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Wayne Hobbs isn’t answering his email. But who can blame him?... Read more

When it debuted in Berlin in 1928, The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) instantly turned old-fashioned opera into groundbreaking musical theater. It had a political edge, thanks to the lyrics of Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), and its music was infused with the sounds and sensibilities of 1920s German cabaret, courtesy of the great composer Kurt Weill (1900-1950).... Read more

A staggering-drunk puppet haltingly navigates his way through a lavish party thrown by a local dignitary. He punctuates nearly all conversations with pointed sexual come-ons to any woman within earshot, but finds his usually dependable lady-killer techniques hampered by frequent drink spills — or perhaps by the prospect of the prison term that awaits him. Meanwhile, his wife — weary of his philandering — plans an elaborate revenge, or at least as elaborate as a 4-foot stage will allow.... Read more

Fresh. Young. Dynamic. Opera. That's the actual name of a brand-new company based in Burlington - only they prefer to just call it f y d o. Yep, lower-case and spaced out. A name that will confound traditionalists, not to mention typists. A name that to the ear sounds like a four-legged companion with a leash. So right from the start this five-piece ensemble is making a statement: An opera company can be edgy, accessible and playful. All of them are thirtysomething: old enough to have plenty of training and experience; young enough to have grown up addicted to "Friends."... Read more

It's now or never, and she's going for it, Shyla Nelson has decided -- "it" being a career as an opera singer. And that's noteworthy not just because she's from Burlington, Vermont, a town better known in the music world as the birthplace of Phish and their jam-rock descendants. What's more remarkable is that Nelson is 35 years old and a divorced mother of two young children; typically a classically inclined performer begins training, networking and making a mark in her twenties, when she's still free of family-raising responsibilities.... Read more

Everyone loves Carmen, including me. A perfectly balanced mixture of comic, exotic and tragic elements, there is not one slack moment in the drama or the music. Carmen is a symbol of passion, a powerful seductress whose fate is to die, not by being dragged off to Hell by avenging spirits or in order to redeem a man — the frequent and offensive function of women in Wagnerian opera — but from the consequences of the deranged passion she provokes in one of her conquests, the soldier Don Jose. Jose, on the other hand, is naïve, a victim.... Read more