Erato has announced the release of Diana Damrau’s latest album alongside Jonas Kaufmann and Helmut Deutsch. The recital, which is set to include Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch, was recorded live from the Alfried Krupp Saal of the Philharmonie in the German city of Essen. The album also comes on the heels of Damrau and Kaufmann’s tour which they started in {…}
This past month Joyce DiDonato released a new recording entitled “Into the Fire.” The new album, which was recorded live at London’s celebrated Wigmore Hall, features the Brentano Quartet and was conceived around Jake Heggie’s song cycle “Camille Claudel: Into the Fire,” a work written for DiDonato. To celebrate the launch of the album, DiDonato and the Brentano Quartet performed {…}
“Opera Meets Film” is a feature dedicated to exploring the way that opera has been employed in cinema. We will select a section or a film in its entirety, highlighting the impact that utilizing the operatic form or sections from an opera can alter our perception of a film that we are viewing. This week’s installment features Calin Peter Netzer’s {…}
Cristina Pasaroiu is one of today’s most celebrated Romanian sopranos and has performed in some of the most prestigious opera houses, concert halls, and festivals. The soprano’s repertoire has ranged from spinto to lyric roles like “Adriana Lecouvreur,” “Manon,” “La Traviata,” “La Juive,” Magda in “La Rondine,” Leila in “Les Pêcheurs de Perles,” Mimì in “La Bohème,” Fiordiligi in “Così {…}
Gaetano Donizetti, born on Nov. 29, 1797, was one of the leading Bel Canto composers of all time. He wrote his first opera, “Il Pigmalione” at the age of 19 and he would go on to create 75 operas throughout his lifetime. His first major successes came with his comic operas, though in 1830, he scored a massive success with {…}
Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” is an audience favorite and a timeless classic and seeing Sir David McVicar’s revival currently playing at the Lyric Opera of Chicago is like a step back into time. The action is pushed forward a few centuries to Spain in the 19th with a dark and murky Goya-themed setting as the fitting backdrop for a tale of {…}
Soprano Sally Silver has passed away after losing the battle to cancer. The soprano was the 2016 recipient of L’Académie du Disque Lyrique’s Orphée d’Or, following the success of her solo release, “Les amoureuses sont des folles,” with Richard Bonynge at the piano. Emily Gottlieb, chief executive of the National Opera Studio issued a statement this morning noting, “I am afraid {…}
Donizetti certainly had an intimate relationship with England’s Queen Elizabeth I, and with the Tudors in general, who provided him with a rich source of characters and themes for his operas. Three works have substantial roles for Elizabeth, herself; “Maria Stuarda” and “Roberto Devereux” are well-known and receive regular performances, whereas the third, “Il Castello di Kenilworth,” rarely receives a {…}
The world premiere recording of Liszt’s “Sardanapalo” is set to be released. Audite will release the new recording of Franz Liszt’s long-lost opera featuring Joyce El-Khoury, Airam Hernandez and Oleksandr Pushniak with the Staatskapelle Weimar conducted by Kirill Karabits. The work had its world premiere over the summer and El-Khoury told OperaWire, “The composition style is quite interesting in that {…}
Konstantin Chudovsky has been named chief conductor at the Ekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theatre. The Russian conductor, who is currently the principal conductor of the Teatro Municipal de Santiago de Chile, recently opened the Youth Program at the Theater an der Wien with a production of Rossini’s “La Cambiale di Matrimonio” and was invited by the Opera de Lyon to {…}
The Skylark Opera Theatre has announced its 2019 season featuring two very different works. Here is a glance at what to expect. Productions The first production of the season will be Mozart’s “Così Fan Tutte” directed by directed by Bob Neu and will be set in the present day. The work will be presented throughout the Historic Mound Theater. “‘Così {…}