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Tenor Michael Spyres on why HGO's Romeo and Juliet is Truly Grand Opera

By Margaret Downing

Apr 26, 2022

In January 2020, tenor Michael Spyres flew in from New York City as a last minute, matinee performance substitute for the ailing superstar Lawrence Brownlee. In what became legend, Spyres sang the role of Fernand in La favorite standing on one side of the stage while the assistant director for the...

Soprano Tamara Wilson strikes a pose in Turandot at Houston Grand Opera.

HGO's Turandot Serves Up Gorgeous Music But Mutes Puccini's Passion

By D. L. Groover

Apr 23, 2022

Composer Giacomo Puccini loved fast cars, fast women, and cigarettes. It was the cigarettes that killed him, leaving his final masterpiece, Turandot, unfinished. There were sketches of the final scene and Adami and Simoni's completed libretto that remained, but the music was left hanging. Legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini, who would...

Robert Wilson's distinctive use of white face and signature colors.

HGO's Turandot: With "Pictures You Can Hear"

By Margaret Downing

Apr 20, 2022

Soprano Tamara Wilson will perform the title role of Puccini's Turandot for the Houston Grand Opera arrayed in distinctive white face and wearing a bold red dress — both the vision of director/set and lighting designer Robert Wilson. Singer Wilson (no relation to the director) says that while she loves...

Soprano Katy Lindhart and baritone Thaddaeus Bourne in the Ruby cast of Opera in the Heights’ Eugene Onegin.

Youthful Dreams Dashed and Deferred: Eugene Onegin at Opera in the Heights

By D. L. Groover

Apr 3, 2022

I knew trouble lay ahead in Opera in the Heights' physical production of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin (1879) when I saw the large portrait on the upstage wall. It resembles a propaganda recruiting poster from the early Stalinist era, a sort of Rosie the Communist Riveter. Against a red background, the...

Are we coming to the last time we'll see someone die on stage at Lambert Hall?

Opera in the Heights Faces a Future With or Without Lambert Hall

By Margaret Downing

Mar 30, 2022

Opera in the Heights is losing its home. No, it's not due to a hurricane's devastation or floodwaters wiping out its costume inventory. It's another common precipitating event of modern times: a merger. Chalk it up to declining church attendance. Two congregations will unite and the one sitting on top...

Houston Grand Opera's The Snowy Day in 2021.

Houston Grand Opera's New Executive Director on Challenges and Opportunities

By Margaret Downing

Mar 25, 2022

Khori Dastoor, who performed professionally as a lyric soprano and who now is the executive director of Houston Grand Opera, knows what the biggest challenge is for HGO right now. Opera Interruptus. Or in other words, people who for the last few years didn't go because of the devastation wrought...

A theatrical, state-of-the-art, mesmerizing production of The Magic Flute.

HGO's The Magic Flute: It Looks Like a Silent Movie, Sounds Like Mozart

By D. L. Groover

Feb 5, 2022

Houston Grand Opera's presentation of Mozart's final masterpiece, The Magic Flute, a co-production between Komische Oper Berlin and London avant-garde theater company 1927, is one for the ages. You haven't seen anything quite like it. It is spellbinding, amazingly theatrical, state-of-the-art, and thoroughly mesmerizing. A feat of theater prestidigitation of...

It's Time For Mozart's The Magic Flute at HGO With, Of Course, The Queen of the Night

By Margaret Downing

Feb 2, 2022

In recent years, Rainelle Krause has spent much of her time traveling Europe and performing the Queen of the Night role in which she gets to sing lyrics like "Hell's vengeance boils in my heart" a anguished, angry lyric rendered all the more ominous by being delivered in German. "I've been...

Dialogues of the Carmelites with Houston Grand Opera

The Sainted Sinners in Dialogues of the Carmelites at Houston Grand Opera

By D. L. Groover

Jan 15, 2022

In one of opera's most powerful and haunted finales, 16 nuns are guillotined in Francis Poulenc's remarkable Dialogues of the Carmelites. This is no spoiler since after the stunning La Scala world premiere in 1957 no one talked of anything else. The opera is renowned for this ultra-dramatic final scene...

Christine Goerke (center) in rehearsal for Dialogues of the Carmelites.

HGO's Dialogues of the Carmelites Finds Redemption Amid Fear and Chaos

By Margaret Downing

Jan 12, 2022

Christine Goerke has been to the graves in Paris — the last resting place for the nuns who were beheaded during the French Revolution because, as it turns out, it wasn't only the rich who had much to fear from the revolutionists. Goerke, the renowned soprano, is back at Houston...

Composer Joel Thompson at a workshop session for The Snowy Day.

The Children's Classic The Snowy Day Inspires a Special Premiere at Houston Grand Opera

By Margaret Downing

Nov 29, 2021

Emmy award-winning composer Joel Thompson had never done an opera before but when Houston Grand Opera's Patrick Summers approached him with the seed of an idea to build on the classic children's book The Snowy Day, he was both "humbled" and ready to go. "All of a sudden, opera made...

Tenor Brian Vu and mezzo-soprano Anne Maguire in Il Trovatore at Opera in the Heights.

Il Trovatore at Opera in the Heights: Attention Must Be Paid

By D. L. Groover

Nov 14, 2021

If you think the art of opera is dying, I turn your attention to Opera in the Heights and its splendid production of Verdi's propulsive warhorse Il Trovatore (1853). Well...let me rephrase. The physical production is rudimentary, and the staging lacks imagination. Updating from medieval Spain to a quasi-dystopian future...

Mezzo Carolyn Sproule as the fiery and doomed Carmen.

A Steamy and Entertaining Carmen Takes the Stage With Houston Grand Opera

By D. L. Groover

Oct 23, 2021

There is no character in opera quite like Carmen (mezzo Carolyn Sproule). She stands alone. Wagner's Brünhilde is a demi-goddess, too imperious and rather scary. Puccini's Mimi is always sick, probably a hypochondriac; his Tosca is high maintenance and deadly jealous. Strauss's Salome is psycho and way underage, and nobody...

The cigarette factory will rise again in Houston Grand Opera's Carmen at the Wortham.

Iconic Songs, Jealousy and Death Take to the Stage Once Again in HGO's Carmen

By Margaret Downing

Oct 12, 2021

Jealousy is never a good thing in real life but as part of the plot of Carmen it makes for some great, classic opera. Houston Grand Opera has brought back Bizet's Carmen, this time with former HGO studio artist (2012-14) Carolyn Sproule in the demanding lead role. Originally scheduled for...

Opera in the Heights Embarks on an In-Person and Digital 2021-22 Season

By Margaret Downing

Sep 16, 2021

The unlikely friendship between U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia has inspired an opera by Derrick Wang that will be part of the 2021-22 season for Opera in the Heights. In a hybrid season of live performance and continued digital content, OH! is partnering with the...

Raven McMillon as Gretel and Sun-Ly Pierce as Hensel in the HGO Digital production.

Get Ready to Access Your Inner, if Somewhat Deadly, Child in HGO's Hansel and Gretel

By Margaret Downing

May 24, 2021

The spectacle and "a little bit of mystery," were what first drew Raven McMillion to opera — or as she describes her initial reaction: "How are these people making these sounds which are almost otherworldly?" Now a Houston Grand Opera Studio Artist, soprano McMillion will have a chance to show...

Everybody at HGO is happy about The Sound of Music song fest including Michael Mayes, center, seen here in his 2019 performance at Houston Grand Opera as the title character in Rigoletto.

Here's Your Chance to Sing Along With Opera Stars in Public and No One Will Shush You

By Margaret Downing

May 4, 2021

As a youngster, Michael Mayes would sometimes accompany his father to his job as an electronics technician working on pipelines stretching from Amarillo to South Texas. Along the way, they'd sing bluegrass and country music. "My dad taught me how to sing harmony," Mayes says. On Saturday, May 8, baritone...

Soprano Nicole Heaston accompanied by HGO Director of Artistic Operations and Chorus Master Richard Bado on the piano.

From Gershwin to Gospel: Soprano Nicole Heaston in Concert for HGO

By Margaret Downing

Apr 6, 2021

Leaning into the comfort factor, soprano Nicole Heaston decided her concert recital recorded for Houston Grand Opera audiences would be all in English, with an emphasis on American and English composers. "Usually when a person goes to a recital you'll have a list with all of the translations. So you...

Opera in the Heights Brings Lucia and Figaro to White Oak Music Hall

By Margaret Downing

Mar 23, 2021

It's the return of live opera for Opera in the Heights but rather than it playing out in the cozy confines of Lambert Hall, it will be on the lawn at White Oak Music Hall this Wednesday and Thursday. Artistic Director Eiki Isomura will conduct the OH! Orchestra in highlights...

Houston Grand Opera Explores Spanish Music in a Special Premiere

By Margaret Downing

Mar 19, 2021

The music of Spain — and no, get those one-note misconceptions out of your mind — will be showcased in a special program at Houston Grand Opera created by acclaimed soprano Ana María Martínez, who also serves as HGO's Artistic Advisor. Premiering on March 26, Suite Española: Explorando Iberia will feature...

Opera

Buck Ross, Artistic Director of Moores Opera House, Retires

Review: Romeo and Juliet at Houston Grand Opera

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