On the evening of April 26, 2019, guests excitedly filed into the Metropolitan Opera’s grand auditorium, eager to experience Verdi’s masterpiece “Rigoletto.” Returning to the stage for its second run of performances this season with a new principal cast, Michael Mayer’s production sets the tragic opera in Las Vegas in the 1960s. With the audience seated and Maestro Nicola Luisotti standing ready {…}
May 1, 1786. That is the day that, for many, the greatest opera of all-time had its very first performance. “Le Nozze di Figaro” has held the stage ever since, performed by all the great interpreters all over the world. The work has also developed a healthy discography over the ages both on audio and visual media, making it impossible {…}
In the premiere American staging of “La Susanna,” Heartbeat Opera and Opera Lafayette have joined forces for the first time to bring this emotive and rare Baroque work to Washington D.C. and New York audiences. “La Susanna” tells the eponymous Biblical story of Susanna and the Elders: two men, referred to as “judges” that desire a beautiful married woman; when they {…}
In Benjamin Britten and Ronald Duncan’s “The Rape of Lucretia,” a young Roman soldier is goaded into testing the chastity of Lucretia, who was the only woman not to betray her husband Collatinus. This roman soldier, Tarquinius, proceeds to show up at Lucretia’s home, awaken her from bed, and, despite being repeatedly rejected, he rapes her. Lucretia winds up killing {…}
On May 3, 2019, Australian soprano Yvette Keong will perform her graduation recital at the Manhattan School of Music’s Greenfield Hall. While still a member of the school’s Senior Opera Theater, Keong has quickly begun to make a name for herself with recent appearances in the role of Pamina in the Berlin Opera Academy’s 2018 production of “Die Zauberflöte,” which {…}
The Grange Park Opera has announced the 2020 Festival. The season will open with a world premiere of Anthony Bolton and librettist Kit Hesketh-Harvey’s “The Life & Death of Alexander Litvinenko.” The new opera will be based on the true story of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 and died in 2006. The cast will include {…}
Opera and concert producer Mark Richter has died, according to Alamo City Opera music director Kristin Roach. Music director Roach announced the death of the 51-year-old who was currently serving as the artistic director of the Alamo City Opera. Richter died on April 28, 2019, at Metropolitan Methodist Hospital, where he was hospitalized for about 10 days. Richter grew up on the {…}
“We want to make this music—these composers—part of the standard repertoire. Events like this shouldn’t be rare,” stated soprano Nicole Leone in a recent interview with OperaWire. Leone’s simple statement refers to the challenge of increasing the prominence of female composers in music programming, and she is doing her part. Together with Randi Marrazzo, her voice teacher from Temple University, {…}
José Bros, a highly regarded Spanish tenor, chose to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his opera debut with a recital of Zarzuela pieces. He was joined by rising soprano Ruth Iniesta, who happens to be currently performing the role of “Nannetta” in Verdi’s “Falstaff” at the same stage. The two sang an equal number of Zarzuela arias and shared the {…}
Cantata Profana will present “Lucretia,” a “dramatically and politically charged show spiraling from the intensity and drama of Handel’s ‘La Lucrezia’ performed on baroque and modern instruments,” according to the press release. Rarely heard masterpieces spanning from the medieval era to the 21st century will be performed. The program will include Bunita Marcus’ “Julia” (1989), Ottorino Respighi’s “Lucretia” (opera exerpt) {…}
Citadel + Compagnie will present “Against Nature,” directed and choreographed by James Kudelka. According to the press release, the production is a “multi-disciplinary work . . . a unique dance-opera-theatre hybrid that adapts French-Dutch author Joris-Karl Huysman’s 1884 novel of bourgeois excess, ‘À Rebours (Against Nature).’” “Against Nature” will feature music by James Rolfe and libretto by Alex Poch-Goldin, as well as {…}
