Today's Opera News -- Metropolitan Opera Schedule -- AllAboutOpera.com

BRADFORD, Pa. - Opera star Marilyn Horne will return to her hometown to receive an honorary degree from the University of Pittsburgh-Bradford. The 70-year-old diva was born and raised in Bradford and on Friday will become the first person to receive an honorary degree from the satellite campus.
— Read more at mercurynews.com

OPERA doesn't always get a good press. Far too often, the word appears in the same sentence as elitist. Yet opera audiences are, in many places, as high as they've ever been, theatres often selling out months in advance of a visit by one company or another.
Even so, some people are put off by opera, feeling it is somehow beyond them - that it's all too grand and unreachable.
— Read more at ic Liverpool

THE IDEA OF programming an opera with only one solitary cast member to open Scottish Opera's new season might seem a convenient metaphor for the company's current financial situation.
But for those keen to savour a unique operatic experience, no matter what scale it's on, next week's double bill - which combines Arnold Schooner's mind-bending monologue Aerating with Artworks' gruesome Duke Bluebeard's Castle - is a tantalising theatrical cocktail, and a commendably daring move by the company. So don't expect rousing choruses, boisterous crowd scenes or shouts of "hurrah". This is the grim side of opera, horror stories real or imagined; where the psychological is more prominent than the reality; where questions remain unanswered; where there is no room for mindless elaboration, musical or otherwise; where the mind is the protagonist.
— Read more at Scotsman.com

JONATHAN Miller has returned to supervise his durable 1995 production of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte in its fourth revival. The original Armani fashion costumes are long gone, and the cast negotiate Miller's own-designed minimalist set in smart modern suits and comfortable slacks. Further updatings include the replacement of the production's ubiquitous mobiles with the latest camera-phones.
— Read more at Scotsman.com

LONDON -- An offstage melodrama dividing two of Europe's leading opera houses has arisen from a dispute over the scenery in Giuseppe Verdi's tale of doomed love, "La Forza del Destino."
— Read more at fortwayne.com

HIGH POINT -- I visited Anthony Dean Griffey at his home in one of High Point's newer neighborhoods. From the outside, it appears as just another house on the block, sturdy with essentially the same architectural features as the houses around it. Griffey met me at the door, greeting me with a smile and the offer of tea as he led the way into another world, a living room as comfortable as it was elegant.
— Read more at goTriad.com

A satirical opera about Italy's controversial prime minister and television magnate, Silvio Berlusconi, has opened in Venice. Mr Minestrone, shortened to Mr Me, is a comic opera about an egomaniac tycoon-politician - a thinly-veiled Mr Berlusconi. In the opera, Mr Me dreams he is being attacked by several comic-strip heroes, including Superman and Tintin.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

It was a long-ago city room story that several New York Herald Tribune veterans shared last month with a reporter from their old rival, The New York Times: the night 44 years ago when Leonard Warren died onstage at the Metropolitan Opera House and their colleague Sanche de Gramont rushed from a bar stool into an assignment that earned him a Pulitzer Prize.
— Read more at The New York Times

WASHINGTON-- Those who like a melody or two in their operas will want to skip "Billy Budd." Singable tunes are in short supply in Benjamin Britten's setting of Herman Melville's morality play. This is unfortunate, since the 19th-century tale of good and evil on the high seas lies becalmed a good deal of the time. Without beautiful music to sweep the audience along, the opera becomes fairly tedious.
— Read more at Fredericksburg.com

TORONTO - A disturbing rape and the explosive destruction of the White House are among the scenes audiences will see Thursday as the Canadian Opera Company raises the curtain on its new season with an acclaimed adaptation of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.
— Read more at CBC News

The Marschallin sings that in life we should hold things lightly and let them go. Some parts of the first act were not quite held lightly and thus did not go but the second was invigorating and wonderfully grotesque while the third moved from nightmare to dream so smoothly one scarcely noticed having been in the theatre 4 hours. As Baron Ochs sings in his favourite waltz, "no night is too long, with me".
— Read more at smh.com.au

IN A programme of arias, orchestral overtures and informative chat from pianist Ian Burnside, it was the quality on display that marked this as a gala worth the ticket price. Opening with the overture to Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades, the Scottish Opera Orchestra (virtually the sole survivors of the stringent down-sizing of the company) provided a glittering prelude to an evening full of highlights.
— Read more at Scotsman.com

They sure do not make things anymore like the Texas lightbulb that sold for a few cents and has burned for 96 straight years. The North Fort Worth Historical Society held a birthday party on Tuesday for its famous household fixture â?? a lightbulb that has burned continuously since September 21, 1908. The bulb was first illuminated at a local opera house with a sign posted that the light over the stage entrance was not to be turned off.
— Read more at HindustanTimes.com

Among many other things, the opening night of a new Metropolitan Opera season is a time for people-watching. And so it was on Monday for the gala performance of Verdi's "Otello," starring the tenor Ben Heppner in the title role, with James Levine conducting. Patrons in elegant evening gowns and tuxedos lingered on the grand stairway to watch as other patrons in elegant evening gowns and tuxedos kept streaming through.

Still, as curtain time approached, the buzz in the house was about one overriding question: what is the state of Mr. Heppner's voice? For ardent opera buffs as well as for the Met, a lot is at stake here.
— Read more at The New York Times

The juxtaposition of Arthur Miller's play "A View From the Bridge" with William Bolcom's operatic treatment in concurrent local productions provides an uncommon opportunity to experience the differences between purely verbal and musical storytelling. Opera Theater of Pittsburgh's compelling performance is directed by Jonathan Eaton, who became the company's general and artistic director in July.
— Read more at PittsburghLIVE.com

It's not as if there wasn't enough drama planned for Saturday night's opening of Lyric Opera's new season at the Civic Opera House.
The evening was to offer a new production of "Don Giovanni," the Mozart perennial that introduced Lyric Opera to Chicago 50 years ago. The stellar cast opening Lyric's Golden Jubilee season was headed by Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel and included the vibrant American mezzo-soprano Susan Graham in her first appearance anywhere as Donna Elvira. Distinguished conductor Christoph Eschenbach was presiding over his first staged opera in Chicago, a city that knows him well in orchestral repertoire from his years as music director of the Ravinia Festival in the 1990s. And the production was the first created for an American opera company by noted German stage director Peter Stein.
— Read more at suntimes.com

And who said those genteel Victorians had trouble expressing their emotions? The decorously costumed creatures in "The Woman in White," the much-anticipated new musical from Andrew Lloyd Webber, certainly do not. No sooner do they tumble into love -- as three of them manage within the first 10 minutes of this swoony, flattening adaptation of Wilkie Collins's classic suspense novel -- than crashing, purple waves of song gush from their mouths.
— Read more at The New York Times

Adieu, adios, arrivederci, wiedersehen, goodbye was the message the Opera House interns sent the audience at last Thursday night's benefit cabaret performance. This was the interns' farewell performance after appearing in three summer musicals. The talented group of youngsters danced, sang and kibitzed their way into the audiencesâ?? heart. From the opening musical number, "Another Op'nin; Another Show," to the final number "I Want to Be Happy," from "No, No, Nanette," these actors, singers and dancers held the audience in the palm of their hands. What made the show more poignant was it could be one of the last Opera House shows produced by managing director Marty Van Kleeck. Neither the interns or the audience were aware of her intent to resign as director. Van Kleeck has been managing director eight years and has been with the Opera House about 27 years.
— Read more at hcnews.com

REVIEW: "You can get away with anything," sings Michael Crawford's Count Fosco in The Woman in White. But, although musicals get away with murder, not even Andrew Lloyd Webber's best score in years and Trevor Nunn's visually vibrant production can disguise the fact that this show is saddled with an impossible book.
— Read more at Guardian Unlimited

Orchestras, Opera Companies, And Choral Groups Say Their Audiences Are Getting Younger. The Numbers Show They're Right, But How Young Is Another Matter When's the last time you went to the symphony or caught an opera? Booked an evening with a local choir, or bought tickets to see that hot Czech string quartet? If you're between the ages of 18 and 35, those dates could be more recent than your grey- and blue-haired elders might think. And more frequent, too. The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver Opera, and other purveyors of what's commonly known as classical music say that the past few years have seen an upswing in the number of youthful concertgoers.
— Read more at Straight.com

The San Francisco Opera eased gently into its 82nd season Friday night with a blandly unruffled solo concert by soprano Renee Fleming at the War Memorial Opera House. After two invigorating and controversial seasons under General Director Pamela Rosenberg, someone must have decided that this wasn't the time for any new shocks to the system.
— Read more at sfgate.com

WITH TENOR Placido Domingo as the Los Angeles Opera's general director, works suited to his talents will naturally figure prominently in its schedule. But Domingo is 63 and cannot comfortably sing many roles now. Signature parts like Othello are out, and commissioning new material for him hasn't gone well.
— Read more at u.sbsun.com

The Opera Company of North Carolina is expanding its offerings for the 2004-2005 Season to include a two full opera productions and a gala concert with one of opera's most celebrated mezzo-sopranos. Season subscriptions are on sale now. Susanne Mentzer appears in concert for the opera company in November, to be followed in April by Franz Lehar's The Merry Widow. In June, OCNC presents Giacomo Puccini's Tosca. All performances will be held at the BTI Center for the Performing Arts in Raleigh.
— Read more at biz.yahoo.com

She's just returned from a couple of days at Franco Zeffirelli's holiday home in Positano with Joan Plowright. She is tanned and radiant, and offers a rotten banana from her jacket pocket by way of explaining how she manages what she manages. Producing Andrew Lloyd Webber's show [The Woman in White] when she has never produced a musical before. Preparing to go into rehearsal with Holly Hunter the day after The Woman in White opens. Securing Kim Cattrall for the production that follows the Hunter play.
— Read more at Times Online

Marion Amy (Standahl) Babb was a Renaissance woman -- a sociable Scandinavian who sang at Carnegie Hall, covered Seattle businesses as a journalist, traveled the world and meticulously tended to the petunias and geraniums in the garden of her Mount Baker-area home.
— Read more at The Seattle Times

THE CALL CAME THROUGH MY AGENT. The producer Sonia Friedman was eager for me to meet Andrew Lloyd Webber to discuss a musical version of Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White. I thought: "Will I really have to read another Penguin Classic?" Since completing my English degree I have had an aversion to anything longer than 400 pages that comes with an introduction. So it was with some trepidation that I came to read the novel two days before I was to meet Andrew.

I needn't have worried. An international bestseller at the time of publication in 1860, it still makes a thrilling and breathless read. It works as a murder mystery, a psychological thriller, a detective novel and a domestic love story. I told Andrew: "You know, I've no idea how to write the book to a musical." He said not to worry. When he, Don Black and Christopher Hampton were writing Sunset Boulevard he had three houses in the South of France; each collaborator had a house to himself and they would meet up for lunch. I thought, "That doesn't sound too bad."
— Read more at Scotsman.com

When Placido Domingo was honored by opera fans here not long ago, there was at least one surprise at the podium: Garry Marshall. Marshall, the director of films like "Pretty Woman," got up and in his signature Bronx twang talked about how shocked he was to be honoring the virtuoso tenor. "I am amazed," Marshall said, "that this man made it to the top of the musical field without ever singing the song 'Feelings.'"
— Read more at iht.com

Camilla Parker Bowles was 'The Woman In White tonight at the premiere of Andrew Lloyd Webberâ??s new musical. She joined the Prince of Wales for the royal gala performance of the $4 million adaptation of Wilkie Collins' Victorian thriller starring Michael Crawford.
— Read more at Scotsman.com

Linger outside the Palace Theatre, in the heart of London's West End, and you can catch a glimpse of Andrew Lloyd Webber's new musical, The Woman in White, on an eye-teasing billboard: as a spectral mist drifts across a wintry landscape, a ghostly shade appears, only to fade away again as you move past. Having refurbished this ornate Victorian theatre specially for the show, Britain's multimillionaire composer must be hoping that his latest effort will hang around longer than the shadowy vision that advertises it.
— Read more at Times Online

New York City is the center of the universe for many professions. Banking, jewelry, art and theatre are just of few of the fields where professionals will find themselves looking to the Big Apple to find out what is going on. In the world of classical music New York is the heartbeat that sends the industryâ??s lifeblood to the rest of the country. Simply put, if you can make there, you can make it anywhere.
— Read more at The Mountain Times Online

The New York City Opera opened its season on Wednesday night at the New York State Theater, and made big news in the city's cultural life, with a new production of Strauss' seldom heard late opera "Daphne," highlighted by a winning portrayal of the daunting title role by the vibrant coloratura soprano Elizabeth Futral. George Manahan conducted a surely paced and essentially well-played account of this sweeping, radiant and difficult score, written in a single act of 90 minutes.
— Read more at The New York Times

A TV documentary is to suggest that the musical works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were influenced by the compulsive, obsessive disorder Tourette's syndrome. The claims are made by British composer James McConnel, who himself has the condition, which can lead to uncontrollable swearing or twitching
— Read more at Scotsman.com

For the composer of colossal musical hits like "Cats" and "The Phantom of the Opera," any lesser success risks being construed as failure. After Andrew Lloyd Webber's last two shows fared poorly here, some London theater critics proclaimed that he had lost his touch. Now, as he prepares to open a new musical, "The Woman in White," based on Wilkie Collins's mid-19th-century "sensation novel," he has a chance to prove them wrong.
— Read more at IHT.com

When Todd G. Patkin heard about professional opera singer Andrea DelGiudice's struggles to keep a youth opera outreach program running in Brockton, he called her to offer condolences. Then he wrote the total stranger a check for $175,000.
— Read more at Boston.com

Puccini's Madama Butterfly tackled interracial love and U.S. imperialism in Asia; Verdi's La Traviata put a tubercular prostitute centre stage.
Odd to think that opera has a stuffy reputation.
A new batch of contemporary operas -- from rappers rhyming about Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to an experimental musical about Microsoft boss Bill Gates -- sets out to change that image.
— Read more at The Globe and Mail

Michael Webb knows what he wants to be when he grows up -- an opera singer.
That's why he quit his job last fall working in a restaurant kitchen to get a job as a waiter at another location. He wanted wait staff experience so that he could get a job at Macaroni Grill, known for its opera singing wait staff.
— Read more at acadiananow.com

As part of a new advertising campaign, designed to expand its reach and broaden its audience, Opera Roanoke will offer free live performances in the downtown market area.
Although the concept is new to the Roanoke area, street performances of this nature have been a longstanding tradition in places such as Italy, the birthplace of opera. Today, New York City's world-famous Metropolitan Opera offers similar outdoor performances to audiences in Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and New Jersey.
— Read more at prweb.com

You might say conductor Steven Mercurio is a creature of two artistic identities. The first has taken him to the intriguing periphery of opera -- works such as Erich Wolfgang Korngold's "Die Todt Stadt," Andre Previn's "A Streetcar Named Desire" and perhaps oddest of all, "La Cavalieri di Ekebi."
— Read more at louisvillescene.com

No voice coach is needed for Pittsburgh Opera's open auditions later this month. The company is looking for supernumeraries: the extra people onstage in costume during operas who neither sing nor speak but are essential for setting the scene.
The volunteer positions are open to anyone age 18 and older. Rehearsals are evenings and weekends.
— Read more at PittsburghLIVE.com

It is a drama of undying love, fiery passion, tragic deceit and finally, ultimate sacrifice.
If you think it sounds like a tagline for a soap opera, you would be halfway right. While the plot elements do resemble those of a soap opera, the Austin Lyric Opera's production of "Tosca" is an opera of a different sort - with none of the bad lighting and trite music that accompany the television variety.
— Read more at The Daily Texan

When Placido Domingo was honored by opera fans here not long ago, there was at least one surprise at the podium: Garry Marshall. Mr. Marshall, the director of films like "Pretty Woman," got up and in his signature Bronx twang talked about how shocked he was to be honoring the virtuoso tenor.
— Read more at The New York Times

Josh Groban is one of the strangest spectacles in popular music today - basically a young opera singer who somehow managed to land on VH1 and introduce us to the concept of classical pop, en route to selling more than 10 million records.
Every time I hear "My Confession" I imagine Celine Dion reincarnated as a dashingly handsome 23-year-old male.
— Read more at Tribnet.com

Opera composers and opera producers don't always see eye-to-eye, but over at the Detroit Opera House, the principals of a drama as thrilling as any real-life potboiler have bonded like expectant fathers in a maternity ward.
The Michigan Opera Theatre is giving birth to "Margaret Garner," a new American opera based on a fugitive slave story, that features some of the top names in the business.
— Read more at freep.com

The hottest opera event of 2004 is on its way! The Genesis Energy Spring Season of Bizet's Carmen is set to burst onto the stages of Wellington and Auckland this September-October in a sizzling new production from The NBR New Zealand Opera. An international opera cast and creative team bring together the spirit of Spain with all the passion, spectacle and famous melodies that have made Carmen one of the world's favourite operas.
— Read more at scoop.co.nz