Leo Nucci is one of the most famous baritones in the world. During his career, he has performed dozens of roles, but the one for which he is certainly most famous is that of Rigoletto. He has performed his signature role more than 500 times all over the world including Teatro alla Scala, Arena di Verona, Opernhaus Zurich, Teatro Regio {…}
Francesca Sassu and Raffaella Lupinacci’s long-awaited debuts at the Lithuanian Opera in “Anna Bolena” proved quite a unique experience for both artists. Namely due to COVID-19. The Italian singers were set to perform the work for the first time in August until they tested positive for the virus. As a result, the company postponed the opening of the production while {…}
Opera fans in San Diego have a real treat in store. Ana María Martínez, one of opera’s foremost interpreters of Mimì, the beloved heroine of Puccini/Illica’s “La Bohème,” has come to town to wow audiences at the Pechanga Arena Parking Lot from October 24 – November 1. The Grammy Award® winning soprano has sung Mimì for nearly 25 years to {…}
Baritone Kenneth Overton recently performed for the first time in front of a live audience at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. The performance, entitled “To America,” celebrated the poetry of the civil rights activist, James Weldon Johnson, an early leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and who is buried at Green-Wood. “To America” {…}
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 {…}
(Credit: Jenkins Mitch) A few months back, it was erroneously reported by several publications (including this one) that soprano Marina Poplavskaya had officially retired from her career. That was far from the case. While the Russian mezzo-soprano has not been quite as active as she was at the beginning of the 2010s, she is far from finished as a singer. {…}
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 {…}
