AllAboutOpera.com

New York City Opera goes 20th century next season

2010-03-11T05:06:00.001-05:00

The New York premieres of Bernstein's "A Quiet Place" and Stephen Schwartz's "Seance on a Wet Afternoon," the world stage premiere of John Zorn's "La Machine de l'etre" and the U.S. stage premiere of Morton Feldman's "Neither" highlight New York City Opera's 2010-11 season.
In its second season since returning to Lincoln Center, City Opera will focus on 20th century American composers as it presents another abbreviated schedule of just five productions.
— Read more at Deseret News

Groundbreaking opera 'Nixon in China' is neglected no longer

2010-03-11T05:00:00.000-05:00

When I was in college, I hated Richard Nixon. Everyone I knew (except perhaps my father) hated Richard Nixon. My perspective was as a politically engaged undergraduate at the University of California Berkeley during the war in Vietnam - holding a low draft number.
I gradually stopped hating Nixon. But it wasn't until Oct. 22, 1987, in the company of bejeweled and Stetson-topped Texans, that I began to understand why. Houston Grand Opera had commissioned John Adams' "Nixon in China" to celebrate the opening of a new opera house.
— Read more at Mark Swed - PopMatters

The Sweet Smell of Success

2010-03-11T04:56:00.001-05:00

Peter Gelb has had mixed results with risk-taking at the Met, but his latest gamble has paid off: The new production of Shostakovich's "The Nose" (1930) is a brilliantly conceived work of art that succeeds on every level. For this company premiere, the South African artist William Kentridge and the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev exploited the Met's formidable resources to create a huge, complex and highly original show that stunningly captured and communicated the opera's anarchic spirit.
— Read more at Heidi Waleson - WSJ.com

Finalists Named for Met's National Council Auditions Grand Finals Concert, 3/14

2010-03-11T04:54:00.000-05:00

The Metropolitan Opera today announced the names of nine finalists who will sing in the 2010 National Council Auditions Grand Finals Concert on March 14 at 3:00 p.m., with the Met Orchestra conducted by Marco Armiliato. The finalists are: Leah Crocetto, soprano from Adrian, Michigan and Oxford, Connecticut; Lori Guilbeau, soprano from Golden Meadow, Louisiana; Rena Harms soprano from Santa Fe, New Mexico; Haeran Hong, soprano from Kang Won, South Korea; Hyo Na Kim, mezzo-soprano from Seoul, South Korea; Maya Lahyani, mezzo-soprano from Hod-HaSharon, Israel; Elliot Madore, Baritone from Toronto, Canada; Nathaniel Peake, tenor from Humble, Texas, and Rachel Willis-Sorensen, soprano from Tri-Cities, Washington.
— Read more at broadwayworld.com

The Royal Opera announces the 2010-11 Season

2010-03-11T04:50:00.000-05:00

The Royal Opera House has announced details of the resident companies' 2010-11 season at Covent Garden. In total, there are eight world premieres, two UK premieres, five new productions and fourteen revivals, as well as a major tour to Japan involving Anna Netrebko in Manon and Angela Gheorghiu in La traviata.
New productions of Wagner's Tannhauser, Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride, Massenet's Cendrillon and Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur provide several of the highlights of the new season, along with the world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage's Anna Nicole.
— Read more at MusicalCriticism.com

Met Radio Broadcast Schedule

2010-03-11T04:20:00.001-05:00

The Met radio broadcast schedule is available at AllAboutOpera.com. Click here for more information.

A very modern opera

2010-03-10T04:58:00.000-05:00

The timing couldn't have been worse. Vancouver Opera made a bold decision to launch a new, lavish production of John Adams's opera Nixon in China. The Canadian premiere would coincide with the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, playing off those global events and taking advantage of an international audience. Such an exciting venture would no doubt attract another opera company to partner in the production, which would provide much-needed help with resources.
— Read more at The Globe and Mail

Fleming shines at Boca Raton's Festival of the Arts

2010-03-10T04:56:00.002-05:00

As perhaps the best-known star in opera today, Renee Fleming could probably coast on her looks, voice and rapport with audiences.
And if ever there was an occasion to just mail in a crowd-pleasing series of arias by Puccini, Bellini and the rest, it was the concert Saturday at Festival of the Arts BOCA, an informal - if expensive - outdoor event at which her voice has to be carried over an amplification system.
— Read more at South Florida Classical Review

REVIEW: Mariinsky Opera's 'War and Peace' at Kennedy Center

2010-03-10T04:55:00.000-05:00

"War and Peace," the opera, arrived at the Kennedy Center freighted with expectations. Terms like "sprawling" and "masterpiece" are often applied to Prokofiev's score, in keeping with its literary model, Tolstoy's novel. Add in the curiosity value of the opera, seldom done in the West until the Mariinsky Opera and Orchestra began taking it on the road. Then there's the buzz surrounding the massive production, weighing in at 30 tons and costing $2 million to import. Saturday night's performance, conducted by Valery Gergiev, had an awful lot to live up to.
— Read more at Anne Midgette - washingtonpost.com

Reality takes it on the chin in 'The Nose'

2010-03-10T04:53:00.001-05:00

Before Stalin tightened his grip, the Russian avant-garde flourished in the 1920s. In a country that saw itself as the vanguard of a new world order, writers, painters, musicians and filmmakers felt free, indeed challenged, to find new expressive voices.
Toward the end of the decade, the 22-year-old Dmitri Shostakovich sounded his barbaric yawp in an absurdist opera called The Nose. Rarely seen since then, The Nose had its Metropolitan Opera premiere Friday night.
— Read more at Scott Cantrell - Dallas Morning News

'Hansel and Gretel' is enchanting

2010-03-10T04:50:00.001-05:00

Sarasota Opera's production of Engelbert Humperdinck's gorgeous 1893 fairy tale opera, "Hansel and Gretel," enjoyed a superb revival on Saturday night, bringing new wit and color to this classic fable of good versus evil. If, in this version, the evil part is not quite as scary as one might like, the good is so good that it matters little.
— Read more at HeraldTribune.com

REVIEW: Emilie, Opera National de Lyon, Lyon, France

2010-03-10T04:50:00.000-05:00

Written for Karita Mattila and premiered in Lyon, the solo-voice opera Emilie opens with the fevered scratch of a pen.
Here is the Marquise du Chatelet, writing late into the night, her swollen belly hidden from society in the Queen of Poland's apartment at Luneville. Physicist, philosopher, linguist and astronomer, author of a dissertation on light, a discourse on happiness and the first translation of Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, she has ordered her papers, fearing imminent death. At the age of 43, after 17 summers of accident-free amorous adventure, "la divine, la sublime Emilie" is about to give birth.
— Read more at The Independent

Subscribe to AllAboutOpera by e-mail

2010-03-10T04:30:00.001-05:00

Now you can get Today's Opera News in your e-mail box every morning. It's a great way to start your opera day!
Click here to subscribe

Full recovery expected for Placido Domingo

2010-03-09T05:06:00.001-05:00

Placido Domingo was discharged Sunday from Mount Sinai Hospital of New York City after successfully undergoing laparoscopic surgery to remove a localized malignant polyp in his colon, his representative Nancy Seltzer announced Monday morning.
The 69-year-old tenor is expected to make a full recovery. He is recuperating in New York.
Per doctor's orders, Domingo will rest for six weeks. His return to performing engagements will depend on how quickly he heals and returns to full strength, Seltzer said.
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

Breath of fresh air

2010-03-09T05:05:00.001-05:00

The Met's new production of "The Nose" should be a hit with everyone except headline writers.
Had the Shostakovich comedy bombed, they'd quip "Met blows nose" or "Don't pick this opera!" But since this sassy, smart show is the highlight of the current opera season, they'll have to settle for something like "Breath of fresh air."
— Read more at James Jorden - NYPOST.com

REVIEW: Tamerlano, Royal Opera House, London

2010-03-09T04:52:00.002-05:00

Whether or not Placido Domingo's presence would have lifted the dynamics of this decidedly flaccid evening one cannot say. It's hard to imagine
him amidst the dispassionate chic of Richard Hudson's whiter than white gallery-like setting with its allusions to suns and moons and the universal orb of power. Indeed it is his character - the Ottoman ruler Sultan Bajazet - that we first see lying prostrate in defeat beneath the said orb. A giant foot bears down on it like a football, symbol of how mere mortals are but playthings of the gods. But Bajazet rises in defiance bearing this entire "universe" on his shoulders. And with four-and-half hours to go, that's just about as dramatic as it gets.
— Read more at The Independent

Jacobs student gets one step closer to Met Opera

2010-03-09T04:52:00.000-05:00

If you asked Laura Wilde in elementary school what she wanted to be when she grew up, she'd probably have told you a lawyer.
Wilde, whose initials spell out `law,' took a different path from courtrooms and case briefs.
— Read more at Indiana Daily Student

REVIEW: 'La boheme,' Met's cash cow, evokes picture-postcard Paris

2010-03-09T04:51:00.000-05:00

For better and for worse, the Metropolitan Opera has been in the headlines a lot since Peter Gelb became general manager four years ago. His initiatives have included live HD transmissions to movie theaters, new repertory and new productions. New directors and designers have been drawn from the worlds of film, architecture and fashion.
(Gelb, by the way, is married to conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson, who was an assistant with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in the mid-1990s.)
— Read more at Scott Cantrell - Dallas Morning News

The singular, vigourless Emilie

2010-03-09T04:50:00.000-05:00

A new work by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, long resident in Paris, is an international event. Her third and latest opera, Emilie, was unveiled last week by the Opera National de Lyon and is soon to be staged at the Netherlands Opera, in Amsterdam, eventually arriving at the Barbican. She has a sort of international style, too.
— Read more at Times Online

Sarasota Opera's 'Hansel and Gretel' isn't just for kids

2010-03-09T04:48:00.001-05:00

Hansel and Gretel is a holiday tradition for families in Europe, not unlike The Nutcracker in the United States. But the Engelbert Humperdinck opera has never really caught on here, so it will be interesting to see how Sarasota Opera fares with its production, which is being billed as family friendly. The company is even offering free babysitting for one performance, making it easier for families and older children to take in the German "fairy tale'' opera.
— Read more at St. Petersburg Times

Picture This: A Nose on the Loose

2010-03-08T05:00:00.001-05:00

It has become commonplace at the Metropolitan Opera for directors and designers of new productions, especially modernist high-concept ones, to be lustily booed by a sizable contingent of the audience during opening-night ovations.
But on Friday night, when the Met introduced its production of Shostakovich's early opera "The Nose" based on the Gogol short story, the South African artist William Kentridge, who directed the production, helped design the sets and created the videos that animate the staging, received the heartiest bravos.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Met premieres Shostakovich's absurdist 'The Nose'

2010-03-08T04:58:00.000-05:00

Dmitri Shostakovich composed his first opera, "The Nose," more than 80 years ago and based it on a short story written nearly a century before that.
Yet few works in the repertory seem more modern or musically challenging than this absurdist masterpiece that came to the Metropolitan Opera for the first time Friday night.
— Read more at Mike Silverman - The Associated Press

Gordon Gietz on His Metropolitan Opera Debut As a Lifesize Nose

2010-03-08T04:55:00.000-05:00

Tonight, young tenor Gordon Gietz makes his Metropolitan Opera debut in William Kentridge's highly anticipated new production of Shostakovich's The Nose, based on the satiric Gogol story about Kovalyov, a civil servant in St. Petersburg who wakes up one day to find that not only is his nose missing, but it has acquired a higher social rank than his own.
— Read more at nymag.com

Renee Fleming stresses hard work and ease of production at Frost master class

2010-03-08T04:54:00.000-05:00

On Friday afternoon four students from the University of Miami Frost School of Music had the dream opportunity to receive coaching from one of the opera world's superstars when Renee Fleming presented a master class at Gusman Concert Hall.
Fleming, who has done similar events at Harvard and Juilliard, was supportive and encouraging toward the young vocalists. "It takes so much courage to get up and do this," she said. "Master classes are hard."
— Read more at South Florida Classical Review

Sarasota Opera's "Cav & Pag" proves a varied bag of verismo

2010-03-08T04:50:00.000-05:00

Even with their enduring popularity, Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci are difficult works to bring off. While complementary in their unbridled vocal demands and tales of violent Sicilian love affairs, the operas are more distinct in their styles and requirements than it seems on the surface, one reason the two works rarely enjoy consistent success together.
— Read more at South Florida Classical Review