Few endeavors are more challenging than creating your own opera company. It requires tremendous amounts of research as well as more challenging audience building than other artforms. But that is exactly what Gail R. Gordon did with Numi Opera, her second opera company. She actually created Opera Nova back in 2000 as a venue where her students could develop their {…}
Shapeshifting snakes, talking trees, a swimming pool, a tragic Botox accident…it’s all in renowned novelist and short fiction writer A.M. Homes’ new opera, “Chunky in Heat.” The opera, premiering on May 31st during New York Opera Fest, is based on four short stories by Homes and will be staged at The Flea Theater by Experiments in Opera. The opera explores {…}
Hui He is one of today’s leading lirico spinto sopranos in the world performing every major Verdi and Puccini role. Since her debut in “Aida” in Shanghai in 1998, she has become one of the leading interpreters of such operas as “Tosca,” “Madam Butterfly,” ‘Turandot,” “Il Trovatore,” and “La Forza del Destino.” She has also performed in every major theater, including {…}
Close your eyes music lovers and imagine going to a bar to hear a phenomenal cover band—a top-notch group of musicians who bring the hits alive and gets the joint jumping as the crowd quaffs some brews. Now, imagine the group onstage isn’t covering Pearl Jam or The Rolling Stones, but Puccini and Rossini. You can stop imagining because there’s {…}
Dr. Indré Viskontas is fulfilling two dreams, establishing herself as an opera singer while satisfying her intellectual side with the study of neuroscience. Having earned a Masters of Music in Voice Performance and a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience, the lyric coloratura soprano teaches at San Francisco Conservatory of Music and at the University of San Francisco. Additionally, she, together with Dana Sadava, formed Pasadena Opera, where {…}
Every singer’s path is laden with expectations. Often, these are not established by the artist themselves, but by the world around them. Karen Slack knows all about having to manage those expectations. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2005 and was singing the major Verdi roles at the start of her career. But the soprano in a recent interview {…}
Opera, Song and Music Theater is quivering, twisting, and turning. Could it be that we are in an renaissance? There is a new blood pulsing through its veins. Opera and theater makers are pulling at its heart, resuscitating our interest and taking us to diverse locations with as yet unclassifiable languages and forms. The Xen of Opera looks at the {…}
New York’s City Lyric Opera recently staged a gritty production of Peter Brook’s adaptation of Bizet’s “Carmen,” “La Tragédie de Carmen.” The opera, an 80-minute chamber piece, retains the musical highlights of Bizet’s original, and brings into sharp focus the tragic stories of the four principal characters: Micaëla, Don José, Carmen, and Escamillo as they collide with one another and {…}
On May 17, 2019, the New York Opera Festival and On Site Opera will host the world premiere of Michi Wiancko and Deborah Brevoort’s opera “Murasaki’s Moon.” The work will be showcased at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and will be presented in conjunction with the Met’s exhibition “The Tale of Genji: A Japanese Classic Illumination.” The work marks the {…}