Most Recent Reviews

"Sizzling...like a live wire throwing off sparks, Sacramento Opera's production sizzles with potent singing and crisp, smart direction. The result was the delivery of the best production this company has staged in recent memory. Condemi asks his singers to honor all the broad comic strokes while also delivering the tiniest of dramatic inflections. Typically you get the first but not the second in such productions. In this production, acting is no poor stepchild to singing"

Edward Ortiz for SACRAMENTO BEE

A funny thing happened on the way to the final curtain of Lyric Opera of Chicago’s new production of Ernani. At the first intermission, the audience was buzzing, semi-stunned by the convolutions of the story set in 16th-century Spain.By the second intermission, the absurdities of this early Verdi opera and by the final curtain, they no longer mattered. Director Jose Maria Condemi’s staging was equally deft, managing to keep both principals and chorus on the move without resorting to stale stage business. Sets and costumes are evocative, full of the rich, dark colors and lush materials of Renaissance paintings. The décor is spare, but the grandeur of aristocratic Spain is clear in walls that look like carved ivory and courtiers adorned in brocades and velvets.

Wynne Delacoma for MUSICAL AMERICA

"Lyric's excellent new staging by Jose Maria Condemi pointedly reconfirmed Ernani's viability in the repertoire?the characters, as rendered through Piave's adaption of Victor Hugos' Hernani, do not exactly provide opportunity for great interpretative depth but Condemi admirably found a reasonable multi-dimensionality in them"

Mark Thomas Ketterson for OPERA NEWS

"Lyric's new Ernani was presented at a level of excellence that few opera companies could afford these days. Jose Maria Condemi's direction was a showing in good taste, precise staging and consummate theatrical flair"

Daniel Lara for OPERA ACTUAL

"ROUSING" Jose Maria Condemi's staging is traditional, conservative and respectful of the drama. Visually it's a sumptuous show. Scott Marr has created a Spanish Renaissance fashion. The lavish sets, lit by Duane Schuler, include towering, ornately decorated, Moorish-style castle walls, carved mahogany doors and a serpentine column set on a steeply raked parquet floor."

John von Rhein for CHICAGO TRIBUNE