(Photo Credit: James Glossop) Disability is a tricky subject in opera. Oftentimes, it is chastised as something dirty or mysterious or just down right funny. But in truth, it’s rather serious and a complicated theme to get right. A new opera about the perils of mental illness, love, and genuine belief has tried to reframe this with exceptional results. Composed {…}
This week Oper Im Steinbruch will open a new production of Bizet’s “Carmen.” The production will feature a soprano in the title role, something that is rarely heard today. And the soprano in question will be Joyce El-Khoury, who is making her role debut. Throughout the past years, El-Khoury has performed a variety of operas that have included the works {…}
As the Teatro Real de Madrid closes its 2022-23 season, the company is set to present a new production of “Turandot” with three casts that include some of the greatest interpreters of the roles. Among the cast will be Ewa Płonka, who returns to Madrid a year after her debut. Płonka has become one of the leading dramatic sopranos of {…}
The story of Clara Josephine Wieck-Schumann and Johannes Brahms is one of both fact and myth. Through their forty years of correspondence, they expressed adoration for each other and the art of music itself. Yet, do we really know what their love was like? Fresco Opera Theatre in Wisconsin had created an opera called “Clara” to explore this relationship using {…}
Does a film titled “Opera” have to be about opera? Moreover, does it even have to use operatic music? Have we come so far as to distinguish between opera and Opera, and is there a difference between being ‘opera’ and ‘operatic?’ While the answer does not exist per se, animator Erick Oh’s short film entitled “Opera”—a Marxian look at the {…}
(Credit: Philip Grosbong) This week the Cincinnati Opera is set to present the world premiere staging of the opera “The Knock.” The opera explores what must be endured by the loved ones of those who serve. Based on years of interviews with real spouses of American soldiers, this new opera tells dramatic stories of heroism that often go unheard, tragedies {…}
This week the Teatro alla Scala will make history by presenting the first-ever production of Dvořák’s “Rusalka. The work, which premiered 122 years ago in Prague has become a fixture at all the major opera houses in the world, but mysteriously has never been performed at the most renowned Italian theater. And for this major occasion, La Scala has brought {…}
(Photo Copyright: Priska Ketterer Luzern) Known as a luminary and artistic visionary in the acoustically-focused style of “spectralism,” a creative approach towards synthesizing technological processing and the human voice, along with her profound interest in culture, philosophy, and literature, Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023) is a musical icon. Pushing the limits of what music could do and achieve as an {…}
Over the years, opera has come to embody an artform that represents all shades of the human experience. From the traditional to the abstract, every form of love that can be expressed on earth has come to the operatic stage to live. One of those shades is the love shared between those belonging to the LGBT+ community. Some of the {…}
