Gilbert & Sullivan’s operettas are so durable that directors succeed best when they go easy on shtick and focus on dead-on execution of the shows’ intrinsic rich humor. The Lyric Opera of Kansas City’s production of HMS Pinafore, which opened November 6 at the Lyric Theatre, was most convincing when it stood back and let us […]

We like to think of the United States as a classless society, where a pauper can rise to the top and anyone can marry for love regardless of rank or station. Still, the idea of our daughter marrying the gardener gives pause — unless, of course, it turns out that the gardener was “switched at […]

Take eight younger singers with decades of rigorous vocal and choral training, hone them to a razor-sharp blend and place them in a church with clean, resonant acoustics, and you have the formula for a sonority that is as luxurious as a Lexus, as rich as triple-chocolate cake, as eloquent as a Shakespeare sonnet. Then […]