Letter from Florida: Robert J Carreras experiences Peter Lieberson's 'vehicle through which to reflect a different face in love’s mirror'

Peter Lieberson: Neruda Songs - Kelley O'Connor, New World Symphony, Stephane Deneve (Photo: Alex Markow, courtesy of New World Symphony)

Ravel: Daphnis & Chloe, Lieberson: Neruda Songs; Kelley O'Connor, New World Symphony, Stephane Deneve; Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts Miami, Florida
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras, 7 March 2026

Robert J Carreras has thoughts about the meaning of home after experiencing Peter Lieberson's Neruda Songs and Ravel's complete Daphnis & Chloe from Stephane Deneve and the New World Symphony in Miami 

It is just as well that Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs is almost single-handedly kept playing by Kelley O’Connor. It is just as well that her portraits of this work have remained steady across time. In 2028, it will be twenty years since the composer trained O’Conner in this music at his home in Hawaii.

O’Connor’s performance of Neruda Songs may be more informed by the years that have passed and life experience, but still comes across as quite fresh. By and large, her work in these songs has stayed near to the composer’s home, and he would have it no other way.

Kelley O’Connor’s gently assumed, creamy mezzo and proficiency in Peter Lieberson’s musical idiom – a smoldering mix of melodic mazes and rhythmic lazes – translates into observing the most intimate scenes of a relationship. Lieberson wants to keep every moment alive and vital with his darling Lorraine – every note, every measure, every word is precious.

O’Conner makes native Spanish speakers reevaluate their use of common words (sueno, porque, ojos, lejos), making subliminally seductive even those perfunctory in daily speech. Stephane Deneve aides in accenting words at crucial points by stretching out rhythmic values – knowing O’Connor would not object, and that New World Symphony (NWS) was well-prepared to execute; they doubled these efforts later for Ravel.

Letter from Florida: Lisette Oropesa delivers fireworks at Palm Beach Opera's 2026 Gala

Lisette Oropesa & members of Palm Beach Opera - Palm Beach Opera 2026 Gala

Palm Beach Opera 2026 Gala; Lisette Oropesa, Micheal Borowitz; Mediterranean Ballroom, The Breakers (1896, Palm Beach Inn), Palm Beach, Florida
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras (2 March 2026)

What do fireworks, opera and Cuba have in common? 

Behind and over our shoulders, the first notes of Jules Massenet’s Gavotte served as a sound and voice check for one Lisette Oropesa. All relaxed systems go. Bird of passage concert galas like these bubble over when there is something of a laid back tone. 

As Manon, Ms. Oropesa’s way invites something like insouciance. Her direct communications to the audience between numbers take another direction, inviting something of the formal. The soprano has a way of making a comfortable fit out of the fun and frolic and the glitz and glamour for Palm Beach Opera’s (PBO) 2026 Gala presentation.

Throughout Europe and the Americas in 2026, opera’s most historic spaces will play host to its most luminescent performers in concerts like this one. To have this event in Palm Beach is a bit of an exceptional coup, with one exceptional headliner after another dating back to when Renee Fleming came to town in 2013. Others that have topped PBO Gala marquees over the years – Joyce DiDonato, Diana Damrau, Sondra Radvanovsky, Christian Van Horn, Nadine Sierra, Matthew Polenzani, Piotr Beczala, and Anna Netrebko.

Palm Beach Opera 2026 Gala at The Breakers, Palm Beach

A coterie of the company’s male resident artists, Lisette Oropesa’s escorts, framed the stage and the fireworks around the piano for that first number. The evening’s expectations may have been high, but the explosions came from the lower part of the stave as much as above it. Oropesa’s Manon, while still in warm-up mode, is the personification of the adage “youth is wasted on the young.” 

Letter from Florida: Verdi reminds us to grieve for and remember soldiers everywhere - the Messa da Requiem from Cleveland Orchestra

Verdi: Requiem - Asmik Grigorian, Deniz Uzan, Joshua Guerrero, Tareq Nazmi, Cleveland Orchestra, Taichi Fukumura - Adrienne Arsht Center (Photo: Alex Marlow)

Verdi: Requiem; Asmik Grigorian, Deniz Uzan, Joshua Guerrero, Tareq Nazmi, The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, Cleveland Orchestra, Taichi Fukumura; Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Miami
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras, 24 January 2026

Notwithstanding the indisposition of Franz Welser-Möst, Robert J Carreras enjoys the immensity of Verdi's Messa da Requiem as part of the Cleveland Orchestra's residency in Miami

Giuseppe Verdi’s Messa da Requiem is a mighty musical memorial to mortality that reminds us both of our fate, and our promise. Though much of a human life takes place in a minor key, those of us graced with enough major key modulations remember the same in Verdi’s Requiem. 

This pilastro of opera reworked his sad and blue minor key moments, transposing them into and transmuting them through the best of times. Verdi became a mighty “soldier of culture” – for Italy, and for all man. Through his life with his art, Verdi reminds us that all, every one of us has expiration dates; every breath you take is one less you have. What will you do with your breaths? 

The collective breaths of those in attendance this evening were held for a moment when Cleveland Orchestra President and CEO Andre Gremillet came out to announce the indisposition of Music Director and Principal Conductor Franz Welser-Möst. Taichi Fukumura, Cleveland’s Assistant Conductor and Music Director to the Youth Orchestra, took to the podium in his place. 

No one will ever catch Cleveland Orchestra musicians underprepared, so Fukumura only needed to provide a solid beat and a little heat to get through the night well. The Japanese-American conductor surpassed that baseline, as Joshua Guerrero can attest. Portraying the tenor part in this Requiem, Guerrero admired Fukumura’s conducting at many points during the evening.

Verdi: Requiem - The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus - Adrienne Arsht Center (Photo: Alex Marlow)

Letter from Florida: Manfred Honeck conducts Mahler’s 4th with New World Symphony in Miami

Mahler: Symphony No. 4 - Manfred Honeck, New World Symphony - New World Center, Miami

Johann Strauss: Overture to Die Fledermaus, Haydn: Symphony No. 93 in D major; Mahler: Symphony No. 4; Lauren Snouffer, New World Symphony, Manfred Honeck; New World Center, Miami, Florida
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras (14 December 2025)

The unexaminable nature of how music touches the human experience. In his last Letter from Florida of 2025, Robert J Carreras experiences Maher's Fourth Symphony

Pythagoras is thought to have been the first to formally study a relationship between math and music. The Greek philosopher of antiquity and “father of math” is now rooted to music as much as to math. In his concept, “the music of the spheres,” Pythagoras theorizes that celestial bodies are in some kind of harmony and synchronicity through and with an otherworldly something. According to Pythagoras, there is a cosmically ordered source that systematizes sounds as humans experience them.  

From this, Pythagoras set forth on creating a rules-based system for understanding music, especially consonance, that became foundational to counterpoint in the Dark Ages and the Renaissance period. In effect, Pythagoras stumbled upon objective and observable patterns that make music pleasing to the ear.

Manfred Honeck is a seeming disciple of Pythagoras, an inheritor of desiring to make math audibly pleasing. Honeck is that rare breed of musical mathematician – in his right hand is a counting baton, in his left, a veritable abacus of artistic expression. 

With New World Symphony (NWS), Honeck delivers on the key parts of Johann Baptiste Strauss II, Franz Joseph Haydn, and Gustav Mahler and seeks to draw bridges across the changeovers of each of the composer’s works played this afternoon. The conductor’s idiosyncrasies betray Viennese partialities; he likes to hang his upbeats, crashing them down onto downbeats; his baton flicks take getting used to, in the manner of, but overall his counting is easy enough to follow. 

Honeck does not mind crouching down to eye-level of the violins as first line of contact, to elicit the start of a shift in orchestral balance. Honeck displays very fine and exacting directions from his abacus – it as active as his counting; this piques interests about Honeck’s hand dominance and dexterity.

Not since the summer years of Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) has NWS combined this level of volume and dynamic diversity. There is also an attempt to integrate the tonal switches gestalt to a composer’s ideas, especially those of Gustav Mahler. Under Honeck’s leadership, these players create bigger sounds that stretch the NWS canvas over an extra large frame in a way reminiscent of MTT. 

Letter from Florida: Opera Up-Close - Unveiling the Dramatic Process with Paul Curran at Palm Beach Opera

Opera Up-Close - Mozart: Don Giovanni - Evan Lazdowski as Leporello and Erik Tofte as Giovanni - Palm Beach Opera (Photo: Kelly O'Brien of Coastal Click Photography)

Opera Up-Close: Unveiling the Dramatic Process with Paul Curran; Palm Beach Opera, The Cornelia T. Bailey Opera Center, Palm Beach, Florida
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras, 13 December 2025

In our latest Letter from Florida, Robert J Carreras enjoys Palm Beach Opera's latest Opera Up-Close with features scenes from four operas where stage director Paul Curran provides expert commentary about each scene.

Palm Beach Opera (PBO) General Director James Barbato and internationally renown Stage Director Paul Curran are creating monsters. Both these types of monsters are of operatic proportions of course, only one serves a higher purpose. PBO demonstrates a resoluteness in this area, sorely lacking representation in classical music today. PBO is looking at itself first.

Look at the calm before the storm in Palm Beach. Something is brewing sub rosa at Wall Street South. It is there in the form of a figure...unclear, unnamed, a monster. It gives rise to and shifts the axis of the facade of the Cornelia T. Bailey Opera Center, a monster. At the meet and greet in the reception hall, it lurks behind the walls. Arcus, nimbi, and tubas are forming and gathering there. A monstrous storm front is overflowing in Paradise now.

The second installment of PBO’s Opera Up-Close: Unveiling the Dramatic Process celebrates its first anniversary of artistic anxiety, never failing to disappoint and disillusion. PBO, Curran and Young Artists peel back another layer of where opera stands at present. The farthest seat tonight is standing room about twenty feet away; the closest, too close. In an age of High Definition captured birthmarks and rashes there is little margin for error; these are very intense training grounds.

There is so much talent out there that the lines between opera-special and opera-Olympian are evermore blurring. The talent has probably always been there, but the recruitment process is now a full-scale competitive exercise all its own. Spaceship earth seems smaller, and there are so many talented talent scouts searching it would take the seclusion of the remotest parts of Papa New Guinea for the next Farinelli to evade discovery. Unless she were never to know about opera, a proposition much less plausible today.

Opera Up-Close - Mozart: Don Giovanni - Sara Stevens as Donna Anna - Palm Beach Opera (Photo: Kelly O'Brien of Coastal Click Photography)

Letter from Florida: Let us take a stand together hand in hand, Hans Krasa's Brundibar from Sarasota Opera

Hans Krasa: Brundibar - Kayla Farrell (Brundibar) - Sarasota Opera (Sarasota Youth Opera)

Raise up your voice: Intolerance through the voices of children: Prologue created by Martha Collins and Jesse Martins, Hans Krasa: Brundibar; director: Martha Collins, conductor Jesse Martins, Sarasota Youth Opera; Sarasota Opera at Sarasota Opera House, Florida
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras, 8 November 2025

In his latest Letter from Florida, Robert J Carreras finds that Sarasota Youth Opera's performance of Hans Krasa's Brundibar, alongside a prologue designed to introduce the work today, touches in the right places

To touch the audience in the right place – how's that for an operatic golden rule? Self-evident as is the worthiness of this pursuit, particularly when children are involved, Sarasota Opera goes much farther. With its Brundibar, the company gives little in the way of mixed messages, aiming tight for that most vital of organs, the human heart.

As a matter of language, there are many telltale signs of agonizing and deliberating over handing this subject matter and its exposition over to young hearts and minds. And in creating from scratch a companion piece that helps shine a light on the point of the main attraction, conductor Jesse Martins and Martha Collins (better known in Sarasota as Stage Director) show they are all too aware that children are barraged with the phrase, “use your words.”

The mouthful that is Raise up your voice: Intolerance through the voices of children, a prologue referred to here as RUYV, may could be a work that stands up next to others it plays with, and, it needs work. As with any effective piece of its type, it is practical to the extent it can be performed in its current iteration solo, to introduce Brundibar as today, or in tandem with any number of other works that agree with it in purpose.

At its core, this prologue is a message in a bottle, a love-letter and call to action for adults, from children. The children want for adults to act like it, to be better human beings. “You know this!” the children seem to be pleading at us. The children of Ha'shoah are not the only ones pleading never forget.

Prologue: Raise up your voice - Sarasota Opera (Sarasota Youth Opera)

Letter from Florida: Stéphane Denève conducts Beethoven's Eroica

Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 Eroica - New World Symphony, Stéphane Denève  - New World Center (Photo: Alex Markow)

James Lee III: Chuphshah! Harriet’s Drive to Canaan (2011), Copland: Lincoln Portrait (1942), Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55, Eroica; New World Symphony, Stéphane Denève, Ziwei Ma, Joshua Malina; New World Center, Miami, Florida
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras on 4 October 2025

In his latest Letter from Florida Robert J Carreras is made thoughtful by a programnme which turned the watchful lens of history on human bondage and oppression with contemporary composer James Lee III alongside Copland and Beethoven

Composers James Lee III, Aaron Copland, and Ludwig van Beethoven – a curious consort at first glance, it is agreed. Let’s look closer with the help of the program curated by New World Symphony (NWS) for this evening. 

Lee’s Chuphshah! Harriet’s Drive to Canaan [inspired by the life of abolitionist Harriet Tubman] and Copland’s Lincoln Portrait turn the watchful lens of history on human bondage and oppression. The backstory of Beethoven’s Third Symphony explains how he presaged the human bondage and oppression of tyranny, and in so doing turned away from Napoleon Bonaparte I.

As a centuries-removed compatriot of “le petit caporal,” NWS Artistic Director and Principal Conductor Stéphane Denève is in an unique position to recount that Beethoven wanted this symphony to be a celebration of Napoleon’s revolutionary and democratic ideals. Why Napoleon was himself a revolutionary, almost jailed at one time for it.

New World Symphony, Stéphane Denève  - outside New World Center (Photo: Alex Markow)

Letter from Florida: Tianyi Lu conducts Bartók & Brahms with Lukas Vondracek & New World Symphony

Bartók: Piano Concerto No. 3 - Lukas Vondracek (Photo: New World Symphony)

Brahms: Academic Festival Overture, Bartók: Piano Concerto No. 3, Brahms: Symphony No. 1; Lukas Vondracek, New World Symphony, Tianyi Lu, Ziwei Ma; New World Center, Florida
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras (20 September 2025)

Inspiring accounts of strenuous works by Johannes Brahms and Bela Bartok in New World Symphony's first orchestra concert of the 2025-26 season conducted by Chinese-born New Zealander Tianyi Lu

Only at the very end of Peter Ustinov Reads the Orchestra is the conductor given some shrift. Just before the Finale, Ustinov refers to her as, “...one last member of the orchestra.” The marketing strategy of leaving the best for last escapes no medium, what you will. And if not best, the work of conductor should be described as most. Responsibilities fallen on conductor’s shoulders are as heavy-duty as they are infinite. 

Conductor of a major orchestra must be an avid interpreter of music as a language. She must be storyteller to the listener of the composer’s score. She must learn and recall many musical languages; old and new, established and emerging composers are part of standard concert programs. She must be conversant in a vast field of musical-speak.

She must be classically trained and reach the level of concert player in her own instrument, often the piano, and also get an applied grasp on the whole family of instruments of the orchestra. She must develop an understanding of these instruments so as to communicate with sections and individual players in credible and convincing ways. 

She must corral orchestral forces – from only a few in chamber music, to a few more, and a group of some 40 players (and singers) or more at a time. And, she must make the music play in a way that translates to audience comprehension, performance after performance.

Equal to these benchmarks is Tianyi Lu, as is sure enough the fresh liveliness and expressiveness she brings to New World Symphony (NWS). This program was an inspiring account of strenuous works by Johannes Brahms and Bela Bartok in NWS’s first orchestra concert of the 2025-26 season. Lu is sure and equal to the task of osmoting much positive influence on this, America’s orchestral academy. 

Letter from Florida: Sarasota Opera's Winter Festival

Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro - Sarasota Opera, 2025 - (Photo: Robert Millington for Sarasota Opera)

Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro, Verdi: Stiffelio, Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia, Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana, Leoncavallo: Pagliacci: Sarasota Opera; Sarasota Opera House, Sarasota, Florida
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras, 25-29 March 2025

In our latest Letter from Florida, Robert J Carreras enjoys Sarasota Opera's 2025 Winter Festival and considers what next for this enterprising company and its quirkily diminutive performance space

What’s next for Sarasota Opera? In recent years, this company seems to have covered all the proverbial operatic bases, advancing from a specialized regional outfit to something like a full-throated and fully invested international opera theatre. Sarasota Opera defies the typical classification of regional company as it has come to be known in the United States, existing more like a top-tier company homed in a quirkily diminutive performance space.

Of late, Sarasota's performers are more well-rounded, with exciting voices the rule. The stage direction is more concentrated, more diffusely assumed across even supers, and more topically informed. The music-making has kept pace, with visiting conductors adding spicy stylistic touches to already stellar orchestra playing. What’s next?

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is the answer to that question for many opera companies. Three of Mozart’s operas take up spots in the top ten most performed operas in the world since the millennium according to OPERABASE. Le nozze di Figaro, sixth on that count, is in repertory for Sarasota’s 2025 Winter Festival.

Letter from Florida: Stéphane Denève & New World Symphony on impressive form in Britten's War Requiem

Britten: War Requiem - Stéphane Denève, Ian Bostridge, Roderick Williams, New World Symphony - Adrienne Arsht Center, Miami

Britten: War Requiem; Christine Goerke, Ian Bostridge, Roderick Williams, New World Symphony, Stéphane Denève, Florida Singing Sons, Girl Choir of South Florida, Master Chorale of South Florida; Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Miami, Florida
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras. 15 March 2025

A matter of reconciliation: Robert J Carreras in Miami is impressed with Stéphane Denève and New World Symphony in Britten's War Requiem

Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem is not meant to be enjoyed; it is meant to be suffered through. After all, it was in this spirit that Britten left the relative safety of his new home in the states and returned to England, in all its fractured remains, after the Blitz. He must have known the trying times that awaited. His contribution to the catalogue of the musical mass for the dead recreates the darkest of conditions in World War II. We return with Britten to the British Isles for madness and mayhem.

On a cloudless and sunny September 7, 1940, and for 57 straight nights, a German aerial assault tormented Great Britain. Throughout the eight months that followed, Hitler menaced overhead, as the only remaining hope seemed far away across the Atlantic, and as yet noncommittal towards the war effort.

In those long, dreadful 267 days, it is estimated that 40,000 long tons of bombs hit the Isles. More than 43,000 civilians were killed. Every night, as many as 150,000 souls sought shelter in London’s underground tube system. Electricity and gas, food and water were in short supply and rationed. By the time Britten returned in 1942, the prevalence of American servicemen on the streets of London must have been a very welcome sight to the British.

Britten: War Requiem - Christine Goerke, New World Symphony - Adrienne Arsht Center, Miami

Letter from Florida: It is hard to imagine any orchestra getting closer to playing as one, though, than The Cleveland Orchestra

Lalo: Symphonie Espagnole - Stephane Deneve, Maria Duenas, The Cleveland Orchestra - Arsht Center, Miami

Dvorak: Symphony No.8, Bizet: Suite from L’Arlesienne (compiled by Stephane Deneve), Lalo: Symphonie Espagnole; Maria Duenas, Cleveland Orchestra, Stephane Deneve; Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Miami, Florida
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras (1 February 2025)

In our latest Letter from Florida, Robert J Carreras enjoys The Cleveland Orchestra as part of its Miami Residency in Dvorak and Bizet, and joined by Spanish violinist Maria Duenas in Lalo.

One violin. One contrabass. One oboe. One trombone. One harp…well, there is only one harp...I beg your indulgence. Is it possible for a full orchestra to play as one? No, not absolutely. Such a thing does not exist in nature. The possible is in the perfecting, not the perfection. It is hard to imagine any orchestra getting closer to playing as one, though, than The Cleveland Orchestra. 

Sokoloff, Leinsdorf, Szell, Boulez, Maazel, Dohnányi – the storied list of past Cleveland Orchestra musical leaders and achievements parallel those of the modern history of classical music worldwide. Most recently, Franz Welser-Möst has been added to that list, the top job at Cleveland. Most has been entrusted to maintain and expand on the musical fruits of the orchestra’s heritage.  

For this performance, however, at the helm of The Cleveland Orchestra is Stephane Deneve, himself entrusted to maintain and expand on the heritage of New World Symphony (NWS) based in Miami. NWS Co-Founder and Artistic Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas passed the baton to Deneve in 2022. In Deneve, both groups – and one baton – is in hands and mind with notably more nuanced notions, a wider scope, and a deliciously elegant musical approach, more perhaps than even the most celebrated of those on Cleveland’s list, and a longer one worldwide. 

[For the performance members of the New World Symphony Orchestra joined the Cleveland Orchestra in the Bizet and Dvorak].

Stephane Deneve, The Cleveland Orchestra - Arsht Center, Miami

Letter from Florida: a study in contrasts, Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette at Palm Beach Opera

Charles Gounod: Roméo et Juliette - Long Long, Kathryn Lewek - Palm Beach Opera, 2025

Charles Gounod: Roméo et Juliette Kathryn Lewek, Long Long, Bernardo Medeiros, director: Tara Faircloth, conductor: David Stern, Palm Beach Opera; Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, Palm Beach, Florida
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras (24 January 2025)

Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette maintains a solid place in the operatic repertoire, brought consistently back by an audience who judges it on its merits. At Palm Beach Opera (PBO), Robert J Carreras in his latest Letter from Florida, finds strong performances from Kathryn Lewek's deeply affecting Juliette and Long Long's ardent Roméo make the production well worth a visit.

For all the success of Charles Francois Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, the work has always been considered inferior to his first great music drama, Faust. Therein lies the rub in a wider sense; for all its success, Roméo et Juliette suffers from a reputation of being dramatically deficient, and not wholly accepted as music drama. 

This is especially so in contrast to the direction opera took in the late 19th century, in the German works, and those of the verismo period. Combined with the fact that acting performance standards hadn’t veered much from overblown on the one hand and remaining static throughout the first part of the 20th century on the other, and Roméo et Juliette is hardly among the works contemporary artist’s look at to put on display and stretch their acting prowess.

Charles Gounod: Roméo et Juliette - Kathryn Lewek - Palm Beach Opera, 2025

No one seems to have told this to Kathryn Lewek. She made the most of what Gounod, Barrier, and Carre (composer and librettists) give Juliette; Lewek kept up the synergy of her significant artistic resources, from her note one to her note fin, three hours later. Her stage manner is as affecting as it is natural. It appears Ms. Lewek has not performed Juliette much out there, and it is a rare thing to exhibit such depth of knowledge of a role in such few attempts. Finally, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who truly looks the part of a love-struck teenager more.

Opera Up-Close: Unveiling the dramatic process with Paul Curran & young artists of Palm Beach Opera

Verdi: Rigoletto - Bernardo Medeiros (Rigoletto)
Palm Beach Opera (Photo: Coastal Click Photography)

Opera Up-Close: Unveiling the dramatic process with Paul Curran; Paul Curran, Palm Beach Opera; The Cornelia T. Bailey Opera Center; Palm Beach, Florida
14 December 2024, Robert J Carreras

For his latest Letter from Florida, Robert J Carreras eavesdrops on director Paul Curran working on opera scenes with young artists from Palm Beach Opera. Opera Up Close featured scenes from seven operas. Stage director Paul Curran, who was artistic director of the Norwegian National Opera from 2007 to 2011, provided expert commentary about each scene.

“Greek theatre is, for me, an examination of what it is to be an human being. It is the basis of all theater. It is the basis of all film…of cinema as a whole.” In a video precis of Phaedra, based on Euripides’ Hippolytus, Paul Curran provides the structure on which to frame his conceptual machinations of stagecraft and how he approaches the work he does with opera-artists in training. So it is that Curran, along with members of Palm Beach Opera’s Young Artists Program, set us off on a vivid voyage of self-discovery via a tilt-a-whirl of emotions.

Workshops like these – open to the public and with experts narrating, setting up scenes and ad-libbing – work toward the furtherance of opera-awareness. They attest to the healthy state of healthy competition in opera today. They serve to demonstrate how opera has moved another step on from prima la voce into the internalization of acting as a rightful and equal part of the artform. For those farther along in an opera-loving journey, these amount to positive developments – opera has a future. 

Sarasota Opera Concert Performance: The Music of Giuseppe Verdi

The Music of Giuseppe Verdi - Victor Starsky
Sarasota Opera (Photo: Sarasota Opera)

Verdi: excerpts from La forza del destino, Aida, Un ballo in maschera, Attila, La Traviata, Don Carlo, I Lombardi alla prima crociata, Rigoletto; Rochelle Bard, Young Bok Kim, Virginia Mims, Jean Carlos Rodriguez, Victor Starsky, Sarasota Orchestra, Victor DeRenzi; Sarasota Opera at Sarasota Opera House
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras, 15 November 2024

Having become the only opera company in the world to have presented every work by Verdi, Sarasota Opera continues its exploration of his music. In his latest Letter from Florida, Robert J Carreras reports on Sarasota's concert, The Music of Giuseppe Verdi

Maestro Victor DeRenzi has Giuseppe Verdi right where he wants him. The conductor's world is inching closer and closer to Verdi's world, creating an intimate bond across time and musical language. Some eight years after completing (2016) Sarasota Opera's endeavor to play every note Verdi wrote for opera, now DeRenzi manages to collect a set of complete-package singing-actors to further express the composer's intentions. With lots of space and the necessary tools to grow, each of these has the chops to one day be their generation's Verdians.

More and varied hearings of tenor Victor Starsky from Queens will bring to light whether he is on track to write his own ticket. In theater, Starsky's burnished, round, and ear-catching overtone series turns more compact into the passaggio, then blooms with enough brass to make things interesting in the higher reaches. It is a sizable tenor, the kind for which the more florid singing required in the bel canto repertoire is not ideally suited. Such roles hover with cantabile lines right at the break of the voice. No matter, Starsky will have wide access to a plethora of roles he is well-suited for, like Radames. After the finely sung passages of "Celeste Aida," the tenor took the last phrase (before repeating sans high note as Verdi wrote) "un trono vicino al sol" in one breath. Word has it he has a high C too. Victor Starsky will be returning to Sarasota Opera for the Winter season as Stiffelio, Verdi's opera of the same name.

New World Symphony Veterans Day Concert: A World War II Journey with Lidiya Yankovskaya and Emily Magee

New World Symphony Veterans Day Concert: A World War II Journey - Michael Tilson Thomas Performance Hall (Photo: Alex Markow, courtesy of New World Symphony)

New World Symphony Veterans Day Concert: A World War II Journey; conductor: Lidiya Yankovskaya, Emily Magee (soprano), British historian James Holland (host), New World Symphony
New World Center, Michael Tilson Thomas Performance Hall, Miami Beach, Florida
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras, 11 November 2024

In what we hope will be the first of an occasional series from Florida, Robert J Carreras reports on the New World Symphony Orchestra's Veterans Day Concert: A World War II Journey

Thirty-six days. The severity of the coming 36 days was made plain to 20-year-old marine Richard Jessor by a U.S. Navy commanding officer: “Tomorrow night at this time, a lot of you are going to be dead.” From Brooklyn to Iwo Jima – over 7000 miles – in less than a year’s time. Such was the journey of many a young American boy soldier as of December 7, 1941.

A soldier flying with Windtalkers over the Pacific as explosions litter the sky. A soldier rushing desperately to scale a vertical wall of earth at Normandy. A soldier scanning flight plans and tactics to take on the Luftwaffe. A Tuskegee soldier from Haiti, from Puerto Rico, from Jamaica. A soldier thrust into fighting alongside other young boys from lands far and wide. A soldier from Brixton. A soldier from Portree. A soldier from Cooladdi. A soldier from Pripyat. A soldier liberating the concentration camp at Bergen Belsen. A soldier from Peoria; from Massapequa; from Snohomish; from Kalamazoo.

Richard Jessor of Brooklyn (and you had better get it right – “Brooklyn is different than New York!”) captivated and charmed with memories of his 36 days in Iwo Jima, a warm-up to New World Symphony’s (NWS) Veterans Day concert: A World War II Journey on Friday, November 9, 2024. This concert is in the larger context of the 2024-25 season’s Resonance of Remembrance, marking the 80th anniversary of World War II (WWII) and the Holocaust. As ever, NWS curates a multimedia experience; all selections for this evening demonstrate a thoughtful and creative expression of NWS’s vision to account for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.

New World Symphony Veterans Day Concert: A World War II Journey - Lidiya Yankovskaya, conductor - Michael Tilson Thomas Performance Hall (Photo: Alex Markow, courtesy of New World Symphony)

Classical music is experiencing a proverbial enlightenment period with women leading historically acclaimed orchestras internationally. NWS is at the vanguard of that inertia, as evidenced by the presence of Xian Zhang in October and Lidiya Yankovskaya here.