The Atlanta Opera (TAO) website greets visitors with an invitation: “JOIN US AT THE BIG TENT!” Cool. The company’s staging its 2021 productions in an enormous tent. But wait a minute; is that a circus tent? Yes, it is, and unlike the Met’s new-ish production of “Così fan tutte” in which the circus entered the opera house, The Atlanta Opera’s {…}
Last month Bright Shiny Things released the world premiere recording of Ricky Ian Gordon and Frank Bidart’s new opera “Ellen West.” The recording was captured from the Prototype Festival in New York in January 2020, with soprano Jennifer Zetlan and baritone Nathan Gunn, the Aeolus Quartet, double bassist Evan Premo, pianist Djordje Nesic, and conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya. The new opera offers a portrait of {…}
(Photo Credit: Staatstheater Kassel) When COVID-19 spread quickly across the globe earlier this year, the entire opera world was forced into a lengthy shutdown. And despite continued concerns over the deadly virus, companies slowly found ways to return to some degree of normalcy. Thomas Bockelmann, the Intendant of the Staatstheater Kassel, took on this challenge head-on and recently spoke to {…}
On Sept. 25, Composer Sarah Kirkland Snider released her latest album “Mass for the Endangered,” a celebration of, and an elegy for, the natural world—animals, plants, insects, the planet itself—an appeal for greater awareness, urgency, and action. The piece is a six-movement Mass for the Endangered and is a rumination on the concept of the traditional Catholic Mass. It features {…}
Few artists have dedicated themselves to championing the works of composers of African and African American descent the way that conductor Marlon Daniel has. A Chicago native, Daniel has performed new works by such composers as Fred Onovwerosuoke, Dominique Le Gendre, and Adolphus Hailstork, among others. He also founded the Festival International de Music Saint-Georges in Guadaloupe and was the {…}
(Credit: Simon Pauly) “The music is giving me what I need. Music has always given me what I needed in my life.” When the COVID-19 hurricane struck humanity in full force in March, tenor Martin Muehle was about to begin rehearsals for the supernatural opera “The Queen of Spades” at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. At that moment it was obvious {…}
(Photo Credit: Lizelle de Wit) The COVID-19 pandemic had a huge impact for many opera singers and companies all over the world. Not only were performances canceled left and right, but there were concerns over when and how singers might be able to get back on the operatic stage. As the months passed by, we saw online performances, socially distanced {…}
(Credit: Jonas Holthaus) “Nothing was produced for the bin.” When the COVID-19 pandemic hurricane hit the world in full force in March 2020, opera houses all over the world were struck badly. All of them were forced to cancel the rest of their 2019-20 seasons, and many new productions were taken off the stage. However, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the {…}
(Credit: Ashley Plante) When Berlin opera houses called off their performances in March due to the COVID 19 pandemic, one rarely performed opera was stopped dead in its track- the Komische Oper’s production of “Schwanda.” Among the artists set to star in that production was American soprano Sara Jakubiak. Jakubiak, who has appeared on the most important world stages, to {…}
History was made on May 3, 2019. The first transgender baritone, Lucia Lucas, sang the title role in Mozart/Da Ponte’s, “Don Giovanni.” Such an important milestone in both opera and transgender history didn’t take place in New York or Los Angeles or Chicago; it was in Tulsa, Oklahoma that Lucas made her debut as Don Giovanni, a crucial and extremely {…}
(Credit: Emelie Kroon) When COVID-19 struck a few months back, one of the final “live” performances to take the stage was a rendition of Wagner’s “Die Walküre” in Sweden. Among the performers in that production was dramatic soprano Elisabet Strid, who took on the role of Sieglinde. Strid, who has performed in such opera houses as the Teatro Real, Lyric {…}