Boston affirms its status as a provincial opera town

The story of Kátya Kabanová is a metaphor for the state of opera in Boston: Passion stifles in an oppressive backwater until its undignified death.

The singers in the current Boson Lyric Opera production were competent but not compelling. We knew the mother-in-law was a baddie not by anything the soprano did, but because the surtitles told us so. The third tenor was engagingly present, which only highlighted how absent the first two tenors were.

Others have commented on Shubert Theatre's funky acoustics, and this performance underscored the flaws. The tympani pocked like pickle buckets, sleigh bells squawked like tree beetles, and the strings sounded strained, as in passed through a colander with the juice extracted.

The production was borrowed from Opera North (U.K.), but it looked more like somebody trying their hardest to recreate the original sets. If this is the best Boston can do, I don't see opera surviving here much longer.