The Lyric Opera of Chicago has announced its 2024-25 season. Here is a look at the productions. Verdi’s “Rigoletto” is set to star Igor Golovatenko, Soloman Howard, Javier Camarena, and Mané Galoyan. Enrique Mazzola conducts the production by Director Mary Birnbaum. Performance Dates: Sept. 14-Oct. 6 2024 Elza van den Heever, Russell Thomas, Mika Kares, and Brian Mulligan star in {…}
The Atlanta Opera has announced its 2024-25 Season. Here is a look at the diverse productions that will be performed. Discoveries Series: The Atlanta Opera immersive “Bohème Project” Following the present season’s traditional production of Puccini’s “La bohème,” in September the Atlanta Opera Discoveries series continues the “Bohème Project” with two immersive productions at Pullman Yards. Produced by Tomer Zvulun {…}
The Teatro Real de Madrid continued its run of “Rigoletto” with a second cast under the musical direction of Nicola Luisotti. Since our earlier review of the first cast already explores the production itself, we will jump right into an analysis of the vocal performances. Étienne Dupuis was a lyrical Rigoletto, but far too lyrical. His warm and effortless timbre {…}
(Photo credit: Seattle Opera © Philip Newton) Why build an elaborate faux-underwater set for the Rhine scenes in Wagner’s “Ring” when you have an orchestra pit that can make a perfectly plausible stage river? It’s an idea so obvious, you think surely, it must have been tried already. This is the solution found by Brian Staufenbiel, tasked with staging “Das {…}
Houston Grand Opera is set to present “Giving Voice” for the third straight year. The showcase, which was created by tenor Lawrence Brownlee back in 2020, will feature Nicole Heaston alongside Blake Denson, Sun-Ly Pierce, William Guanbo Su, Peixin Chen, Key’mon W. Murrah, Ryan Speedo Green, and pianists Kevin J. Miller and Bin Yu Sanford. The program will include arias, {…}
The Houston Grand Opera has announced its 2021-22 season, which will feature six productions. It all starts with Bizet’s “Carmen” starring Carolyn Sproule, Richard Trey Smagur, Christian Pursell, and Heidi Stober. Lidiya Yankovskaya conducts a production directed by Rob Ashford. Performance Dates: Oct. 22 – Nov. 7, 2021 Next up is the world premiere of “The Snowy Day.” The new {…}
The San Diego Opera has announced a Spring season made up of Drive-In events. The Spring Season opens on Saturday, April 24, 2021, at 7:30 PM with “One Amazing Night,” the company’s annual concert of arias and duets with the San Diego Symphony. This year’s one-night-only event will feature soloists from the San Diego Opera chorus and will be conducted {…}
With the Dallas Opera canceling its 2020-21 season, the company has announced its 2021-22 season starting in February of 2022. The official grand opening of The Dallas Opera 2021-22 Season will feature Puccini’s “Madama Butterly” starring Latonia Moore as Cio Cio San and Evan LeRoy Johnson as Pinkerton. Emmanuel Villaume, TDO’s Mrs. Eugene McDermott music director, will conduct a cast {…}
We are reaching an interesting point in the summer for the opera world. Europe has essentially returned to “normalcy” as far as performances go. That also means an increasing lack of online content for operagoers from Europe’s biggest houses. Meanwhile, the rest of the opera world is in a transitional phase. With most companies preparing for digital starts to their {…}
Fisher Center’s digital platform has announced its latest offerings for the remainder of July and throughout August. The company will present a 2012 production of “Le Roi Malgré Lui” by Chabrier. Leon Botstein conducts a production directed by Thaddesu Strassberg. The opera features Liam Bonner, Michele Angelini, Andriana Chuchman, Nathalie Paulin, Frédéric Goncalves, and Jeffrey Mattsey, among others. Streaming Date: {…}
The Teatro Real de Madrid has announced the 2020-21 season featuring premieres, new productions and some of the greatest stars in the world. Opera Nicola Luisotti and Lorenzo Passerini conduct a production of Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera“ directed by Gianmaria Aliverta. The production stars Michael Fabiano and Ramón Vargas as Riccardo, Anna Pirozzi and Tatiana Serjan as Amelia, Artur {…}