AllAboutOpera.com

City Opera's Former Director Tracks the Tumult and Breaks Down the Buzz

2010-03-19T04:58:00.001-04:00

The New York City Opera is never far from the thoughts of Julius Rudel, who was its general director and principal conductor for 22 years, until he stepped aside in 1979, making way for Beverly Sills. I recently met Mr. Rudel, still lively and avuncular at 89, for an interview in his apartment on Central Park West. And the first thing he showed off was his collection of framed sketches of memorable sets from City Opera productions he had conducted. The pictures adorn an entire wall next to his piano.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

CSO maestro-in-waiting Muti conquers New York

2010-03-19T04:57:00.001-04:00

Both the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic were courting Riccardo Muti well before he tied the knot with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In fact the mighty Met tried to nail down the peripatetic Italian maestro for decades, while the philharmonic pitched its music directorship at least twice in recent years. As if to soothe wounded feelings, the CSO's future music director is enjoying a kind of pre-spring fling with his two former suitors before he settles into a permanent relationship in Chicago this fall.
— Read more at John von Rhein - chicagotribune.com

Six of One

2010-03-19T04:56:00.004-04:00

It's understandable that most of the advance publicity for Armida - an opera about a beautiful, bewitching sorceress with legendary powers over men - tends to focus on the title character, a woman capable of diverting armies of Christian crusaders from their true path. Sure enough, months before the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Rossini's opera this spring, Renee Fleming's face as Armida - leaning in to the camera, blue eyes staring straight out, hands holding a fortune-telling ball with little lightning bolts emanating from it - could be seen on posters plastered around Lincoln Center.
— Read more at Opera News

Washington National Opera marks 75th anniversary of 'Porgy and Bess'

2010-03-19T04:56:00.000-04:00

When George Gershwin sat down to compose "Porgy and Bess" based on DuBose Heyward's book about a segment of the population that polite society ignored, did he sense that it was destined to achieve international success and popularity?
The soaring score and heart-wrenching story captivated both classical and popular audiences from the outset, but four decades passed before the Houston Grand Opera Production of 1976 decisively established it as a legitimate opera.
— Read more at Washington Examiner

Wacky opera of a lost nose

2010-03-19T04:50:00.000-04:00

Some Philadelphia operagoers have an all-too-sensible golden rule: Never buy tickets for something whose duration is shorter than the travel time required to get to it. By that standard (and many others) the new Metropolitan Opera production of Shostakovich's The Nose is a borderline case at 110 minutes, if not a borderline personality in its satirical story of a petty bureaucrat who wakes up one day without his nose.
The whole package - conductor Valery Gergiev, a production full of computer animation by South African artist William Kentridge, and a star performance by South Pacific alumnus Paulo Szot - has added up to the unlikely artistic success of the Met season and something rare in the big-budget opera world: an intellectual event. How can you not ponder the meaning of a renegade singing nose?
— Read more at David Patrick Stearns - Philadelphia Inquirer

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2010-03-19T04:30:00.001-04:00

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Met Radio Broadcast Schedule

2010-03-19T04:20:00.000-04:00

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Singer's Busy Day: 'Hamlet' and 'South Pacific'

2010-03-18T05:28:00.002-04:00

Plantation owner by day; regal ghost by night. It's not a pitch for a bizarre comic-book hero - it's the Saturday schedule for David Pittsinger, who may need some super-powered vocal cords to pull it off.
On Saturday afternoon Mr. Pittsinger will perform his regular gig as Emile de Becque in the Lincoln Center Theater revival of "South Pacific." Then that night he will travel about 30 feet from the Vivian Beaumont Theater to his dressing room at the Metropolitan Opera, where he will sing the role of the ghost of Hamlet's father in "Hamlet." (The understudy, William Michals, will play Emile in the Saturday evening show.)
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Hamlet comes to the Met

2010-03-18T04:58:00.000-04:00

I first reviewed "Hamlet," the opera, in Geneva in 1996 for Opera News, with Simon Keenlyside in the title role, Louis Langree in the pit, and a production by Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser in which unnecessarily peripatetic, deliberately shabby set flats by Christian Fenouillat rolled around in a range of attempts to divide up the black void of the stage. Last night, I had the strange time-warp experience of seeing the same production, with Simon Keenlyside in the title role and Louis Langree in the pit, except that this time, it was at the Metropolitan Opera. If Natalie Dessay, who sang the role of Ophelia in Geneva and was scheduled to sing it at the Met, hadn't canceled, I would have almost forgotten where I was.
— Read more at Anne Midgette - washingtonpost.com

REVIEW: This Prince: What a Piece of Work

2010-03-18T04:52:00.001-04:00

The Metropolitan Opera under general manager Peter Gelb is defining itself through the choice and quality, however debatable, of its ambitious new productions. Yet bringing successful existing productions of overlooked works to the Met is just as important to the company's artistic mission, not to mention a safer bet. And few operas have been as overlooked as Ambroise Thomas's "Hamlet."
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Merola Opera Grads snag 3 wins at Met National Auditions

2010-03-18T04:50:00.000-04:00

Sure, the The San Francisco Opera Merola program owns a stellar reputation as a training ground that kicks out the most promising opera singers around.
But this weekend, when singers performed and competed in the prestigious and uber-competitive Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, three of the five winning spots were awarded to Merola grads.
— Read more at sacbee.com

Lyric Opera brings fresh 'Ariadne' to Shubert

2010-03-17T04:58:00.002-04:00

Boston Lyric Opera has committed itself these days to mounting more of its own productions. But when it chooses to import a staging, Esther Nelson, the company's general and artistic director, has said she will be looking not only to American houses but also their European counterparts. BLO is currently making good on her promise with a delightful new production of Strauss's "Ariadne auf Naxos,'' shipped over from Welsh National Opera. Conceived by the Australian director Neil Armfield, it's been revived here by Denni Sayers, and opened Friday night at the Shubert Theatre, conducted by Erik Nielsen.
— Read more at Jeremy Eichler - The Boston Globe

San Diego Opera offers ravishing 'Romeo and Juliet'

2010-03-17T04:56:00.002-04:00

San Diego Opera's splendid production of Charles Gounod's ravishing "Romeo and Juliet" makes one wonder why this opera is not performed more often.
Based on Shakespeare's play, and sometimes even quoting his text, it was Gounod's major success after "Faust," which had been so universally acclaimed that his next four operas languished in its shadow. Not so "Romeo and Juliet."
— Read more at sdnn.com

Annapolis Opera offers high-energy production of Puccini's 'Tosca'

2010-03-17T04:54:00.001-04:00

Annapolis Opera's 37th season featured a production of Puccini's "Tosca" over the weekend that reconfirmed several things:
There will always be a valuable place for regional opera companies and the live-performance experiences they offer their communities; there are young singers around today capable of giving credible portrayals of challenging roles; economical sets that could be blown over by a good breeze can do the atmospheric job well enough (Arne Lindquist was the designer here); and in an age of stage director supremacy and theatrical concept-run-amok-ness, there's still something to be said for thoroughly traditional approaches (Braxton Peters directed).
— Read more at Tim Smith - The Baltimore Sun

Royal Opera in London to Stage 'Anna Nicole'

2010-03-17T04:50:00.001-04:00

According to the BBC, the Royal Opera House in London plans to stage the world premiere of "Anna Nicole," based on the life of the former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith, right, who went from impoverished Texas waitress to oil tycoon's widow to reality television celebrity. The new work is from the composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and the writer Richard Thomas, a creator of "Jerry Springer: The Opera."
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Nixon in Vancouver: a triumphant visit

2010-03-17T04:50:00.000-04:00

At the end of the last act of John Adams's opera Nixon in China, the character Chou En-lai asks: "How much of what we did was good?" We may not be able to answer that question as it refers to the political events in the opera. But ask it of this particular production of Nixon in China, by Vancouver Opera, and it's easily answered. What you did was good, very good indeed.
— Read more at The Globe and Mail

The excellence of bad opera

2010-03-16T04:59:00.000-04:00

I made pretty clear in my glut of Mariinsky reviews that the troupe's Kennedy Center residency left me disappointed. One felt it could have been so much better.
People I talked to and heard from about the Mariinsky in the past couple of weeks, both in the music business and outside it, both in Washington and New York (where Gergiev led a slightly flabby "The Nose" at the Met and then brought the Mariinsky to Carnegie Hall for a two-night concert performance of "Les Troyens") were sharply divided.
— Read more at Anne Midgette - washingtonpost.com

A Chance to Listen to the Future at the Met

2010-03-16T04:57:00.001-04:00

The Grand Finals Concert of the Metropolitan Opera's National Council Auditions, the most prestigious voice competition in North America, has drawn the attention of company managers, artist representatives and opera insiders for more than 50 years. For the voice buffs in the audience, it is always fascinating to hear the young finalists and try to sort out, along with the panel of judges, who among them will be the stars of tomorrow.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Barber's 1966 opera flop now 2010's hot ticket

2010-03-16T04:54:00.000-04:00

If there's one reason why Samuel Barber should have lived to be 100, it's the upside-down irony that his monumental New York flop is Philadelphia's hottest opera ticket.
Born a century ago in West Chester, Barber is being performed far and wide, though the most closely watched event is Curtis Opera Theatre's production of his Antony and Cleopatra - the composer's most ambitious score but a devastating failure at its 1966 Metropolitan Opera premiere. Nonetheless, Curtis' run of three performances, starting Wednesday at the Kimmel Center's Perelman Theater, has been sold out since July.
— Read more at David Patrick Stearns - Philadelphia Inquirer

Vancouver Opera's 'Nixon in China' a brilliant Canadian premiere

2010-03-16T04:53:00.000-04:00

With a bit of help from the Cultural Olympiad, Vancouver Opera offered the first of four performances of John Adams's 1987 opera Nixon in China at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre Saturday. The demanding work's very first Canadian production is a brilliantly effective one.
— Read more at vancouversun.com

Pittsburgh Opera returns 'Carmen' to original form

2010-03-16T04:50:00.000-04:00

Quality isn't always recognized immediately. But few works of art have had so rapid a change in esteem as "Carmen" by Georges Bizet.
"Carmen" was a flop at its premiere in Paris in March 1875. Seven months later, it was a hit in Vienna and has remained one of the most popular operas ever since.
Pittsburgh Opera will present four performances of "Carmen" starting Saturday night at the Benedum Center, Downtown. The production will present "Carmen" in its original form as an opera comique, a work with spoken dialogue between musical numbers.
— Read more at Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Profile: Anna Nicole Smith

2010-03-16T04:40:00.000-04:00

[The sensational life of the curvaceous Texan waitress, oil heiress and Playboy model may well be tailor-made for the operatic stage, says William Langley.]
When Anna Nicole Smith died three years ago, Entertainment Tonight, the wildly popular American television programme that had bought the broadcast rights to her funeral, boasted that the occasion would "make the Oscars look like a barn dance". Ms Smith's two most recent boyfriends, lawyer Howard Stern and celebrity journalist Larry Birkhead, eyeballed each other menacingly across the nave, while Anna's mother, Virgie, arrived to raucous boos from the crowd.
— Read more at telegraph.co.uk

In Defense of the Singing Hamlet

2010-03-15T04:58:00.000-04:00

AMBROISE THOMAS'S "Hamlet" returns to the Metropolitan Opera on Tuesday night, no doubt to be furiously denounced once again as a travesty of Shakespeare's tragedy. Composed in 1868 as a five-act French grand opera with all the trimmings and not seen at the Met since 1897, "Hamlet" invariably seems to get bad press, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries. "Pretentious and wearisome," summed up a critic for The New York Times after the Met premiere in 1884.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Antonio Pappano raises the roof

2010-03-15T04:56:00.000-04:00

Antonio Pappano doesn't have the airs of most international maestros. Ten days ago, I flew with him and the Royal Opera House's orchestra on an early-morning charter flight from Gatwick to Vienna, where they were making their debut at the Konzert-haus in a programme of Wagner, Liszt and Bartok. Pappano had left his home in north London at 5am for the 7.30am check-in, and, though looking as bleary-eyed as the rest of us, he chatted cheerily with the players before taking his place in the front row of the all "roach class" plane.
— Read more at Times Online

Playwright Terrence McNally's love of opera takes center stage at Kennedy Center

2010-03-15T04:54:00.000-04:00

From his aisle seat in the Kennedy Center, dressed in a comfy sweater and corduroy slacks, Terrence McNally is gazing serenely at the Opera House stage.
The production he's immersed in is a Russian company's concert version of the Tchaikovsky opera "Eugene Onegin," and though he seems thoroughly engrossed, the serious fan in him can't resist breaking the spell with some running color commentary.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com