11
February
2023
Gianni Schicchi/Buoso’s Ghost
Stage Director
Florida Grand Opera
Fort Lauderdale, FL
“Mo Zhou represents the next generation of opera artists combining impeccable schooling with already extensive professional experience, knowledge, and passion for the art of opera.”
— Paula Wang in NY Times Chinese Edition
GIANNI SCHICCHI/BUOSO’S GHOST – Florida Grand Opera 2023
“Operatic comedy is serious business to get right. Saturday night’s opening of Florida Grand Opera’s double bill of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and composer Michael Ching’s sequel Buoso’s Ghost at the Arsht Center proved that point. With adroit staging, terrific singing from top to bottom by a large cast and an eye-filling production, this pairing is both potent theater and delightful entertainment.”
“Mo Zhou’s deft staging brought out the twin bill’s fun. The opening scene, as the Buoso relatives scavenge the house and turn it upside down to find the will between fake tears, drew much laughter from the audience.” —Lawrence Budmen, South Florida Classical Review
“The production directed by Mo Zhou is suffused with humorous touches; her cast is clearly having a great time playing just one millimeter short of leaping over-the-top with plenty of eye-popping, grimaces and vaudevillian physicality.” —Bill Hirschman, Florida Theater On Stage
RINALDO – Minnesota Opera 2022
“Director Mo Zhou transplanted Handel’s tale of the crusades to 1980s Wall Street in a production wonderfully staged, sung and memorably costumed, christening the company’s intimate North Loop space.” —Rob Hubbard, Star Tribune (Minnesota’s Top 10 Classical Highlights of 2022)
DON GIOVANNI – Florida Grand Opera 2019
“Zhou’s production successfully shone a spotlight on the inner lives of the women whose lives are uprooted by Giovanni’s violence, greed, and rage…We should feel uncomfortable watching these moments on stage, period.”— Carly Gordon in Schmopera
“Zhou had soprano Elizabeth de Trejo stand center stage and address the audience directly…[s]peaking out like so many contemporary women at the trials of powerful men, her testimony was chilling.”— Celeste Landeros in Opera News
“Stage director Mo Zhou framed the opera with a shrewd eye, especially abandoning cliché for tenderness in staging the couples scenes – encouraging a soft hand to the cheek, a playful gesture, a cheeky smile. She mined the relationship between Giovanni and Leporello, bringing out the subtleties in their personalities to deepen and widen their bond.”— Steve Gladstone in MiamiArtZine
“ Mo Zhou, making her FGO debut, has taken the #MeToo movement into account and come up with a Giovanni closer in spirit to the text: A man entirely made of id, driven by a thirst for sexual conquest, and glorying in his ability to carry it off so successfully.”— Greg Stepanich in Palm Beach Arts Paper
