The Chris Seabrooke Music Hall at Wits University was packed to capacity on the afternoon Oct. 11, 2026 as Dr. Musa Nkuna, head of the university’s music department, unveiled “The Fallen Youth Op. 61,” a through-composed opera commemorating the 50th anniversary of the June 16, 1976 Soweto uprising. Among the audience were Dr. Tinyiko Maluleke, Vice-Chancellor of Tshwane University of {…}
(Photo: W.Hoesl) I have gone back to Vienna’s “Fledermaus” several times since it was broadcast at New Year, and each viewing has left me more certain about what troubles me in it. What was shown was the famous Otto Schenk production from 1979, long regarded as a model of traditional operetta staging: elegant, theatrical, and musically alert. It is still {…}
I am 43-years-old. My voice – a true bass, the kind this art form waits decades to mature – is at its peak. The instrument I spent my life building is finally, fully mine. Low notes that took years to settle and high notes that took a decade to secure. A career that carried me to national stages, and to {…}
Tippet Rise Art Center fuses music and art with a 12,500-acre working ranch in Fishtail, Montana. What began as a pipe dream for visionary pioneers Cathy and Peter Halstead — artists themselves — has become a place cultivated by dreamers who dare to use their wildest imaginations to curate the land. The Halsteads are founders of the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry {…}
In May 1962, three singers were supposed to stand together inside the newly consecrated Coventry Cathedral. Benjamin Britten had chosen the English tenor Peter Pears, German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya for the premiere of his “War Requiem.” The casting carried powerful post-war symbolism: three nationalities united in a cathedral destroyed during the Second World War and {…}
(Photo: Gary Payne) At 26 years old, French composer Louise Bertin launched “Fausto,” an Italian semiseria and what would be her third opera. After a largely anti-climatic and tepid response to the 1831 premiere in Paris, the opera would be shelved and forgotten for nearly 200 years. Now in 2026, Opera Neo has revived the work for the first time {…}
(Photo Credit : © Glenn Francis, www.PacificProDigital.com) “You sing this piece very well and it is interesting, but not well-known. It’s risky to do this repertoire in a conservative industry that more likely favors the rep they will know and understand. Something they can compare it to.” I’m hearing these words from a successful opera professional. This person is nice {…}
Institutions often outlive their original purpose. Empires collapse, churches lose congregations, universities change beyond recognition, but the rituals remain, transformed into heritage. The question is whether opera is heading the same way: admired as a monument, but no longer essential. Opera was once the ultimate multimedia art form, fusing poetry, music, theatre, and design. For centuries it stood at the {…}
(Photo: © Monika Rittershaus) “Don Giovanni” is an opera of seductions and escapes, moral wreckage and divine retribution, a shimmering mosaic of comedy, tragedy, farce, and existential dread. Yet “the mother of all operas” is also a uniquely treacherous work—at once alluring and intractable, irresistibly open yet elusive. Music’s sublimity rarely fails to connect with audiences, even in a less-than-stellar {…}
(Credit: © Sandra Then) The sounds of history often linger, echoing into the present in ways that demand our attention. Sometimes they whisper, unsettling but distant; other times, they crash through with devastating force. In Germany, the past is never far from the surface, but it has rarely felt as raw and urgent as it does now. At the Hanover {…}
Cerise Lim Jacobs grew up in colonial Singapore and then under the “benign” autocrat and strongman Lee Kuan Yew. Her passport was revoked when her family emigrated to Australia, punishment for an act deemed “unpatriotic.” She was a trial partner at Goodwin Procter (one of the 20-plus law firms being investigated for its DEI-related employment practices.) After she retired, she {…}
