Tag Archives: music

San Miguel de Allende

Amazing grace of Operisima’s holiday concert

It is times like these that you realize what a precious treasure Operisima Mexico is for San Miguel de Allende.

The operatic troupe’s Christmas Concert in the Iglesia San Francisco added rocket fuel to an already soaring holiday spirit.

Nearly a dozen elegantly dressed singers poured heart and soul into a program of popular and sacred seasonal music under the direction of Rogelio Riojas-Nolasco and in conjunction with Casa Europa Mexico.

Here’s a small taste of the evening. It repeats tonight (Sunday, Dec. 14, by the way. You can walk up and get tickets $300 — 600 mxn.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende

To market, to market … this holiday we go

Every Christmas season, Mercado de San Juan de Dios is turned into a Winter Wonderland.

Well, pretty much minus the Winter part.

Let’s say it transforms into a Christmas Marketplace, without all the messy snow and sub-zero temperatures.

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photography, Reviews, San Miguel de Allende

Fireworks one day, serenely beautiful concert the next — the holidays have arrived in San Miguel

If the Christmas season got off to a banging start with the tree lighting and intensive fireworks display on Friday, the holiday was elevated to a serenely beautiful level on Sunday by a concert featuring organ and brass instruments in the Templo de la Tercera.

The concert was under the aegis of Chorale San Miguel and completely underwritten by arts patrons John and Joy Bitner. That’s right, some people give fruit cakes for Christmas, the Bitners throw open the doors to an ancient church and put on a concert of mostly classical music for free.

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San Miguel de Allende

Festival of the Arts San Miguel de Allende starts Friday — let the feast begin!

Eduardo Adame’s gigantic sprawling, eclectic, cultural “potluck party” is about to begin. 

A “potluck” is how Adame described the third edition of the two-week-long Festival of the Arts San Miguel de Allende (FASMA) in May, when he was pulling together global and homegrown artists, musicians, singers, actors, poets, photographers, craftsmen, and the like for the showcase.

“Everyone is invited to bring the best that they can do – and invite their friends,” he said back then, expanding on the analogy

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San Miguel de Allende, Uncategorized

FASMA2025 is more than a festival; it is a feast served up by local arts and culture groups

Read the latest on FASMA 2025 here.

The third edition of the San Miguel de Allende Festival of the Arts (FASMA2025) is coming in August and will offer more than 100 events from scores of local arts and culture organizations.  Music, theater, opera, film, dance, literary and plastic arts programs will be presented in many of San Miguel’s finest venues, Aug. 1-17.

Individually, these are the kinds of events for which this city is famous around the world.

Collectively, this is an opportunity for San Miguelians to sample the many lively, beautiful, and inspiring performance programs that make up the fabric of this community.

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Rants and raves, Reviews, San Miguel de Allende, Uncategorized

Composer Hoppé takes audience on a memorable journey with the help of some talented friends

The theme of Michael Hoppé’s annual San Miguel de Allende concert on Wednesday night was “Together!” And, indeed, even inside the expansive and nearly full Teatro Angela Peralta, it was a cozy affair.

That was largely due to the artist’s engaging reminisces between each of the 21 compositions that were performed and the music itself which is endlessly appealing on so many emotional levels.

But Hoppé had a subtitle to offer: Encouragement. You could see it in the five talented musicians who took turns performing with the maestro and in his own recollections on the trajectory of his career.

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San Miguel de Allende

Terry Barber: A Night of Emotion and Music in San Miguel on March 19

A countertenor knocks your socks off, every time. Because you don’t see it coming.

The fellow is moving along in the sweet clarity of a tenor through a lovely piece of music, something about love lost and regret, let’s say. You’re feeling it. Because the singing matches the lyrics and matches the emotions. On the edge of crying, let’s say.

Suddenly the singer veers upward into a celestial aural region that you were in no way expecting – up where the emotions and sensations are usually reserved for the pure of heart. For angels and their earthly equals.

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San Miguel de Allende

Soprano Barbachano has grown from flirty teen boy to a young maiden to savvy Countess Rosina in ‘Figaro’

It was just one year ago that opera soprano Jacinta Barbachano performed in San Miguel de Allende as the youthful and highly desirable single Rosina in “The Barber of Saville.” One year on, she will have to age 10 years as the story resumes this weekend in “The Marriage of Figaro.”

Older but wiser, as they say. 

For soprano Barbachano that may well be the key to her character, the now Countess Rosina, in the highly anticipated Pro Musica production of “The Marriage of Figaro.”

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San Miguel de Allende, The Week in SMA

Go ‘Figero’: A night at the opera that’s right on the Marx (Harpo, Chico, Groucho …)

There is a comedy – a musical sitcom – about a powerful man who believes he has the right to do whatever he wants to women. 

It’s a sequel, in fact, that gives off a sort of a bro-boy’s “Your body, my choice” vibe.

But the women in this comedy are smart and savvy, with a sort of a “Me too” vibe. They know how to stand up to power in clever ways. They know how to work the angles on the patriarchy.

And, no, it is not called “Trump’s Second Term.”

The musical is actually an opera and it was written in 1786. A huge hit in its day. Now, it is considered one of the greatest operas of all time. 

Apparently, things haven’t changed all that much in the last 239 years.

The opera is Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” with a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte.

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Rants and raves, Reviews, San Miguel de Allende

Dominic Cheli in concert: Stop me if you’ve heard this one (I guarantee you have not)

A classical pianist walks into eight bars …

If you think there is a punchline,  the chaconne is on you.

Actually, it was the “Chaconne in G minor” by Thomaso Antonio Vitali and the pianist was Dominic Cheli in his return performance after two years away to San Miguel de Allende on Friday night at St. Paul’s Church.

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