Verismo? È Vero: Reviewing Puccini's La fanciulla del West at the Castleton Festival
It has certainly been shocking to see more live opera in a week living in Charlottesville, Virginia than in three holiday seasons and three summers in Toronto, one of the most cosmopolitan cities in North America. (I should note that overall I saw more classical music performances and other cultural elements in Toronto than I have so far in Charlottesville.) After Wednesday's La bohème with the Ash Lawn Opera Company, I had the opportunity to drive about an hour and twenty minutes north of Charlottesville, edging in on the Washington, D.C. suburbs, to Castleton, Virginia, where the Castleton Festival is held. The festival is a project of esteemed conductor Lorin Maazel, who actually personally conducted the performance I attended. That performance was of Puccini's La fanciulla del West. Fanciulla is an opera about which I had heard anecdotes: it's one of Plácido Domingo's favorites, it has material Andrew Lloyd Webber may have plagiarized for the theme of &q