The Utah Opera has announced its 2024-25 season. The season will open with Sondheim and Wheeler’s “Sweeney Todd.” Robert Tweten leads a cast that includes Michael Mayes as the demon barber himself, Audrey Babcock, Amy Owens, Megan Marino, and Christian Sanders. Doug Scholz-Carlson directs. Performance Dates: Oct. 12-20, 2024 Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel” will be conducted by Stephanie Rhodes Russell {…}
(Photo credit: Seattle Opera © Philip Newton) Why build an elaborate faux-underwater set for the Rhine scenes in Wagner’s “Ring” when you have an orchestra pit that can make a perfectly plausible stage river? It’s an idea so obvious, you think surely, it must have been tried already. This is the solution found by Brian Staufenbiel, tasked with staging “Das {…}
Photo Credit: Marc Brenner English National Opera has had a stay of execution from the swinging cuts imposed on them by Arts Council England before Christmas. At least another year of funding is guaranteed, though it has not come without casualties; the “Siegfried” planned as the next installment of their burgeoning “Ring” has reportedly been pulled. A pity, as Richard {…}
The Seattle Opera has announced the 2023-24 season featuring four productions. Productions Wagner’s “Das Rheingold“ is set to open the season with Greer Grimsley as Wotan, Frederick Ballentine, Michael Mayes, and the Seattle Opera debut of internationally celebrated mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves. The cast is rounded by Martin Bakari, Melody Wilson, Kenneth Kellogg, Peixin Chen, and Sarah Larsen. Performance Dates: August {…}
Photo: © Lloyd Winters Unlike ballet, which has “The Nutcracker” as a festive staple, there aren’t very many Christmas operas. “La bohème” opens on Christmas eve, and there is invariably snow, but yuletide is hardly the subject of the opera. ENO were scheduled to perform John Adams nativity oratorio “El Niño” during lockdown, but it sadly got canned. Along comes {…}
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, {…}
(Photo: Catherine Ashmore) Such has been the success of Margret Atwood’s novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” that, since its publication in 1985, it now finds itself positioned alongside other major 20th century dystopian novels, drawing comparisons with Orwell’s “1984” and Huxley’s “Brave New World.” Like them, it has entered the cultural mainstream, spawning plays, films, a ballet, a major television series, {…}
The English National Opera has announced its 2022-23 season featuring eight productions and seven operas. Leo Hussain conducts Puccini’s “Tosca” in a new production by Christof Loy. The cast will include Sinéad Campbell-Wallace, Adam Smith, and Noel Bouley. Performance Dates: Sept. 30–Nov. 4 2022 Gilbert & Sullivan’s “The Yeomen of the Guard” will include Anthony Gregory, Neal Davies, Alexandra Oomens, Heather {…}
(Credit: Jens Fauth) Washington National Opera has announced that tenor Frederick Ballentine has been named as the recipient of the 2021 Marian Anderson Vocal Award, in recognition of his artistic accomplishments and great promise of an illustrious career. A Virginia native and a 2018 alumnus of WNO’s Cafritz Young Artist Program, Ballentine made his Metropolitan Opera debut in their acclaimed {…}
(Credit: Evan Zimmerman) On October 31, 2021, the Metropolitan Opera opened this season’s run of the Gershwins’ “Porgy and Bess.” This revival of James Robinson’s acclaimed, 2019 production saw nearly the entire cast return to Catfish Row for a truly powerful opening night, led by conductor David Robertson. The set featured a rotating, framework of the boarding house which struck {…}
The Cincinnati Opera has announced the world premiere of “Castor and Patience” by Gregory Spears in July 2022. The opera, written by librettist Tracy K. Smith, centers on two cousins from an African American family who find themselves at odds over the fate of a historic parcel of land they have inherited in the American South. Deeply relevant to ongoing {…}