can’t get enough Baroque opera (and really, the pickings are slim), San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s historical performance program is a blessing. On March 9–10, they offered two concert performances of the Handel rarity Tamerlano. What fun: the score is pure Handelian excitement, and the plot is full of suspenseful twists. SFCM students displayed a dazzling variety of vocal riches, but inconsistent stage presence and acting.
Howards End, America Sports Fine Music
E.M. Forster’s Howards End is making waves: first a television mini-series in 2018, and now an operatic adaptation staged at Z Space by Earplay in partnership with RealOpera. The novel has the double allure of a refined air and a potboiler plot. In turn-of-the-century England, the sensitive and idealistic Schlegel sisters (Helen and Margaret) mix with the successful, capitalist Wilcoxes (Henry, his ailing wife Ruth, and their son Charles) and the poor Basts (Leonard and Jacky).
Island City Opera’s Engaging Little Women
Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women is a book full of music. The March sisters sing and play piano, and they use their skills to devise their own operatic entertainments. It makes sense, then, to set their story to music, and to weave the sisters’ music into a broader opera. Like its source material (but unlike many operas), the resulting work is not grand or melodramatic.
Giving and Receiving in AMOC’s With Care
After a long silence in the pitch-black ODC Theater, a square of light appears. Four people stand at each corner. The silence stretches on — uncomfortable but powerful. This is the starting point of the strange, new dance theater work With Care, which played at ODC on Saturday. Even in those soundless moments, the connection and trust between this quartet is clear. They are here to perform giving and receiving care, but they are bound by more than this show.
Garden Court at the Palace Hotel – Highfalutin Afternoon Tea Society – Medium
The most striking feature of the Garden Court at the Palace Hotel is its translucent glass roof. At tea time, the sun filters through just enough to give the room a warm glow that renders the light from the crystal chandeliers irrelevant. Marble columns and gilded details add to the grandeur and fire the imagination.
Strauss’ <i>Arabella</i>: Hidden Trove Of Seductive Beauty
SAN FRANCISCO – Richard Strauss’ Arabella languishes on the edges of the core operatic repertoire. San Francisco Opera last performed it twenty seasons ago. Its sheer, breathtaking beauty makes it hard to understand why. More soaring in its lyricism than Der Rosenkavalier and more accessibly tuneful than Elektra, Arabella seems a natural choice for a popular Strauss staple. Although San Francisco Opera’s current production has flaws, it moved me deeply and reminded me why I adore this score.
West Bay Opera Hits a High Mark With La Bohème
As West Bay Opera General Director José Luis Moscovich pointed out, 19th-century Paris and 21st-century San Francisco have plenty in common. Artists struggle to make rent, healthcare is expensive, and friends share small apartments to make ends meet. Voilà: the scene is set for La bohème. Director Igor Vieira used the modern setting to make his production relaxed and fun.
Radvanovsky Reigns in S.F. Opera’s Roberto Devereux
Even if you’re hot stuff, it doesn’t pay to offend the queen. That’s the moral of Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux, in which the title hero loses his head for loving a woman other than the aging, but passionate Queen Elizabeth I. San Francisco Opera’s production has stars that make this simple love triangle a searing musical drama and a staging that questions the whole genre of history plays (and operas).
Radvanovsky Reigns in S.F. Opera’s Roberto Devereaux
Even if you’re hot stuff, it doesn’t pay to offend the queen. That’s the moral of Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux, in which the title hero loses his head for loving a woman other than the aging, but passionate Queen Elizabeth I. San Francisco Opera’s production has stars that make this simple love triangle a searing musical drama and a staging that questions the whole genre of history plays (and operas).
Portland Opera Is Well Worth the Trip
For West Coast opera travelers, Portland is an easily overlooked destination. Portland Opera is not as well-known or well-funded as Seattle’s, San Francisco’s, or Los Angeles’s main houses. The opera’s main venue, the Keller Auditorium, boasts boring architecture and dreadful acoustics. But those who skip Portland when planning their operagoing are missing out.
At Merola, Early Mozart Gets the Serious Treatment
The little-performed Il re pastore (The shepherd king) is billed as early Mozart. True, he was only 19 when he wrote it, but he had already written nine other operas! Il re pastore has a similar structure and sound to Mozart’s even-earlier opere serie (Mitridate and Lucio Silla). It’s a barrage of arias strung together by recitative, with ensembles saved for special occasions like the end of an act. The pieces themselves are familiarly Mozartian.
The San Francisco Ring: Episode IV - A New Hope
Earlier parts of The Ring demand patience for their slow-moving action and self-indulgent scores. In Götterdämmerung, events race along, with plots and counterplots, disguise, sex, greed, assassination and the burning of the world. It’s the one Ring opera that is dramatically gripping from start to finish, especially as presented at San Francisco Opera.
A gritty Siegfried continues the San Francisco Opera Ring
In the decades between Die Walküre and Siegfried, the world of San Francisco Opera’s Ring has crumbled. Brünnhilde’s rock lies in ruins. Stumps and barren, charred trunks form the forest. Mime and Siegfried usually live in a hut in the woods; here, they inhabit a broken trailer on a trash heap. Their quest to find Fafner takes them to an abandoned warehouse, where the survivalist Alberich hunkers down with night-vision goggles and homemade bombs.
Valkyries parachute into San Francisco
Wave projections before the beginning of San Francisco Opera’s Die Walküre continued the water theme from Rheingold, but the first act failed to maintain Rheingold’s excitement. Urgent playing from the orchestra and shaky video racing through the woods made for an electrifying start. Francesca Zambello’s staging, however, fell flat. Hunding’s hut featured an oddly two-dimensional tree, which sprouted a sword from its trunk at a nonsensical moment.
A strong start for San Francisco Opera's Ring
As the program notes for San Francisco Opera’s Ring assert, the cycle hinges on love. Das Rheingold can sometimes seem empty. Love is renounced; family members enslave, murder and sell each other. Romantic politics are absent from this prologue, though they will drive the plot in the cycle proper. It’s a testament to SFO’s success, then, that their Rheingold was full of excitement and emotion. A well-crafted production and the highest musical values got this Ring off to a very promising start.
Don Quixote rides (a tricycle) again at Cal Shakes
If you’ve seen Man of La Mancha or other wrenching adaptations of Don Quixote, you might have missed a key feature of Cervantes’ novel: it’s hilarious. In creating his Quixote Nuevo, playwright Octavio Solis and director KJ Sanchez have captured the book’s humor and transported it to a modern town near the US-Mexico border. The result is a fast-paced, bilingual romp that’s funny and touching enough to warm audiences, even in California Shakespeare Theater’s windy outdoor venue.
Pocket Opera Lifts the Veil on The Secret Marriage
Domenico Cimarosa isn’t quite a household name in the opera world. His 1792 big hit, Il matrimonio segreto (The secret marriage), hovers at the fringes of modern repertoire. The chance to see these little-known confections (albeit only in English translation) is one of the services Pocket Opera provides the Bay Area opera community. The plot is insubstantial. The wealthy and half-deaf Geronimo has two daughters, Elisetta and Carolina. Carolina is secretly married to Geronimo’s secretary, Paolino.
Old Comedy in New Operatic Bottles at the Conservatory of Music
Classic opera is infamous for its questionable source material. Modern composers and librettists therefore look for strong stories to build on. John Musto’s Bastianello and William Bolcom’s Lucrezia (performed together this weekend at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music) draw on unpromising sources but make charming operas out of them just the same.
Pocket Opera is Spot-on in Offenbach's Belle Hélène
What really happened between Paris and Helen before they ran away to Troy together? Homer doesn’t tell us, but Offenbach fills in the gaps (with an added dose of nineteenth-century political satire) in his toe-tapping operetta, La Belle Hélène. Venus promised Helen to Paris in exchange for her victory in the goddesses’ beauty contest, and she’s determined to keep her oath.
A gaudy stand-and-sing Semiramide at the Met
Semiramide isn’t Rossini’s most toe-tapping opera, but it’s experiencing something of a revival. In 2017, it graced the stages of both the Bayerische Staatsoper and the Royal Opera House, in a bizarre production by director David Alden. That staging featured a dizzying parade of contemporary political and pop-cultural references, plus a memorable mad scene with an ax. Such an avant garde approach would never do at the Metropolitan Opera.
Sex, angels and cannibalism: Written on Skin
Written on Skin tells an old, oft-retold story. A woman cheats on her husband. Her husband kills the lover. The woman kills herself. In George Benjamin’s and Martin Crimp’s 2012 opera, this is less a tragedy than a triumphant sexual awakening. The woman, Agnès (she insists on her name, while the men remain anonymous), is intelligent and curious.
“Auf nach Mahagonny" in Mannheim!
From the first moments of Nationaltheater Mannheim’s Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, it’s clear that we’re in for a good time. The sequins of the narrator’s blazer glitter as she steps onto the stage. Then the music begins, and conductor Benjamin Reiners’ deep love for Weill’s score is immediately apparent. As the overture plays, we see a police chase scene that moves from video projection (that must have been fun for the singers to film!) seamlessly into the theatre.
The show must go on: Lucio Silla in Kassel
The Staatstheater Kassel is a small house – too small to employ covers in case of illness or accident. When two of their six leads for Mozart’s Lucio Silla fell sick at the last minute, they had to get creative. One part (Giunia) was cut entirely; the other (Cecilio) was sung from the pit while the assistant director acted it onstage. The result was messy, but it’s a minor miracle that the show went on at all.
More Porpora operas, please (just not this one!): Mitridate at Schloss Schwetzingen
The “rediscovery” of Baroque opera in the mid-20th century was a boon to opera lovers. It brought gorgeous works by Handel and Monteverdi (and, to a lesser extent, Rameau, Lully and Cavalli) back to the stages. There are many more composers who were lauded in their time but remain unknown to modern audiences. Theater und Orchester Heidelberg is in the seventh year of its Opera Napoletana project, which produces Baroque obscurities by the likes of Scarlatti, Jommelli, Zingarelli and Porpora.
In Konwitschny's modern Medea, monsters are made by men
Euripides’ play Medea shocked Athenian audiences in 431 BC. It features a strong woman who kills her own children (as well as her romantic rival) to punish her husband, Jason, for abandoning her. It is unclear whether its initially frosty reception was due to its content or its departure from mythical canon, but Euripides was certainly innovative. His anti-heroine murders in cold blood and escapes unscathed.
Stars and Léhar's score shine in The Count of Luxemburg at Deutsche Oper am Rhein
The 1909-10 season was good for Franz Léhar. The composer had three operettas premiere, and the most successful, Der Graf von Luxemburg, got over 300 consecutive performances in Vienna. The score, full of irritatingly catchy waltzes and polkas alternating with lush ballads, makes it easy to hear why. The story is the standard silly stuff of the genre.
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