(Credit: Ashkan Roayaee) In early January, “Sweet Dreams of Joy,” the song in the documentary “Viva Verdi,” was shortlisted in the 15 finalists. However, no one gave it a chance as the field included such stars as Miley Cyrus, Ed Sheeran, Billy Idol, Stephen Schwartz and Nine Inch Nails. But on Jan. 22, 2026, when the Academy announced the nominees {…}
Alvise Casellati was born in Padua, Italy, to a Venetian musical family with important ties to the top classical music composers of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Rossini, Wagner, and Boito, among others. He is the founder and Music Director of Opera Italiana is in the Air (OIA), created in 2017 to bring opera concerts with with superstar singers {…}
(Photo: The King’s Singers press) The King’s Singers, a beloved ensemble, will be performing at NYC’s St. Bartholomew’s Church on February 4th at 7:30pm, and the Washington National Cathedral in DC on February 6th and 7th, 2026 at 7 p.m. These will also be some of the last performances with first countertenor Patrick Dunachie (after 10 years in the group) {…}
The choice of the young Spanish mezzo Patricia Illera for the roles of María and her shadow in Ástor Piazzolla and Horracio Ferrer’s opera “María de Buenos Aires” was a wise one. After studying medicine at the UAM and singing at the Madrid School of Singing (ESCM), she has been able to alternate between oratorios such as Saint Saëns and {…}
“It takes a village to raise a child” is a proverb that has served conductor Gregory D. McDaniel well. Thanks to musical educators and mentors, he knew he wanted to pursue a career in conducting music at an early age. A Houston native, McDaniel has about five months left with the New Jersey Symphony (NJS) as a Colton Conducting Fellow, where {…}
(Photo by Jonathan Slaff) In the 1970s, Leonard Lehrman, a Kansas-born but Long Island-raised composer of 12 operas and seven musicals whose major mentors include Elie Siegmeister, Lenore Anhalt, and Olga Heifetz, wrote “Sima,” an opera about a Jewish girl orphaned by a pogrom in 1905 in Ukraine. For decades, the composer attempted to bring the opera to a New {…}
Marina Rebeka and Ludovic Tézier need little introduction. Simply put, they are two of the most important Verdi singers of our time. The two have sung several of the composer’s works, with Rebeka becoming the go-to soprano of the composer’s early works requiring Bel Canto agility, while Tézier has dominated many of the composer’s most dramatic operas. Recently they made {…}
(Credit: Slawek Przerwa) Legendary tenor Roberto Alagna is celebrating 43 years in the business. Considered to be the least talented in a large family of musicians, he nonetheless spent his youth busking around Paris cabarets, singing pop music accompanied with his guitar. But his passion, fired by Mario Lanza films, was opera and, largely self-taught, he pursued that dream. That {…}
(Credit: ©️Alessandro Lodola) In 2022, Francesco Lodola founded Ben Artists, a management and public relations agency for artists that support artists. Lodola is a graduate in his city in Science of Communication and started studying piano since he was seven years old, attending the Liceo Musicale where he had the opportunity to deepen the theoretical and practical aspects of music {…}
