Performance One of the city’s most innovative arts companies enters a new phase Friday, Nov. 25, with The Black Pirate vs. The Flying Dutchman, its first show under new artistic director Erica Melton, who’s b   More

Arts & Books Spring is the season of renewal, and this one has brought a fresh wave of youthful artistic energy to Portland stages in what’s paradoxically one of the most old fashioned artistic forms—opera. ---The first blossoms appeared at the Newmark Theater, where Portland Opera’s annual Studio Artists show represents the culmination of a nine-month training program for 20-something singers from some of ...   More

Arts & Books I've just received a request for "composers, vocalists, actors and musicians" to perform a Portland version of Dawn Weleski's Bus Stop Opera project. Say what? Weleski interviews public transit riders and draws from their conversations to create a short opera piece, which is then performed on public transit. Here's an NPR piece explaining the thing. I can't decide whether I find the project fun ...   More

Arts & Books Yoking vastly different operas on a single playbill was a gamble, but it paid off. For its annual studio production, Portland Opera has programmed a show in two halves. Before intermission: Monteverdi. After: Bernstein. Wait. What? That's right. No typo. Monteverdi, get up, stretch your legs, Bernstein. Just to give you some idea how big a stretch that is: Monteverdi wrote Renaissance madrigals ...   More

Arts & Books Murderous clowns never sounded so good. The curtain goes up. Onstage, in bright lights, lie two dead or nearly dead bodies, a woman in clown paint and a young man in plain clothes. Nearby sits the jealous husband who has stabbed them. The townspeople are poised to apprehend him, but at this moment, for some reason, they are frozen like a photograph, a tableau of horror and outrage. All at once, ...   More

News Portland Opera's production of Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw borrows Hollywood scare tactics from horror classics like The Shining, The Exorcist, and The Children of the Corn—elements like cloak-and-dagger chiaroscuro lighting and children behaving supernaturally—and the result is frankly chilling. But stage director Nicholas Muni's relentless pursuit of gasps and shrieks turns ...   More