(Photo: Eric Woolsey) For their 2024 mainstage summer festival season, Opera Theatre Saint Louis (OTSL) paired two fixtures in top-ten performance frequency, “The Barber of Seville” and “La Bohème,” with two exciting, less offered menu items. Philip Glass’s “Galileo Galilei” (2002) received just its fourth staging anywhere, while George Frideric Händel’s operatic capolavoro, “Julius Caesar” (“Giulio Cesare in Egitto,” 1724) {…}
The Opera Theatre of Saint Louis has announced its 2025 season which will run from May 24 – June 29, 2025 at Webster University’s Loretto-Hilton Center. The season opens with Strauss II’s “Die Fledermaus” with George Manahan conducting Shawna Lucey’s production. The operetta stars Sara Gartland, Deanna Breiwick, Kelsey Lauritano, Joshua Blue, Edward Nelson, and Johnathan McCullough. Performance Dates: May 24-June 28, {…}
The Opera Theatre of Saint Louis has announced that it will extend Principal Conductor Daniela Candillari’s contract. The conductor will remain with the company through September 2028. Candillari made her OTSL debut in 2021 conducting the “New Works, Bold Voices Lab” and began her tenure as OTSL’s Principal Conductor in 2022. In a statement, the conductor said, “Since joining OTSL as {…}
The Opera Theatre of Saint Louis has announced its 2023 season. The season opens with “Treemonisha,” Scott Joplin’s landmark opera. The work will see an expanded version, reimagined for the modern day with an added prologue and epilogue by composer Damien Sneed and librettist Karen Chilton. Charlotte Brathwaite directs the opera with George Manahan conducting. The cast includes Justin Austin, {…}
(Credit: Damjan Švarc) The Music Academy of the West has announced the appointment of Daniela Candillari as the new Principal Opera Conductor of the Summer Festival. Candillari has already engaged with the company by conducting the west coast premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s “Cold Mountain,” and led several works on a program of all contemporary vocal chamber music in 2021. In {…}
(Photo credit: Damjan Svarc) Conductor Daniela Candillari makes her Met Opera podium debut on Wednesday, December 8th, pacing Matthew Aucoin and Sarah Ruhl’s ‘Eurydice.’ OperaWire connects with Candillari to discuss her creative process leading up to ‘Eurydice’ and how she constructs her perspective. OperaWire: What moments in Aucoin’s work do you enjoy most and how do they resonate with you? Daniela {…}
(Credit: Stephanie Berger) As part of the MetLiveArts series and Project 19 initiative, The Met Museum collaborated with musicians from the NY Philharmonic and singers from The Juilliard School’s Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts in a historical performance of Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein’s “The Mother of Us All.” This creative collaboration was the first of {…}
(photo credit: Damjan Švarc) Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein’s opera “The Mother of Us All” recently made a historical debut at The Met Museum in honor of Susan B. Anthony’s life and women’s suffrage movement. The production celebrates a unique collaboration between the NY Philharmonic, Juilliard, and The Met, which features some of today’s visionary young artists working in opera. {…}
On November 8, 2019, Arizona Opera presented composer Gregory Spears and librettist Greg Pierce’s 2016 opera “Fellow Travelers.” Premiered at Cincinnati Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago presented the work in March 2018, and Minnesota Opera staged it three months later. That is not a surprise to anyone who has heard its enchantingly original music. Yes, it has its Puccini-style moments, but it also relates to much earlier music and contains tonal vocal harmony rarely heard in 21st century opera. Spears’ music shows human grace and warmth one moment and counteracts it with chilling dissonance the next. Thus, he magnifies and intensifies the conflict between characters.
(Credit: Opera Philadelphia) Music Academy of the West will soon present the West Coast premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winning Composer-in-Residence Jennifer Higdon’s “Cold Mountain.” Based on Charles Frazier’s novel, the opera, described in the press release as an “American odyssey of love, honor, and redemption at the close of the Civil War,” tells the story of Confederate soldier W.P. Inman’s desertion {…}