“Opera Meets Film” is a feature dedicated to exploring the way that opera has been employed in cinema. We will select a section or a film in its entirety, highlighting the impact that utilizing the operatic form or sections from an opera can alter our perception of a film that we are viewing. This week’s installment features a look at {…}
We are going to switch things up this week with a new format to the puzzle. In lieu of our usual, complete the name, we are going to ask you to find the last name of the artist referenced in the clue. So get out your history books and brush up on your “Ariadne auf Naxos” interpreters because this puzzle {…}
Dell’Arte Opera Ensemble is set to present excerpts for Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos” at Isham Park in Inwood, New York City. The showcase, which kicks off on Oct. 9, 2021 at 3 p.m., will star Priscilla Salisbury as Zerbinetta and Minica Niemi as The Prima Donna and Ariadne. Other cast members include James Danner as The Dance Captain, Olivia Ottinger {…}
The Metropolitan Opera has announced the 69th straight week of streams. Per a press release, this week’s streams, which will be dedicated to the operas of Richard Strauss, will include several first-time broadcasts. Here is a breakdown of the schedule. Week 69 – Strauss Week Monday, July 5 – Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier” Starring Kiri Te Kanawa, Tatiana Troyanos, Judith Blegen, Luciano Pavarotti, Derek Hammond-Stroud, and Kurt {…}
“Page to Opera Stage” looks at stories – real-life or fiction, old and new – that have inspired operas, and the ways these narratives have been edited and dramatized to fit a new medium. This week, we look at a theatrical work adapted for opera: Oscar Wilde’s often-banned “Salome” and Richard Strauss’ no-less-controversial operatic reworking. Over the past few weeks, {…}
(Credits: © Aymeric Giraudel / Seattle Symphony official website) Mezzo-sopranos Karine Deshayes and Delphine Haidan will give a recital at Opéra de Vichy on Feb. 19, 2021. The program for the concert includes the works by Adolpha Le Beau, Brahms, Strauss, Gounod, Delibes, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, and Rossini. Due to the French government’s COVID-19 regulations, the concert will be held without {…}
With an election coming upon the U.S. and the world in general focusing on their nations’ leaders in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, we turn to a topic that we believe is at the core of opera: politics. On a very personal note, it’s been rather surprising to hear many comments about how opera and politics should not be “mixed {…}
(Credit: Natalia Sedinta) Moldovan soprano Natalia Tanasii was only 21 when she made her professional stage debut as Countess Almaviva (“Le nozze di Figaro”) at the Moldovan National Opera. Her unforgettable Salzburg Festival debut followed in Krzysztof Warlikowski’s staging of “Elektra” this year. In an interview with OperaWire, Ms. Tanasii discussed her career moves, repertoire choices, and her preparation process {…}
(Credit: Ray Burmiston) “One voice in a million.” This is the kind of phrase on which legacies, mythologies, histories are built. And it’s the phrase that continues to crop up whenever Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen enters the operatic conversation. The soprano has definitely played her part in bringing about this idea that her voice is of a unique power. She {…}
(Credit: Julia Wesely) After a performance of “Elektra” on August 17, 2020, conductor Franz Welser-Möst was awarded with the Ruby Festival Brooch at the Salzburg Festival. The award was presented to the conductor on his 60th birthday by Salzburg Festival President Helga Rabl-Stadler. Welser-Möst made his debut with the Festival back on August 29, 1985 in a concert featuring works by {…}
(Credit: Salzburg Festival / Bernd Uhlig) Entering the dark Felsenreitschule hall of the Salzburg Festival, carved into the rock of a mountain, you feel uncomfortably crammed inside the mountain – in a terribly unfamiliar space that hides something in the distance of the stage. So far you can’t see or hear anything but in the air, you feel uncertainty, tension, {…}