BY ALAN SHERROD Composer Giacomo Puccini was reportedly adamant that the three one-act operas—Il tabarro, Suor Angelica, and Gianni Schicchi—comprising his triptych Il Trittico be performed together. Clearly, music history had other ideas. While the works premiered as a…
Review: Knoxville Opera Polishes Up a Comic Gem in Rossini’s ‘Il Barbiere di Siviglia’
BY ALAN SHERROD Without a doubt, Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) was the perfect choice for Knoxville Opera’s winter production. With a clever directorial hand and impressive casting, this weekend’s performance at the Tennessee Theatre…
2025 Most Memorable Classical Music Performances in Knoxville
Change in the art and music world can come swiftly or cautiously, but finding meaning in either one is not necessarily easy to manage. Generally, new start-up organizations are a good sign, as is major news from those groups already…
Review: Knoxville Opera Brings a Superb Cast to Bizet’s ‘Carmen’
BY ALAN SHERROD Note for note, minute for minute, Georges Bizet’s Carmen can seem today like one hit tune after another. Interestingly, it didn’t start its operatic life that way, the premiere in 1875 being quite the disaster. Thankfully,…
A Glimpse Ahead: 2025-26 Knoxville Music and Theatre Season
Waiting anxiously in the wings for its entrance cue, the 2025-26 season of theatre and music is yet another one packed with classics and new works—gems of both history and the latest efforts of playwrights, composers, and authors. Subscriptions to…
Review: Knoxville Opera Offers A Timely ‘Stuck Elevator’
It would be next to impossible to find a more timely subject matter for an opera libretto than Stuck Elevator, Knoxville Opera’s latest production that had four performances this past weekend at the Old City Performing Arts Center. With music by Byron Au Yong and a libretto by Aaron Jafferis, the one-act opera, first performed in 2013, deals both tragically and poignantly with the immigrant experience that confronts us—immigrant or not—on a daily basis in 2025.
Review: Knoxville Opera Offers a Deliciously Romantic ‘La Boheme’
According to those that count such things, Giacomo Puccini’s La Boheme is perennially in the top five of the “most produced” operas worldwide. Closer to home, Knoxville Opera’s own history suggests a similar calculation, the company having performed the work six times since 1982, with a seventh coming this past weekend at the Tennessee Theatre.
This Week: Knoxville Opera’s ‘The Pirates of Penzance’ at Tennessee Theatre
On first glance, the very idea of mentioning Broadway’s musical hit, Hamilton, and the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance, in the same sentence may seem ridiculous in the extreme. Of course, the whole of the American musical…
Review: Knoxville Opera’s ‘Cendrillon’ – Charming Theatrical Magic
Theatrical magic may be hard to define, but don’t tell that to last evening’s audience at Knoxville Opera’s production of Pauline Viardot’s Cendrillon, an adaptation of the Cinderella fairy tale.
This Weekend: Knoxville Opera’s ‘Cendrillon’ by Pauline Viardot
It’s almost as if someone waved a magic wand…and just like that, the story of Cinderella was everywhere. This weekend, Knoxville Opera is taking on a lesser-known, but charmingly attractive ‘Cendrillon’ by Pauline Viardot.