Reviews

The Turn of the Screw

Something is terribly wrong at Bly House — but things couldn't be righter with Houston Grand Opera's adroitly realized The Turn of the Screw. - Houston Chronicle
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"The young Michael Kepler Meo makes his HGO debut...He’s a kind of miracle throughout. Joélle Harvey is his confident sister Flora, with a clear and exacting intonation, and Tamara Wilson truly steals the show as Miss Jessel" - Culutre Map
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"This is yet another triumph in HGO's repertoire, and the unfaltering care being given to the Britten series makes one confident that it will continue to be a highlight of upcoming seasons." - ConcertoNet.com
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"The opera also contains three of the most vivid operatic characters that Britten ever devised – the Governess, Peter Quint and Miles.  In Houston, Roocroft, Kennedy and Meo performed these roles brilliantly." - Opera Warhorses

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"Director Neil Armfield skillfully brings the characters to life while gradually tightening the dramatic screws." - The Dallas Morning News
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Tosca

"The role fits Racette's voice, her temperament and her finely tuned dramatic instincts like an opera glove.the role fits Racette's voice, her temperament and her finely tuned dramatic instincts like an opera glove." - Houston Press
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"John Caird's snazzy new production at Houston Grand Opera hit all the right notes, with a stellar cast, intriguing new sets, a lively pace and just enough edge to keep us on the edge." - Culture Vulture

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"The celebrated Patricia Racette's role debut as the passionate diva Floria Tosca makes this production an event. She exceeds expectations with a rare blend of radiant singing and emotional truth in an exciting portrayal that keeps this volatile heroine a credible human being." - Houston Chronicle
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"Houston Grand Opera's new production of Tosca, custom tailored to the company by director John Caird and set and costume designer Bunny Christie, is an absolute triumph." - ConcertoNet.com

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 "Credit belongs to HGO music director Patrick Summers and the HGO Orchestra, which from delicate shimmers and flutings to brazen climaxes ravished the ear" - The Dallas Morning News
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“Transcendent music, impeccably realized, proves the invincible strength of Houston Grand Opera's new Lohengrin, which opened to an enthusiastic reception Friday night at Wortham Center…Much as the staging and design support them, it is chiefly the orchestral, vocal and choral work that make this production a grand event of which HGO can be justifiably proud.” - Houston Chronicle
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“With one of the strongest casts assembled on the Brown Theater stage in recent memory, it is a huge success. This - long-awaited return to German opera at HGO - flaunts the prowess of the company, with Patrick Summers leading his resident orchestra and chorus in a taut crackerjack of a performance. There is not a weak link anywhere in the thoughtfully assembled cast." - ConcertoNet.com
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"It's the music that reached sublime heights... HGO proved, without a doubt, that they are on solid ground to launch their much-awaited return to German opera." - CultureVulture.net
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"Under Summers's ever alert and sensitive direction, the eighty-piece orchestra--at times commenting with crispness and agility, at times shaking the walls with sweeping transcendent climaxes--took its rightful place alongside the singers as a narrative instrument." - Opera News
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The Elixir of Love
"Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love has been delighting audiences around the world for 177 years. Still, it would be hard to imagine a more delightful rendition than the one with which Houston Grand Opera triumphantly opened its 55th season Friday evening at Wortham Center." - Houston Chronicle
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"The role of Nemorino, the village idiot, was played by tenor John Osborn. This marks his HGO debut and what a debut it was! He sang with surgically precise coloratura and shimmering, glorious light-lyric high notes." - Examiner.com
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"Houston Grand Opera opened their season with a rousing *Elixir*, packed with enough star power, charm, and soaring voices to get any opera lover on board for the treats that await them throughout the year." - CultureVulture.net
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Brief Encounter

"[Previn's] great talent as a composer is to catch you unawares. In Brief Encounter, he hooks you with a melody, turns it on its side and moves on, measure after measure feeling like a brief but significant encounter. The opera will last." - LA Times
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"Feel free to fall madly in love with Brief Encounter." - Houston Chronicle
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"[Brief Encounter] is a skillful musical reimagining of this intimate romance about infidelity." - Wall Street Journal
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Rigoletto
"This is one of the best Rigolettos in memory, a production that would make Verdi smile in appreciation." - Houston Press
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"On a stormy evening in Houston (both in and outside of the house), Houston Grand Opera’s opening night production of Verdi’s Rigoletto went off with a thunderous bang...Albina Shagimuratova’s Gilda was one to remember." - Opera Today

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"Houston Grand Opera’s new staging of Rigoletto is a great success on almost every level." - ConcertoNet.com
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"[Albina Shagimuratova's] radiant soprano dispatches the gorgeous lines and elaborate ornamentation with agility and flair, glistening in her top notes, virtuosic in her trills and flourishes." - Houston Chronicle
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"...one of the most moving performances of Gilda the city has ever seen." - MusicWeb International
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Chorus!
Houston Grand Opera's Chorus! on a grand scale
"When Houston Grand Opera unveils Chorus!tonight at Wortham Theater Center, the audience will witness an operatic premiere unlike anything previously attempted." - Houston Chronicle
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Even Novices Will Fall For HGO's Chorus!
"a production full of surprises and unexpected joys " - Houston Press
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Chorus! @ HGO
"The evening really is like a single artistic piece – it’s certainly costumed and staged non-stop as one – with the added benefit of squeezing in more great songs." - Arts Houston
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A Midsummer Night's Dream
"What one does understand is what a superb job the four child soloists and the Houston Grand Opera’s Children’s Chorus, under Children’s Chorus Director Karen Reeves, did in playing the fairies, and how crucial this element was to the success of the production." - Opera Warhorses
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"Houston Grand Opera’s new production of the opera capitalized on the magic in the score, with a stunning visual production matched by transcendent singing. " - Concerto.net

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"If not constantly enchanting from first note to final curtain, Houston Grand Opera’s new production of Britten’s Dream proved at Friday’s opening to be enchanting..Welsh countertenor Iestyn Davies sings Oberon with smooth control and precision, exuding stately authority...Soprano Laura Claycomb makes a glamorous and golden-throated Tytania, with far-reaching vocal command and the proper capriciousness of character." - Houston Cronicle

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Three Decembers CD
"Three Decembers is, without a doubt, masterfully performed." - ConcertoNet.com
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Girls Chorus
"The chorus’s gorgeous descants on Angels We Have Heard on High and Joy to the World showcased not only beautiful arrangements, but demonstrated their ability to harmonize together, to listen to each other and to bring forth an epic sound." - Arts Houston
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Beatrice and Benedict
"The performance heard on November 2, was as impressive vocally as it was visually...In DiDonato, now an international star, one experiences magnificent growth with each encounter; it is hardly surprising that she walks a path already strewn with awards. And Reinhardt, tall, handsome and virile of voice, is a perfect partner for her." -  Opera Today
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"Lush and utterly gorgeous, Houston Grand Opera's production of Hector Berlioz's Beatrice and Benedict is a treat for multiple senses." - Houston Press
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"You know the work is in good hands from the moment conductor Michael Hofstetter launches into the Overture. His dynamic attack maintains proper delicacy in the intricate filigree of Berlioz's orchestral writing, yet commands full-bodied sound in the more robust surges...DiDonato exudes personality and vocal splendor. " - Houston Chronicle
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"Joyce DiDonato, one of the HGO studio's shining success stories, is predictably brilliant as Beatrice. Her voice is pure, agile and distinctive, and her acting is superb...Reinhardt...wields a supple, powerful voice and projects the charm and dash  " - Marcus Maroney
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Cav/Pag Stars Shine in Season Opener

"The performance of October 17 featured superb singing and captivating acting that infused these two short operas of violent passions with depth, nuance and a few surprises." - Opera News
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"Russian tenor Vladimir Galouzine similarly returned for a portrayal of Canio, in Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, that was magnetically mean and frightening from the first note...Zajick was a marvel. She was a powerhouse with technique under utter control and dramatic instincts honed near perfection." - Charles Ward, Houston Chronicle

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"Houston Grand Opera's recent productions of Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana and Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci proved a terrific beginning to the season." - Culture Vulture
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The Refuge CD in Opera News
"In the end, the piece is sprawling, intriguing, illuminating, deeply moving and often thrilling - probably exactly what its creators hoped it would be. Patrick Summers, the HGO music director, deserves much credit for marshalling these large and unusually diverse forces." - Opera News
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Houston Grand Opera and The Refuge featured in Symphony Magazine
"Houston Grand Opera's ground-breaking production of The Refuge offers a model of how an arts organization can achieve civic stature: by engaging the hearts and minds of diverse communities." - Symphony Magazine
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The Refuge CD
"Opera companies have begun reaching out in ways we couldn't have imagined even a few years ago...But Houston Grand Opera deserves bountiful credit for one of the most ambitious and affecting projects of all." - Gramophone Magazine
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Billy Budd
"This Budd's for You!" - Charles Ward's Houston Chronicle Review of HGO's Billy Budd
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The Houston Grand Opera’s six-year tribute to the composer Benjamin Britten is off to a gripping start. Billy Budd, which opened this past weekend at the Wortham Theater Center, sustained a dramatic impact that was reflected in the audience’s hushed intensity on Sunday afternoon. Prolonged applause at the end confirmed that reading of the hall’s atmosphere.
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"As Billy Budd, baritone Daniel Belcher... sings with total conviction, whether he's waxing rhapsodic in 'Billy Budd, king of the birds,' or plangently prayerful in his expansive yet gentle farewell from below decks. As malignant Claggart, bass Phillip Ens has Budd's juiciest role — if you don't count the chorus — singing this fiend with booming, malevolent relish. And as 'Starry' Captain Vere, tenor Andrew Kennedy has an open, fresh sound and immaculate enunciation — no surtitles needed for him! — as he ponders his 'endless sea' of guilt and remorse. He manages to bring highfalutin Vere down to earth.

The supporting cast throws itself into the nautical life with a hearty heave-ho. Especially buoyant are tenor Chad Freeburg as Novice, who betrays Billy to forestall another flogging; bass Gwynne Howell as Dansker, the wise old salt; and baritone Philip Cutlip as Donald, the below-decks jokester. The all-male chorus sings the rousing war anthem "This Is Our Moment" with appropriate dramatic gusto, while maestro Patrick Summers invests Britten's score with the very smell of the sea. In HGO's hands, this opera...sails majestically onward. " - Houston Press
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"One performance remains of what I would consider the best musical production in Houston this season: Houston Grand Opera's production of Britten's Billy Budd.  Easily the most strongly cast of HGO's productions this season, it bodes well for a five-year look at the composer." - Marcus Maroney
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La Boheme
"Martinez...has given a transcendent interpretation and etches herself into our hearts as one of the most memorable of Mimis...Shagimuratova is a force of nature ...Patrick Summers conducts the Houston Grand Opera Orchestra in a taut and lustrous interpretation. This conductor, who returns to this opera after a decade’s absence, shows himself as a master of this music. Summers is one of the best opera conductors on this continent or any other." - ConcertoNet
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"With her dusky sound and bright characterization, Martinez stood out...The portrayal was one to remember for its total impact...Summers and his ensemble...made Puccini's score gleam... the orchestral playing was sumptuous. As always, in their brief work in Act 2, the HGO Chorus and Children's Chorus were first-rate." - Houston Chronicle
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"The people – critics included – who go on and on about how the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra is the best in the world, how others are far inferior, should have been in Houston's Brown Theater on Saturday night. You'd have to catch the Met on an awfully good night to hear the nuance and finesse Patrick Summers consistently coaxed out of the Houston Grand Opera Orchestra in La bohème." - Dallas Morning News
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Last Acts
"Jake Heggie... has a true gift for soaring and meaningful melody, a great ear for orchestral effects, a talent for picking good source material, and a knack for crafting affecting melodrama (in the best sense of that word) that can move an audience to tears... Von Stade (is) a classy, beautiful, consummate artist...She charms, she rants, she belts, she caresses, she provokes, she soothes, and she pours out phrase after phrase of plangent sound."
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"Tailor-made for her, von Stade is in her element in Last Acts, performed on a largely bare stage with an ensemble of 11 instrumentalists on risers behind her. Cesar Galindo provided her with sumptuous gowns, and Brian Nason‘s lighting added to the effectiveness of shifting scenes. Von Stade relishes 'Maddy' and she accounted for the success that the work was in the eyes — and ears — of the opening-night audience that packed the 1000-seat Cullen Theater in Houston’s Wortham Center."
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HGO's production was Magic
"..the local unveiling of the David Hockney-designed production had a very earthbound feel Friday at the Wortham Theater Center. The performance sparkled with lots of gorgeous singing. " - Houston Chronicle
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Attention, Opera-holics: Mozart is Coming to Town
"Tenor Paul Groves makes an impressive HGO debut as fervent Belmonte. A splendid Mozart interpreter, he caresses his lovesick arias with passionate, fluid phrasing. " - Houston Press
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Not From Here: An Opera for Houston's Immigrants
"Dramatic oratorio, musical drama, opera vérité or some new synthesis, performed against a stark backdrop of shifting photo portraits, the collaboration by the award-winning composer Christopher Theofanidis and the librettist Leah Lax, a Houston writer, drew standing ovations and bravos at its two performances on Saturday. " - New York Times
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The Refuge: updating the immigrant experience
"The Refuge, the moving new Houston Grand Opera work about the city's most recent immigrants, is in reality the story of many Americans." - Houston Chronicle
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'Daughter' update a scream
"Critics attend some operas dutifully - until a production turns preconceived notions upside down. Friday, at the Wortham Theater Center, it was a smashingly funny version of Gaetano Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment." - Houston Chronicle
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