Becoming an opera singer is both an act of faith and a passion. It is also an arduous path of discipline and hard work, day after day, year after year. When an audience sits in the opera houses of the world and revels in the sheer beauty of sound and drama, let alone the color and glamour of an operatic {…}
Every year, the Glow Lyric Theatre does something that few other opera or musical theatres companies are willing to do – embrace the distinct art forms as siblings and celebrate their unique differences and similarities. For several years the company has put on three shows in its summer season: an opera, an operetta, and a piece of musical theatre. But {…}
It was announced on Wednesday that Roxie Perkins and Ellen Reid’s “p r i s m” had won the Music Critics Association of North America third Annual Award for Best New Opera, following in the footsteps of such works as “Breaking the Waves” and “The Wake World.” The opera, which premiered on November 29, 2018, as part of Los Angeles Opera’s {…}
Guatemalan soprano Adriana Gonzalez is the first musician in her entire family, making her meteoric rise in the opera world all the more essential to her and her loved ones. She has the potential to go even further this very week when she competes in the Operalia Competition, one month after appearing the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition. {…}
(Credit: Noelia Pirsic) “Do you live from singing opera?” “Is it difficult to sing that way?” “Is it hard to memorize the lyrics?” “How do you resist singing for so long?” The doubts of 10-year-old kids in wonder flew like ping-pong balls during one of the open rehearsals for “Hansel & Gretel” that took place in the hall of the San {…}
(Credit: Cristopher Santos) Dead branches bend in the wind as the first notes of Schubert’s “Du bist die Ruh” palpitate softly. Suddenly a gentle soprano materializes as we get a birds eye view of soprano Julia Sophie Wagner, in a vibrant red dress, lying in the dark dirt around her, arms outstretched and moving gently up and down. This is how {…}
Legendary soprano Montserrat Caballe once said, “Saioa Hernández is the diva of our century and the theaters are sleeping because she should be in every single one.” Up until this year, Hernandez had been performing in the smaller European theaters to great acclaim and slowly moving up the ranks. But she was far from a household name in the opera {…}
(Production photo: Duane Tinkey/Des Moines Metro Opera’s “Billy Goats Gruff”) Father of six, retired bass-baritone John Davies first attempted to write a children’s opera for an unusual reason. “Around 1978,” he remembered in an interview with OperaWire, “it seemed to me that the tobacco industry was advertising to my young children, with the Marlboro Man, Joe Camel, and Virginia Slims {…}
(Photo: Jonas Lampens) The great castrato, Carlo Maria Michelangelo Broschi, better known as Farinelli, had such impact on 18th century opera-seria that his fame has lasted down the centuries, so that even today his name remains well-known amongst opera-goers. His older brother, Riccardo Broschi, however is less well-known, few will recognize his name. Yet, during his lifetime he was a {…}