Photo: Caitlin Oldham On March 3, Arizona Opera is set to present a production of “The Sound of Music.” It’s a rare moment when an opera company brings a musical to its stage. The 1959 musical is most famous for its movie adaptation, which won the Oscar for Best Picture and has some of Rodger and Hammerstein’s most iconic work. {…}
Composer and Innovator Tod Machover breathes vitality and brightness out of his very being. Abundance and color spring from his first words. Alert and active, he spoke with me from his farm and studio in Massachusetts. He drove from his state-of-the-art Media Laboratory at M.I.T. in Cambridge, where he is the Director of the Opera of the Future group as {…}
Photo: RibaltaLuce Studio The Turin-born conductor Francesco Cilluffo sees himself at home in both the Italian and English-speaking worlds. Having graduated from the city’s Giuseppe Verdi Conservatoire and then the University of Turin, where he completed a thesis on Benjamin Britten, he moved to London, where he studied at the Guildhall School of Music before going on to King’s College, {…}
Photo: Fay Fox Brian Jagde spent his early voice coaching years under his teachers’ misguided notion that he was a baritone. Born in Long Island, New York, and raised just outside New York City, he eventually obtained both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in voice. Under the guidance of New York voice coach Michael Paul, he switched to tenor and went {…}
It has not been the easiest time for soprano Mary Elizabeth Williams. Her debut at Paris Opera has been, to say the least, controversial. On the one hand, she is pushing for redefinitions of what art is and how we should face the standard operatic repertoire. On the other hand, the audience’s reaction has been, in her own words, “passionate.” {…}
(Photo Credit: Rebecca Fay) Soprano Katrina Galka, who will portray the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” with Arizona Opera this April, spoke with OperaWire to discuss her upcoming role. The theme of good and evil throughout the opera really propelled the conversation. We discussed the Queen herself and the outdated gender roles and portrayal of women {…}
On March 2, the Royal Danish Opera is set to open a new production of Verdi’s “Aida.” The production by British director Annabel Arden is set to highlight the personal story of the captured Aida, who falls in love with her enemy. Arden will bring the story to modern times and showcase two neighboring countries at war, which is very {…}
Hailing from Belgrade, Serbia, triple-threat (composer/pianist/coach) Milica Ilić (1985 -) sat down with me to discuss her newly premiered opera, XX Mono-Opera For Schizophrenic Voice and Tight Strings, a harrowing tale about alien females from the planet Mnemosyne-369 who have their lives upturned when they receive a mysterious signal from space. Set in the far distance future, the Y chromosome {…}
On March 3, Indiana University is set to present the world premiere of “Anne Frank” by an all-Jewish team comprising composer Shulamit Ran, librettist Charles Kondek, and conductor Arthur Fagen. Fagen is a professor of music and chair of the Jacobs School of Music Department of Orchestral Conducting and the son of Holocaust survivors. His mother, Rena, was a prisoner in Auschwitz {…}