Stephen Stubbs and BEMF "Breathed Comic Fire" in Lampe's The Dragon of Wantley

The Boston Musical Intelligencer praised Boston Early Music Festival's most recent chamber opera as "an essentially faultless performance". "Although an unabashed satire of Italianate Baroque opera, with all of the expected pomposity and rigid conventions, Stephen Stubbs, Paul O’Dette, and company honored the material with tender care....[and] the cast and orchestra embraced the work’s wide emotional breadth. Stubbs, conducting from his seat with his guitar in hand, led the cast in a breath-taking, dissonant, almost out-of-time choral plea to Moore of Moore-Hall to vanquish the dragon (“O Save Us All!). We felt the desperation and terror in our viscera....Every decision, from Jacqueline Quintal’s costumes and Melinda Sullivan’s choreography, down to the minutiae of the instrumental articulation, allowed the elegant show to burst with humor and pathos." Click the link below to read the full review now.