This week the Bayreuth Festival will open its 2026 season with “Rienzi,” a work that the festival has never performed. For the production, festival has aligned some of the greatest Wagnerians currently singing. Heading the charge will be Andreas Schager, one of the premiere tenors of the repertoire. Schager has performed the role for many years first in June 2011 at {…}
Photo Credits: Hudson Opera/RB Schlather (2017) Within contemporary American opera, there are many works whose lifespan betrays its contents. Even historical significance can’t save opera from being forgotten if it fails to find its audience. Works like Carlisle Floyd’s ‘The Passion of Jonathan Wade‘ (1962), Thea Musgrave’s ‘Simón Bolívar‘ (1994), Dorothy Moore’s ‘Frederick Douglass‘ (1985), Stewart Wallace’s ‘The Bonesetter’s Daughter‘ {…}
This week the Tiroler Festspiele Erl opens a production of “Der fliegende Holländer” with numerous rising stars including Nian Bezu, who will make her role debut as Senta. Bezu is a rising star who has performed at the Theater Baden, Finnish National Opera, Auditorio de Zaragoza, and Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire, among many others. In anticipation for {…}
On June 29, the Royal Opera House will present a new production of “I Puritani,” featuring Lisette Oropesa in her signature role and led by one of the great Bel Canto conductors working today, Riccardo Frizza. The performance will mark Frizza’s debut on the podium of the Royal Opera House, and it comes as he celebrates 25 years since his {…}
Photo Credit: David Bachman/Pittsburgh Opera In these uncertain times, where rights are being systematically upended, questioned, destablized, and generally violated, art provides opportunities to reflect on the stories, legacies, and tribulations of those who came before. During these summer months, we will look at three operas that epitomize this very dynamic, namely the ways opera creates space to think about {…}
For the last five months, we reversed course and explored operas based on films, and we now know that it sometimes produces mixed results, whilst at other times, it strips the film of what made it great and ends up alienating the audience from the story. But now we’re going to take a step back in time, something familiar to {…}
The relationship between a conductor and a singer is one of the least examined and most consequential elements of operatic performance. Audiences follow the voice. Critics assess the voice. The conductor, who shapes the tempo the voice breathes within, the space it is given, the dynamic world it moves through, tends to appear in reviews as a presence behind the {…}
(Photo: Chris Tribble) “Try to imagine the whole universe beginning to ring and resound. There are no longer human voices, but planets and suns revolving” wrote Gustav Mahler, commenting on his 8th Symphony. On 16th May, the majestic, (if not suitably astronomical), Coventry Cathedral hosted a remarkable and rarely performed work that received a rapturous reception at its cessation, much {…}
Joining the ranks of other screen-to-stage operatic adaptations, Swedish composer Hans Gefors and his eighth opera, “Notorious,” can be considered a contemporary grand opera. Spanning five acts — a number usually seen in French grand opera but also seen in Italian verismo including “Don Carlo,” “Robert le diable,” and “La muette de Portici” — the opera details the complex love affair between a {…}
