Tag Archives: Opera

by | October 16, 2026 · 5:57 pm

The Dallas Opera’s Cunning Little Vixen Is the Season’s Wild Card

Most operas are about people. Leoš Janáček wrote one about a fox, and then quietly made it about everything else: love, aging, freedom, and the way the forest keeps going long after any of us are gone.

The Dallas Opera brings The Cunning Little Vixen to the Winspear Opera House starting Oct. 30. It’s been a long wait. The company hasn’t staged this opera in 26 years and hasn’t presented anything by Janáček in 22. This time it arrives in director Barrie Kosky’s production, created for the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in 2022 and making its North American premiere here in Dallas.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under Steven Doyle

Tagged as , , , , ,

by | October 2, 2026 · 8:22 pm

Never Been to the Opera? Start With The Elixir of Love

Let’s get one thing out of the way. If your idea of opera is a man in a horned helmet singing for four hours about doom, this is not that opera. (Save the Wagner for March, when The Dallas Opera brings in Lohengrin.)

This one is about a lovesick small-town mechanic, a schoolteacher who is a little too smart for him, a swaggering American soldier, a con man peddling fake medicine, and a bottle of cheap red wine that half the village believes is a magic love potion. Nobody dies onstage. Somebody gets tipsy. Everybody goes home happy. If it were a movie, it would star Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, and you’d stop to watch it every time it came on cable.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under Steven Doyle

Tagged as , , , ,

by | August 14, 2026 · 11:25 am

Dallas-Fort Worth’s Next Six Weeks Are Loud, Then a Little Louder

Dallas-Fort Worth is about to get loud. The next six weeks bring a run of arena rock, honky-tonk legends, and a few genuine bucket-list pairings, and the calendar only gets busier once the theaters and orchestras open their seasons behind them.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under Steven Doyle

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

by | April 15, 2026 · 12:57 pm

Opera’s Greatest Characters: Carmen

There is a moment in the first act of Bizet’s Carmen when the title character walks onto the stage, tosses a flower at a soldier she has barely glanced at, and walks away. No grand entrance. No trembling aria. Just that. And the soldier — and the audience — is already lost.

That soldier is Don José. He is decent, dutiful, engaged to a good woman back home. Within the hour he will have helped Carmen escape from custody, thrown away his career, and started down a road that ends with a knife outside a bullring. Carmen did not chase him. She never chases anyone. That is the whole point.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under Steven Doyle

Tagged as , , ,

by | March 20, 2026 · 3:24 pm

Opera’s Greatest Characters: The Queen of the Night

Opera’s The Queen of the Night from The Magic Flute is one of the most famous characters in opera. When the audience first meets her, she seems like a loving and worried mother. She asks the hero, Tamino, to rescue her daughter, Pamina, from a supposedly evil man named Sarastro. At first, she seems sympathetic and powerful, but as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that she is actually the villain. Sarastro is wise, calm, and good, while the Queen of the Night is driven by anger, revenge, and strong emotions. This shift in perception makes her a very interesting and dramatic character.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under Steven Doyle

Tagged as , , , , ,

by | March 10, 2026 · 6:03 pm

Opera’s Greatest Characters: Violetta Valéry From La Traviata

Lisetta Oropesa – Met Opera

Violetta Valéry is the emotional center of La Traviata, and one of opera’s most human characters. At first glance she seems to have everything: wealth, beauty, and a glamorous social life in Paris. But Violetta is also a courtesan—admired in public, judged in private—and she understands that the world she lives in offers comfort without respect. On top of that, she is quietly dying of tuberculosis, a fact that gives her story a constant sense of urgency.

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under Steven Doyle

Tagged as , , , , , ,

by | February 25, 2026 · 3:11 pm

Operas Greatest Characters: Rodolfo in La bohème

At the heart of La bohème is Rodolfo, a young poet with more imagination than money and more feeling than sense. He isn’t written as a grand hero. He’s impulsive, idealistic, occasionally selfish, and deeply in love. That combination makes him feel real—and it’s why he remains one of opera’s essential tenor roles.

Continue reading →

4 Comments

Filed under Crave

Tagged as , , , , , ,

by | February 13, 2026 · 3:03 pm

Operas Greatest Characters: Papageno, the Magic Flute

When it comes to opera characters who are energetic, humorous, and impossible to ignore, few can match Papageno. From Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Papageno is the archetypal comic figure — a bird-catcher with a heart as big as his appetite for food, drink, and love. On stage, he bursts with playful energy, moving with physical comedy that rivals his vocal agility. Every scene he enters is filled with movement, gestures, and expressions that instantly draw the audience into his world.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under Steven Doyle

Tagged as , , , , , , ,