Julia Pevzner
Director
Press Reviews
The Nose
"Director Julia Pevzner and her design team mimicked the freewheeling nature of the score with a shifting, fractured evocation of nineteenth-century St. Petersburg. Buildings, bridges and cityscapes were raised or lowered as needed in order to effect quick, cinematic scene changes and to suggest an urban environment in constant, bewildering motion. The period costumes, through intelligent use of texture and color, were both interesting and stylish while striking a general tone of understatement and realism - the notable exception, of course, being Kovalyov's missing nose, grown to six feet in height, ambulatory, and sporting the uniform of a superior officer... the production skipped along at a nice, brisk clip."
- Kalen Ratzlaff, Opera News, 2/27/2009
"As in the literary original, the city of St. Petersburg and its residents are as much characters as the characters themselves. Pevzner acknowledges that with hyperactive set (designed by A. Lisyansky) and in-your-face staging, creating a visual whirl-wind that mimics the score and captures the comic energy of the composers' intent."
- Keith Powers, Boston Herald, 3/1/2009
Boris Godunov
"In Stein Winge's austere production, staged here by director Julia Pevzner, the performance thrives on a spirit of unadorned ferocity."
- Joshua Kosman, SF Gate, 10/24/2008
"No questions arise about Julia Pevzner's directorial mastery, which consistently injects life into the production."
- Jason Victor Serinus, The Bay Area Reporter, 10/30/2008
Eugene Onegin
"The opening scene of Julia Pevzner's production of Tchaikovsky's 'Eugene Onegin, which the Virginia Opera brought to the George Mason University Center for the Arts over the weekend, was an evocative vignette of Russia, created by someone who knows it."
- Anne Midgette, The Washington Post, 2/26/2008
"The Virginia Opera's new production directed by Julia Pevzner echoes, in a way, Tchaikovsky's Moscow premiere in its clever use of minimal sets to speed the action, including a dwelling rotated on a turntable to highlight the rooms within, and a series of morphing mirrors that chart the drama's underlying symbolism. A windmill blade spins stage left at times, underlining the opera's frequent turns of fate."
- T.L. Ponick, The Washington Post, 2/26/2008