Opera Memphis has announced its 2019 Midtown Opera Festival. The event kicks off in April with “The Falling and the Rising,” an opera that follows the imagined journey of a soldier suspended inside a coma after a roadside attack. The work was composed by Zach Redler with a libretto by Jerre Dyne. Performance Dates: April 6, 12, 13, 2019 The {…}
The Pittsburgh Festival Opera has announced its 2019 slate of performances. All of the operas will be sung in English. Everything gets off to a unique start with Strauss’ rarely performed “The Love of Danae” appearing for one performance at the Falk Auditorium. Performance Date: July 12, 2019 “Mister Rogers’ Opera” takes the stage on the second night of the {…}
Scott Hendricks is one of the most diverse artists in opera. His repertoire spans classic works by Monteverdi, Mozart, Debussy to contemporary works. He has also become one of the leading Verdi, Puccini, and Wagner interpreters around the world and has sung at every major theater to great acclaim. With an ever-increasing repertoire, this week Hendricks will have the honoring {…}
OperaVision will start streaming the world premiere of “Ice” at the Finnish National Opera and Ballet on March 5, 2019. The opera, written by Juhani Koivisto and composed by Jaakko Kuusisto, will feature Ville Rusanen, Marjukka Tepponen, Sointu Wessmann, Markus Growth, Jussi Merikanto, Jenny Carlstedt, Jenni Lättilä, and Pekka Kuivalainen, among many others. The composer leads thiis performance while Anna {…}
On Sunday, February 24, 2019, tenor Matthew Polenzani took to Carnegie Hall for a sold-out recital of song cycles from Schubert, Beethoven, Brahms, and Janacek. Accompanied by Julius Drake, this evening’s recital featured not only a finely-crafted program, but experienced artists who burned with a passionate fire. Some Schubert To Start First on the evening’s program was a selection of {…}
Elegant, thoughtful, persuasive – that is “Howards End, America,” Allen Shearer and Claudia Stevens’ new chamber opera, which just premiered in San Francisco’s Z space. Adapted from E.M.Forster’s outstanding novel, “Howards End,” set in 1910 Edwardian England, Shearer and Stevens turned fiction into music and lyrics set in 1950s America, a time of fierce race relations, class distinctions and challenging {…}
Orchestra of St. Luke’s second performance of the 2018-19 Carnegie Hall Series was led by Principal Conductor Bernard Labadie which featured Jonathan Biss as a guest artist performing Beethoven’s “Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 19” and soprano Ying Fang also as a guest artist, performing Mozart’s aria “Non temer, amato bene, K.490” from “Idomeneo.” The evening began {…}
Bizet’s “Carmen” had its world premiere on March 3, 1875 and is now one of the most renowned in the canon and even popular culture. But many people don’t know that it didn’t actually start that way. It was anything but a smashing success. So here is a challenging trivia quiz with some other nuggets about the world’s most famous {…}
Few directors in the opera world are quite as iconic as Robert Wilson. While his style, with its cool color palettes and calculated and slow movements that look like pantomime, may not be for everyone, there is no denying that he has a clear vision for how he sees theater. He’s worked a nearly any major theater organization you can {…}
“Carmen” is one of the greatest and most popular operas ever conceived. That combination is a rare one that only a handful of composers have truly managed. But it didn’t seem destined for such a destiny. When it premiered on March 3, 1875, the work was a complete failure. Unfortunately, Bizet died a month later thinking that his great masterpiece {…}
To paraphrase Shakespeare “an opera by any other name would sound as sweet.” There are multiple nomenclatures for the lyric theatre ranging A-Z from “Azione teatrale” to “Zarzuela.” Not to forget Wagner’s singular appellation of “Parsifal” as a “Bühnenweihfestspiel” or Richard Strauss’ designation of “Capriccio” as a “Konversationsstück für Musik.” Karol Szymanowski stands unique in that the original description of {…}