Photo credit: Winslow Townson, courtesy of the BSO

Presented by Boston Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with Boston Lyric Opera
Music by Samuel Barber 
Libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti
Conducted by Andris Nelsons
Staging coordination by Alexandra Dietrich
Tanglewood Festival Chorus: Betsy Burleigh, guest choral conductor
Boston Lyric Opera Chorus: Brett Hodgdon, chorus director

Boston Symphony Hall
Thursday, January 8, 2026 
Saturday, January 10, 2026
301 Massachusetts Avenue 
Boston, MA 02115
Online Playbill 

Sung in English with supertitles

Critique by Kitty Drexel

BOSTON — This critique discusses the BLO & BSO concert production of Vanessa currently at Symphony Hall. As you read, please keep in mind several truths: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Board, the private, nonprofit corporation created by Congress to steward the federal government’s investment in public broadcasting, voted to dissolve on January 5 after 58 years of American public service. 

The President and his Secretary of War (lol) illegally kidnapped the Venezuelan President and his wife for oil, and Instagram hits. 

A trained ICE mercenary murdered unarmed citizen Renee Nicole Good in Minnesota on January 7 when Good began driving her civilian vehicle away from an enforcement operation. 

These things are not normal. Life under these circumstances, whether you agree with the media’s portrayal of them or not, is not normal.

During these unprecedented times under fascism, the BLO and the BSO are commended for their elegant production of Barber and Menotti’s Vanessa, a 1958 Pulitzer Prize-winning opera by two gay men, one an Italian immigrant. It was composed at a time when it was unthinkable (and frequently illegal) to be out, and Italians weren’t entirely white. Vanessa was a necessary distraction from the impending fall of democracy. Continue reading →