Dell’Arte Opera Ensemble just announced its 2017 Opera Festival. Starting on August 12, 2017 and running until August 27, the schedule features 14 full performances, covering ten works, and two fully-staged productions. The 15th annual opera festival opens with two Operatic rarities, Francesco Cavalli’s “La Calisto” andLeos Janacek’s “Prihody Iisky Bystrousky (The Cunning Little Vixen).” The former is about two {…}
As part of the New York Opera Fest, Rhymes with Opera will present “Coping Mechanisms” on May 19 at 8:00 p.m EDT and then again on May 20 at the same time. The production will take place at the 124 Bank Street Theatre for both nights. This will be the final show of Rhymes With Opera’s (RWO) 2016-2017 season. Founding {…}
Yesterday we took a look at two titanic sopranos that shared a birthday. Today, May 18, we turn our attention to two important basses that were also born on the same day. Ezio Pinza’s birth came on this day in 1892 while Boris Christoff’s came in 1914. Both artists led rather different careers with the former finishing out his career {…}
The Russian Opera Workshop has announced its summer season presenting two main operas and a number of masterclasses. The company will first present Tchaikovsky’s “The Queen of Spades” starting on June 27, with the run concluding on the 29th. It will then present Alexander Dargomyzhsky’s “Rusalka,” a rarely performed bel canto-inspired lyric opera starting August 1 and running through the 3rd. The company {…}
The Martina Arroyo Foundation has announced its operatic prelude to performance selections and master series programs for the summer. The Prelude to Performance will feature Bizet’s “Carmen” starring Emily Righter in the title role, Ben Werley, a young artist with Florida Grand Opera, as Don José, and Brian Major as Escamillo. Opera Tampa’s Daniel Lipton conducts. The following opera will be a {…}
Maybe you missed some operas? Or you just loved it so much you need a second dose. The popular Metropolitan Opera Live in HD encores are scheduled for four viewings in June and July. These popular silver screen opera transmissions have grown since 2006 to become the leader in alternative movie theater programming. June will be encoring “Les Pêchuers de {…}
The starting point for any production of Peter Grimes lies in the interpretation of the opera’s central character, namely Peter Grimes himself: to what extent should the audience be encouraged to view the anti-hero as an outsider, a victim of the underlying, but all-pervading intolerance and hypocrisy which saturates the Borough, rather than simply as a sadistic sociopath? Clearly, any {…}
New Opera NYC is gearing up to present Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Golden Cockerel” in a rare appearance in NYC. According to the company’s official website, the famed work has not appeared on the New York City stage since 1971 when New York City Opera did it last. Interestingly enough, the opera has also always been sung in French and English. However, {…}
Zinka Milanov was born on May 17, 1906. Exactly 12 years later, on May 17, 1918, Birgit Nilsson was born. The two women would go on to markedly different careers, though they both performed at the greatest houses in the world and would perform with many of the same artists, albeit in different operas. Both women were dramatic sopranos, and {…}
Ardea Arts with the University of Kentucky opera theatre are coming together to present, “Bounce: The Basketball Opera Pop-Up Shows” with performances all around New York City basketball courts. The series will start on May 17 and continue every Wednesday up until June 14. Each week the location of the production will change, but all of them start at begin at {…}
We’ve talked up the finest female performers. We’ve engaged in a discussion about the best men onstage. Now we shift over to the best conductors of the year, the artists that make the entire production work. In this edition, we only picked five, given that, unlike the other categories, there are far fewer to choose from. Here are our favorite {…}