The Park Avenue Armory has announced its fall 2024 recital series. The season opens with Beverly Sills Award-winning soprano Leah Hawkins with pianist Kevin Miller exploring her personal journey of self-acceptance and identity. They will perform works by Poulenc and Lili Boulanger as well as a collection of folk songs from various cultures. Performance Dates: Sept. 13 & 15, 2024 Tenor Karim {…}
The Metropolitan Opera has named soprano Leah Hawkins the winner of the 2024 Beverly Sills Artist Award. The annual $50,000 award recognizes extraordinarily gifted singers with rising Met careers. In a statement the soprano said, “I am extremely honored and grateful to be the 2024 recipient of the Beverly Sills Award and to join this incredible group of recipients, all {…}
The Arizona Opera has announced its 2024-25 season. The season opens with Arizona Opera’s new “Beyond Downtown” program, the newest evolution of the company’s McDougall RED Series, which will bring operatic performances throughout Arizona, reaching beyond the walls of the theaters in which the company typically performs. Performance Dates: TBD Caitlin Gotimer, SeokJong Baek, Benjamin Taylor, and Emma Marhefka perform {…}
The San Francisco Symphony has announced its 2024-25 season. Here is a rundown of the vocal performances on offer. Joe Hisaishi conducts a concert of music from the films of Hayao Miyazaki. The concert will feature the participation of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus. Performance Dates: Sept. 5 – 8, 2024 Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts Verdi’s Requiem with Leah Hawkins, Karen Cargill, {…}
The Dutch National Opera is set to present Puccini’s triptych “Il Trittico” for the first time. The opera will premiere on May 3, 2024 and will be shown in celebration of the centenary of Puccini’s death 1924-2024. “Il Trittico” will be conducted by Lorenzo Viotti. Stage director Barrie Kosky will helm the production and will star baritone Michael Volle in {…}
The Philadelphia Orchestra has announced its 2024-25 Season. Here is a look at the vocal performances for the season. Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts perform Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 with Joyce DiDonato as the featured soloist. Performance Dates: Oct. 3-5, 2024 Riccardo Muti conducts Verdi’s Requiem with soloists Juliana Grigoryan, Isabel De Paoli, Giovanni Sala, and Maharram Huseynov. Performance Dates: Oct. 24-26, {…}
It’s time of the year. The moment we wrap up the year and look back at our favorite moments. After releasing our favorite performances of 2023 and showcasing our rising stars of the year, it’s time for OperaWire’s annual tradition of naming our top 11 singers of the year, performers that we thought stood out and had major breaks or performances. So {…}
(Photo credit: ©Kerry Hallihan, ©Rod Evans, ©Caitlin Odham ©Holli Egerstrom) The American Symphony Orchestra and the Bard Festival Chorale present Antonin Dvořák’s “Requiem,” Op. 89 on Jan. 25 at Carnegie Hall. Soprano Leah Hawkins, mezzo-soprano Lindsay Ammann, tenor Joshua Blue, and bass Stefan Egerstrom serve as soloists in one of the composer’s lesser-known choral works. They are joined by the Bard {…}
(Credit: Marty Sohl) The Metropolitan Opera’s 2023-24 season unfurled a tapestry of music, history, and Afrofuturistic magical realism with Broadway producer Robert O’Hara’s “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X,” composed by Anthony Davis, to a libretto by Thulani Davis, based on a story by Christopher Davis. The Met, traditionally a bastion of opera’s classic repertoire, transformed into a {…}
(Credit: Zenith Richards / Met Opera) The Metropolitan Opera is set to present the company premiere of Anthony Davis’s “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X.” The opera will open on Nov. 3 and will be conducted by Kazem Abdullah in a newly revised score, which features a layered, jazz-inflected setting. The opera will star baritone Will Liverman, soprano Leah {…}
Credit: Richard Termine As a mopey high schooler, requiems were my thing: Mozart’s, Fauré’s, Verdi’s — it was these that introduced me to choral music on a grand scale, and if not for them, in all likelihood, I wouldn’t have been sitting in the Met auditorium watching Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin lead soloists and the Met Orchestra and Chorus {…}