A gripping “Carmen” at West Bay Opera

Artistic Director José Luis Moscovich led an out-sized production of the opera Carmen on Saturday, June 2 in the South Bay’s intimate Lucie Stern Theater. Brought to musical life by French composer Georges Bizet from a novel by Prosper Mérimée, this steamy pot-boiler was the backdrop for one of the best casts that I have heard here. And hearing that cast in this modest theater was a triumph of nuance over the usual operatic excess, with the title character’s range and deft...

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Fidelio at West Bay Opera

Freedom, a constant struggle. Big themes and a big orchestra filled Palo Alto’s Lucie Stern Theater last Friday, Feb. 16 for the opening of Beethoven’s Fidelio. It was his only opera and he cursed the ten years that he spent writing and revising it. Although Beethoven was the Grand Master of many musical forms from symphonic to sonata, his one attempt at opera was cautiously received in 1804 and then again in 1814 and still performed less than one might expect from the...

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