VHO’s Sympathy was centuries in the making

I’ll be honest: I’m not really an opera person. Until this weekend, I assumed opera consisted of people in fancy outfits belting overwrought, angst-ridden songs in foreign languages before dying on stage. And while I’m terribly impressed by the skill and talent required to fine-tune the operatic “instrument,” I am not the most qualified person […]

‘Drugsong’ crosses new thresholds in stage performance

A mysterious woman named Iz arrives at a sanatorium-cum-medical spa, completely mute. She’s brought in by her husband who explains that one night, while putting their son down to sleep, Iz stopped singing mid-lullaby and hasn’t uttered a word since. Everyone at the sanatorium/spa finds Iz—and her silence—compelling. So begins Drugsong, theater and performance artist Jennifer […]

Victory Hall Opera vocalizes the gay experience in Ghost House

At Juilliard, up-and-coming opera singers learn the art of method acting: channeling their personal experience into the emotions they express on stage. But for mezzo-soprano Brenda Patterson, the acting never stopped. “As a gay person, that’s sort of what you feel like you are doing a lot of the time in real life. You are […]