The Houston Grand Opera has furloughed 25 employees as it combats the financial challenges caused by the COVID-19 crisis. Per a report from the Houston Chronicle, not only is the company furloughing 25 of its 120 employees, but other staff members are taking a 15 to 20 percent pay cut. The furloughed workers’ last day is expected to be on {…}
American soprano Arlene Saunders has passed away on April 17, 2020 at the age of 89, due to the coronavirus. Born on October 5, 1930 in Cleveland, Ohio, her professional debut came in 1958, when she played Rosalinde in “Die Fledermaus” with the National Opera Company. Three years later she made her New York debut as Giorgetta in “Il tabarro” {…}
The Teatro dell’Opera di Roma has started a fundraiser entitled “I Love Roma Aperta” to help the opera company remain open. On its official website, the company wrote, “The theater remains closed due to the Coronavirus emergency. If you love music as much as we do and believe that a world without opera or ballet cannot exist, please help us {…}
Heartbeat Opera will be presenting “Lady M” this May as part of its work-in-progress series of virtual soirées on Zoom. The work, which is an online fantasia for Verdi’s “Macbeth,” will present the work through the perspective of Lady Macbeth. The work was conceived, adapted, and directed by Ethan Heard with musical arrangements by Daniel Schlosberg. The opera will feature {…}
(Credit: Leslie Hassler) Tenor Brian Cheney has announced his fourth weekly concert on StageIt, which will center on the music by Verdi and Puccini. The performance, which kicks off on Saturday, April 25, 2020 at 7 p.m. EDT, will feature arias from the two famed composers. Among the selections he will perform are “La donna è mobile” from “Rigoletto,” “Celeste {…}
On Site Opera in New York has added an additional live stream to its 4-part series of encore presentations. The company, which has streamed past opera performances from its archives over the last month, will offer a watch party of its 2018 production of Ricky Ian Gordon and William Hoffman’s “Morning Star,” originally performed at the Museum at Eldridge Street {…}
The American Opera Projects has added “The Echo Drift” to its streaming programming AOPTV: Opera Comes Home. The production, which premiered in 2018 at the PROTOTYPE Festival at Baruch Performing Arts Center, will be available for free at www.aopopera.org. The 80-minute chamber opera by composer Mikael Karlsson and librettists Elle Kunnos de Voss and Kathryn Walat received rave reviews when it {…}
The Music Academy of the West will be introducing the Music Academy Remote Learning Institute this summer, providing an opportunity for its 129 scholarship fellows an opportunity to engage with the program despite the complex circumstances. For four weeks between June 15-July 10, fellows will receive mentorship from faculty, guest artists, and industry leaders. Among the activities they will engage {…}
The BBC Chorus has announced that chorus member William Noce has died at the age of 64. Noce was an IREX scholarship student at the Kodaly Institute in Kecskemet and went on to study voice at the Liszt Academy with Sylvia Sass and Yevgeni Nesterenko. He later studied with John Shirley-Quirk privately as baritone. He then gave his first Hungarian {…}
The Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has announced that no concerts or sporting events will be allowed until September. In his address to the to the nation, the Prime Minister announced new guidelines to reopening nation. With no mass gathering, Netherlands will become the latest European nation to cancel all summer music festivals. The Dutch National Opera already canceled the {…}
Austria’s Minister of Culture has announced that starting on June 1, the country will start lifting some of the social distancing restrictions. Among those changes will be allowing orchestras to start rehearsing once again. Per reports, these new permissions also extend to others musicians and dancers, enabling them to slowly restart their professional lives. However, the guidelines do emphasize that {…}