Washington National Opera celebrates the return of the 12th year of the free opera broadcasts at Nationals Park with Opera in the Outfield on August 28. Hosted by General Director Timothy O’Leary and WNO Artistic Director Francesca Zambello, the event will feature an outdoor broadcast of Rossini’s “Cinderella” on the high-definition Nationals Park scoreboard. The event, which begins at 5 {…}
The Washington National Opera has announced its 2021–2022 season featuring four world premiere commissions celebrating the Kennedy Center’s 50th Anniversary and several debuts from acclaimed and rising opera stars. The season opens with “Come Home: A Celebration of Return,” a concert performance of opera excerpts highlighting liberty and artistic idealism, themes embraced by John F. Kennedy and featuring a musical tribute {…}
The Washington National Opera is set to present the ninth season of its acclaimed American Opera Initiative. The upcoming season will present three world premieres on the Kennedy Center’s streaming platform, Digital Stage+ on Saturday, May 1. the performance will be directed by Amanda Consol and will feature works by librettist-composer teams Laura Fuentes and Ben Morris, Rebecca Hart and {…}
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has announced that it has canceled all previously scheduled programs through April 25, 2021, due to the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Center also announced that the Washington National Opera’s spring productions and much of the late spring and early summer touring theater programs have been canceled. As a {…}
(Credit: Jason Daniel Shaw) The Teatro Massimo di Palermo has announced that the recital of Italian soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci scheduled for Nov. 15, 2020 has been redesigned due to the ongoing concerns over COVID-19. The new program will include Tosti’s “Quattro canzoni d’Amaranta,” Ottorino Respighi’s “Liriche,” “Venezia” by Reynaldo Hahn, and Francis Poulenc’s “La voix humaine.” Donald Sulzen will {…}
The Kennedy Center has announced a revised 2020-21 season for the Washington National Opera. In a press release the WNO, led by Artistic Director Francesca Zambello and General Director Timothy O’Leary, announced plans for its season beginning fall 2020. The new 2020-21 will include an innovative mix of virtual performances and small-scale live performances, culminating in May and July with {…}
On Thursday, July 9, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced the continuation and expansion of long-term Social Impact initiatives leveraging the arts for non-arts outcomes. Under the leadership of Vice President and Artistic Director of Social Impact, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and the Social Impact team, the Kennedy Center is harnassing the momentum it has built across {…}
“I am Khumn!” These were the first words ever spoken on stage by baritone Michael Hewitt. The phrase is one you might expect from the Narrator in “Akhnaten” but not in a fifth-grade educational history play about ancient Egypt. According to Hewitt, his entrance was dramatic and well-received. He recounted striding to center stage, dressed from head-to-toe in black and shrouded in dense fog. {…}
The Washington National Opera has released a virtual performance of “The Humming Chorus” from Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” The choral passage was performed by members of the Washington National Opera Orchestra and the Chorus and Cafritz Young Artists. The showcase is led by Evan Rogister, principal conductor of the Washington National Opera and depicts the “hopeful emotional state of Butterfly holding {…}
The recording of “Pepito,” a comedic opera in one act with music by Nicolas Lell Benavides and libretto by Marella Martin Koch, is set to release on May 1, 2020 and it is an amusing, quick-hit of delightful opera worth a listen. This compact, 20-minute chamber opera tells the story of Pepito, a shelter dog meeting a husband and wife who {…}
(Credit: Gerard Collett) On the eastern side of the Cape of Good Hope, at the very tip of South Africa, sits Port Elizabeth, a city with a population just shy of one million people. The population size matters because it makes soprano Vuvu Mpofu one in a million, a ratio perhaps not unlike the shot she had at making it {…}
