Utah Festival Opera and Musical Theatre offers up fantasy, historical perspective in summer season

The Deseret News

In most big musicals, there is one song that really has to be done right: the one that percolates through the theme, might be heard more than once and should ring in the ears and hearts of patrons after they have left the theater. For “Show Boat,” the popular musical from Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein first staged in 1927, that song is likely “Ol’ Man River.” The slow, rolling ballad serves as a perfect window to view the passage of time throughout the production, and its initial presentation in “Show Boat” is a heartfelt examination of labor, race and economic conditions. And lucky for this year’s UFOMT offerings, they got it right with Brandon Coleman as Joe. Coleman’s cavernous lungs and deep, rich dynamics were as soothing as, well, watching the meandering Mississippi River. Coleman was born to sing this anthem and dropped down to hit all the right notes, delighting a packed house at the Ellen Eccles Theater.

Utah Festival Opera delivers 'Porgy and Bess'

HJ News

Brandon Coleman is genuinely scary as Porgy’s chief rival for Bess, the predatory Crown. Coleman is not only physically imposing, he has the voice of an angry god.

YOU’LL HAVE TO MAKE BELIEVE YOU LOVE UFOMT’S SHOW BOAT

Utah Theatre Bloggers Association

Moreover, a first-rate vocal cast, including standouts like Meers and Coleman (whose “Ol’ Man River” justifiably brought down the house), shines a spotlight on the score’s most stirring moments.

Hawaii Opera Theatre’s ‘Il trovatore’ is a melodramatic shocker

Honolulu Star Advertiser

Brandon Coleman was memorable as Ferrando, the Count’s Captain of the Guard who explains the backstory in the first scene, his smoky-dark, weighty bass lending gravity to the role.

Opera Company brings Puccini's fairytale to life with "impossibly beautiful" voices

Addison County independent

Among others gathered in the Forbidden City is the intriguing Mandarin with impressive Fu Manchu-style fingernails played by silky voiced Brandon Coleman.

TCO SEASON OFF TO GOOD START WITH WELL-SUNG ‘RIGOLETTO’

BROOME COUNTY ARTS COUNCIL

As her brother{Sparafucile}, Brandon Coleman, also a 2014-15 Resident Artist, was appropriately sinister.

TCO ‘DON GIOVANNI’ MARKED BY STRONG SINGING AND PRODUCTION VALUES

BROOME COUNTY ARTS COUNCIL

In the program Brandon Coleman’s voice is described as having “exotic vocal colorings,” and his performance as Il Commendatore, particularly as the statue of the Commendatore, exhibited that richness. I was not surpised to further read he has performed Zarastro in The Magic Flute. His marble-esque statue costume added to the menace of the role.

Dicapo Opera – Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta

Classical Source

..Ibn-Hakia, sung by Brandon Coleman in a wonderfully resonant bass voice. He handled with clarity Tchaikovsky’s tricky modal tonalities, in the aria ‘Two Worlds’, in which the physician advises the king on how Iolanta can be cured.

Iolanta NEW YORK CITY Dicapo Opera Theatre 12/8/11

Opera News

As Ibn-Hakia, the Moorish physician brought in by the king to cure Iolanta, Brandon Coleman revealed an exotic vocal coloring well suited to the foreign doctor's mysticism. Coleman's delivery of Ibn-Hakia's aria — another high point of the opera — was gripping and well paced.

 

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