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

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Tchaikovsky's 'Eugene Onegin' is a story of strong emotion accommodating itself, painfully but with resigned acceptance, to external reality. Dreams of romantic love prove untenable, or merely mistimed; passionate friendship is fatally betrayed in a thoughtless instant.
— Read more at sfgate.com

At first thought, Fanny Ardant would seem all wrong to play opera diva Maria Callas. The French star ("Ridicule," "Eight Women") conveys thoughtful intelligence and quiet elegance, while the ethnic-Greek Callas is remembered as the epitome of fiery temperament.

But in Franco Zeffirelli's "Callas Forever," Ardant definitely pulls it off. The film, which was released in Europe more than two years ago, is fairly forgettable but Ardant blends into the sad character so completely that we lose all sense of an actress playing a role.
— Read more at nwsource.com

The Wales Millennium Centre has become the latest addition to the nation's drive to raise its worldwide profile. With a 106m price tag it is Wales' first dedicated national venue for opera and the arts. But the road to the lavish opening ceremony in Cardiff Bay was strewn with political and financial obstacles.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

Cincinnati Opera trustees revised their organizational structure and announced advancements in the search for an artistic director Tuesday. Trustees also announced that Patricia K. Beggs has been named general director and CEO, reporting to Cincinnati Opera President Harry Fath and the board.
— Read more at The Cincinnati Post

A FUNDRAISING concert for Scottish Opera was cut short last night when a number of instruments were stolen from an Edinburgh venue minutes before the performance was due to begin. The theft from St Andrew's and St George's Church, on George Street, occurred at some point between 7pm and 7:30pm, and forced the cancellation of the second part of the performance by the orchestra of Scottish Opera.
— Read more at Scotsman.com

If the holidays are about rebirth and redemption, The Spitfire Grill by James Valcq and Fred Alley is the perfect show for the season. Making its regional debut at Stages Theatre, this musical is based on the 1996 independent film by Lee David Zlotoff and it offers a captivating vision of the America we want to believe in, but can't always find... Spitfire is directed by internationally-known opera director Brad Dalton. "I wanted to direct this musical even before I finished listening to the CD," commented Dalton, who is making his Houston directorial debut with Spitfire. "This show is perfect for Christmas. It has a beautiful message, and the music is spare, honest, and intimate; the country and folk flavor is warm and consistently involving -- perfect for Houston audiences."
— Read more at Theatreport.com

Opera singer Sir Willard White will today receive his knighthood from the Queen at Buckingham Palace. The 58-year-old, Jamaica-born singer has performed in some of the great opera houses of the world and with many of the world's most celebrated symphony orchestras.
— Read more at Scotsman.com

Opera doesn't have to be grand in scope. It does need to tell us stories that interest us. On that score, the double bill presented last night by Nashville Opera succeeds grandly. Conductor Karen Keltner and Director John Hoomes have taken two 20th century one-act operas that speak to the tragedy of human isolation and brought them to stunning life with finely detailed performances from singers and musicians alike.
— Read more at tennessean.com

NEW YORK (Kyodo) For the past seven years, conductor Atsushi Yamada of the New York City Opera has dreamed of seeing his company on a Japanese stage. News photo A scene from "Madame Butterfly," performed by the New York City Opera, is shown in this undated file photo. He will finally get his chance next May when he conducts the Giacomo Puccini opera "Madame Butterfly" at the 2005 World Exposition in Aichi Prefecture
— Read more at The Japan Times Online

Do titles tell the tale in the new books about Luciano Pavarotti and Renee Fleming?
Herbert Breslin, Pavarotti's long-time American manager, dishes it out in The King and I: The Uncensored Tale of Luciano Pavarotti's Rise to Fame by His Manager, Friend, and Sometime Adversary (Doubleday, $25.95). Associated Press photos

Herbert Breslin, Luciano Pavarotti's longtime American manager, writes about the good, the bad and the ugly while Renee Fleming details her career in The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer. Fleming takes the opposite tack, proceeding carefully in her memoir, The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer (Viking, $24.95).

After finding his calling as a music publicist, Breslin's first clients were Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne. Then he met Pavarotti. The rest is amusing history.

As shaped by co-author and New York Times critic Anne Midgette, Breslin's book is a brisk read -- opinionated, brash, filled with darts about famous people in the music business.
— Read more at chron.com

When Everett McCorvey heard Jordan Bisch sing at yesterday's Metropolitan Opera regional auditions, he knew the singer would be hard to beat. The University of Kentucky voice professor realized Bisch, an Indiana University student, had lots of things going for him:

Bisch is a bass, and recently, basses have been a rare commodity in opera.
His bass voice was full, robust and disciplined, easily filling UK's Memorial Hall, where the Met's National Council Tri-State Regional Audition was held.
Bisch just turned 23 on Oct. 14, meaning there is a lot of time to work with his voice and his stage skills if Met directors decide to take him into their fold.

— Read more at Lexington Herald-Leader

Regardless of nerves, sweat and cottonmouth, the University opera ensemble presented an evening of opera scenes and arias to a nearly full Beall Hall on Tuesday.
Thrown before the eager but discriminating crowd were singers of a "very wide range of ages and experience levels," assistant professor of voice Charles Turley said in his opening remarks. Turley is the new director of the opera program.
— Read more at Oregon Daily Emerald

I WONDER if the woodwind section of the Orchestra of Scottish Opera, in the first of the orchestra's new concert series on Sunday, felt short-changed? Splitting the band into strings and wind, on this occasion, left the strings with all the meat, while the wind section, relatively, had side dishes with arrangements and just one original work: Gounod's charming, if slight, Petite Symphonie. Still, their turn will come, and they did get to play an interesting version of Berlioz's Roman Carnival Overture which, while lacking orchestral richness, underlined the staggering originality of its composer.
— Read more at The Herald

An unusual number of people made their debuts in the New York City Opera's production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella." They're not necessarily connected with the opera world, but then nor is "Cinderella," which was originally written for TV nearly 50 years ago.
— Read more at New York Daily News

The London hit Jerry Springer--The Opera has postponed its pre-Broadway run in San Francisco from the 2004-2005 season and is now planning on a New York debut in 2006. "As a result of creative team availability, Jerry Springer--The Opera will not be coming to San Francisco as part of the Best of Broadway 2004-2005 season" reads an official statement. "This multi-award winning musical will be presented in San Francisco in a future season."
— Read more at playbill.com

Sir Jonathan Miller, one of the UK's best known opera directors, has said his opera career is effectively over. In an interview with The Guardian newspaper, Sir Jonathan said he felt opera houses had turned their backs on him at the age of 70. Sir Jonathan, whose operatic works include a Mafia-style Rigoletto for English National Opera, said he has no other productions planned. He blamed an "obsession" with the new and cutting-edge.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

Arts organisations such as the Royal Opera House face the risk of losing their charitable status over ticket prices under a proposed bill. According to the draft charities bill, organisations granted charitable status will have to demonstrate how they provide benefit to the public. "Expect the Charity Commission to take increasing interest in what you charge," a Home Office official warned at a seminar.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

In one of the most creatively wacky official explanations ever offered in the theater world, Best of Broadway has pulled the troubled U.S. premiere of "Jerry Springer -- the Opera" with this announcement: "As a result of creative team availability, 'Jerry Springer -- The Opera' will not be coming to San Francisco as part of the Best of Broadway 2004-2005 season, brought to you by Citibank."
— Read more at sfgate.com

Move over Jerry Springer, the next talk-show host to be immortalised in song could be the Question Time presenter David Dimbleby as part of a BBC deal to develop six made-for-television operas. The BBC has commissioned the team behind the award-winning West End musical Jerry Springer - The Opera to write and produce a series of bespoke comic operas based on different television formats.
— Read more at independent.co.uk

New Jersey Opera Theater presents: Mozart's The Magic Flute, a children's adaptation of an opera classic. WHERE: First Presbyterian Church, 120 E. State Street, Trenton, WHEN: November 20 at 3pm ADMISSION: FREE sponsored by Princeton Friends of Opera.
— Learn more at NJOT.ORG

For many people, when they see the word "opera" they think of the fat lady standing on stage singing in a foreign language. Now imagine a small army of performers somersaulting across the stage, twirling spears and tossing swords, executing superb martial arts moves - all the while singing melodiously, costumed in magnificent silk brocades and multi-colored makeup. That is the wonder that audiences will find when they go to see The Adventures of the Monkey King: A Beijing Opera, which is coming to The Music Hall in Portsmouth on Nov. 16 at 7:30 p.m. for one performance only.
— Read more at seacoastonline.com

"Madama Butterfly" always will be one of the most popular operas of all time. This season, Giacomo Puccini's tragic look at Asian-American relations, as seen through the experiences of a mismatched couple, will be staged in at least 17 cities around the country, from New York to Fargo, N.D.
— Read more at indystar.com

New Jersey Opera Theater Singer Circle presents: "28x14," an evening of vocal delights sung by the stars of tomorrow. The evening will feature Emerging Artists in a 90 minute accompanied concert of well known selections and lesser known gems from the operatic, art song and musical theater cannon. WHERE: Grounds for Sculpture, 18 Fairgrounds Rd., Hamilton, in the Domestic Arts Building. WHEN: Friday November 19th at 7:30 pm ADMISSION: FREE and open to the public, note: Grounds for Sculpture is generously waiving their admission fee for this event.
— Learn more at NJOT.ORG

TUCKED away in Glasgow's Centre for Contemporary Arts is a little-visited interdisciplinary world, where musical expression meets performance art and theatre. Overseen by artistic director Cathie Boyd, who seems to hoover up awards, Theatre Cryptic periodically launches a salvo of visually stunning, musically challenging work on a theatrical scene that is dominated by small dark rooms with a couple of actors and a minimal soundtrack. The latest attack, Books of Silence, begins this week.
— Read more at scotsman.com

Western Michigan University's Opera Workshop class presents a shortened version of Mozart's delightful opera "The Magic Flute" at 8:15 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 22-23, in the Dalton Center Recital Hall. The free, public performances include most of the scenes from the opera, presented by multiple student casts with minimal scenery, props and costumes, and accompanied by piano. The programs are the final presentation of the Opera Workshop class, the acting class for voice majors in the WMU School of Music.
— Read more at WMU News

It's a bit bewildering that Charles Gounod's 'Faust' was probably the most popular opera on the planet 100 years ago, when it dominated the repertory at the Metropolitan Opera House and top European theaters and was on its way to being translated into 25 languages and performed in 50 countries.
— Read more at freep.com

"THE MUMMY," a new comic opera with music by George Quincy and libretto by Thayer Burch suggested by the 1930's film, will give four staged readings directed by Sue Lawless, on Saturday, December 4 and 11 at 8 PM and Sunday, December 5th and 12th at 3 pm at The Actor's Temple, 339 West 47th Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues.) Admission is free but reservations are strongly advised. Call (212) 591-0710.
— Read more at broadwayworld.com

The best thing were the little girls. A large number of them were sprinkled throughout the audience of the first performance of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella" at New York City Opera on Friday night, resplendent in their dressy clothes and evidently enjoying the experience. Or at least I hope they were. It would be terrific if this "Cinderella" could succeed in entertaining children and awakening them to the excitement of live theater. It sure didn't work for me.
— Read more at The New York Times

Opera tenor Jay Morris calls Paris home. He says he's the luckiest guy in the world and when he grows up he might just settle down. The 41-year-old artist says his voice is just now maturing and that in the opera world he�s still just a youth. Morris, a 1981 Paris High School graduate, has sung major roles in leading opera houses throughout the United States, Europe, South America and Australia.
— Read more at The Paris News

Perhaps the most novel aspect of Pittsburgh Opera's upcoming production of "The Marriage of Figaro" will be Michael Maniaci's portrayal of Cherubino -- the ebullient teenager who has fallen in love with love. It is a classic "trouser role" -- a male character intended to be sung by a woman.
— Read more at PittsburghLIVE.com

San Francisco Opera Music Director Donald Runnicles' contract has been extended by three years through the end of the 2008-09 season, laying to rest -- at least for now -- questions about the Scottish conductor's future in this country.
— Read more at sfgate.com

La Fenice, Venice's historic opera house, has reopened with a gala performance of Giuseppe Verdi's opera La Traviata. The first performance of La Traviata took place in the same theatre 151 years ago. And Maria Callas sang the title role in the show, one of Verdi's most popular operas, at the 100th anniversary performance of La Traviata at the Fenice back in 1953.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

Music, rather than talk, will take center stage for the November topic of the Inside Opera Lecture Series. Presented montly by Opera Theater Corvallis, the second lecture of the series will take place at 10:15 a.m. in the Main Meeting room of the Corvallis --Benton County Public Library, 645 N.W. Monroe Ave. In the presentation, titled "Opera Overtures and Entr'actes," The Quintessential Winds, a group founded by Lisa Taylor, offers a program of famous opera overtures, entr'actes and highlights.
— Read more at Corvallis Gazette-Times

It was, yes, a dark and stormy night as the San Francisco Opera unveiled its new production of 'The Flying Dutchman' at the War Memorial Opera House on Wednesday. As a program note reminded us, Edward Bulwer-Lytton's undying clunker of an opening line applies nicely to Wagner's ghostly sea tale, and it applied less happily to this grim little undertaking.
— Read more at sfgate.com

"At last an Aida." began Anne Midgette's last week's New York Times review of soprano Angela M. Brown's Metropolitan Opera debut, on Oct. 29, 2004, in the title role of Aida. Ms. Midgette continued: "Ms. Brown was deservedly the focus of the evening" and went on to say that Ms. Brown's reprisal of the role in Philadelphia this coming January "would be worth the trip." Brown performed the role again at the Saturday, Nov. 6th matinee and garnered a rave review and front-page article in Monday's New York Times, stating, "For a fill-in Aida, a triumphant ovation long in coming". The article, also by Midgette, tells of Brown's rise from her grandfather's Baptist church in Indianapolis to what has been described by Three Mo' Tenors Musical Director, Victor Simonson as, "the biggest debut since Salvatore Licitra two years ago".
— Read more at emediawire.com

California University of Pennsylvania's first opera series will take place Tuesday through Nov. 18. Students and faculty will present the Baroque opera, "Dido and Aeneas" in the Chapel Theatre on the second floor of Old Main Hall 8 p.m. each night. The opera was written in 1689 by English composer Henry Purcell.
— Read more at PittsburghLIVE.com

In early October, Christopher Mattaliano was all set to direct his first opera here since becoming boss of Portland Opera, when darn if he didn't learn he had a tumor in his small intestine.
He dropped out (as did his wife, Pamela South, who was to sing Madame Cortese) and appointed Assistant Stage Director Casey Stangl to do it instead, working under Mattaliano's direction. However, a week later Mattaliano felt well enough to direct again while awaiting treatment.
"The best therapy I can have right now is directing an opera," he says with a grin during a lunchtime session 13 days before the opening of Rossini's "The Journey to Reims." That the production has two directors doesn't necessarily mean it will be twice as good, but it does mean it again will have Mattaliano's fingerprints all over it. He has made "Journey" his calling card, having directed it six times.
— Read more at PortlandTribune.com

A Pollock painting set to music. That is the effect Gyorgy Ligeti's beyond-modern, absurdist opera, "Le Grand Macabre," exuberantly unleashes for its American debut run at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House.
— Read more at San Francisco Examiner

Operatic soprano Carol Ann Manzi of Eugene cooks as well as she sings. She is married to Robert Ashens, the Eugene Opera's artistic director. Four years ago, they moved to Eugene, where they live in what Manzi describes as a tiny apartment. "I did a lot more cooking when we lived in Connecticut because we had a much larger apartment and because I had all of my family and longtime friends around me," she said.
— Read more at The Register-Guard

WINNIPEG - The Manitoba Opera is hoping new changes will help bring them out of debt. The company began losing money in the early 1990s when audience numbers started to shrink and its debt began to grow. Its debt is now at $600,000.
— Read more at CBC Manitoba

Turn down the volume on the Washington National Opera's latest foray into zarzuela -- Spanish light opera -- and there are moments when it could be a play by Ibsen or Strindberg as staged by an establishment-minded classical theater company. The costumes are black and white, the set is all clean lines and elegant minimalism, and everything is bathed in a chilly yet creamy Nordic light. The producers of this show have taken Federico Moreno Torroba's three-act operetta "Luisa Fernanda" and classed it up, so much so that the occasional bawdiness of the original feels a little out of place.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

Continuing the longstanding trend of opera houses dabbling in musicals (both the UK's Royal Opera and Opera North have produced Sondheim's Sweeney Todd in recent years), English National Opera has scheduled Leonard Bernstein's On the Town.
— Read more at playbill.com

Gioacchino Rossini's rarely produced 'The Journey to Reims' seemed to be the perfect way to start the Portland Opera season Saturday. Then came the complications: Opera general director Christopher Mattaliano, scheduled to direct the show, became ill and discovered he had a malignant tumor of the small intestine. His wife, soprano Pamela South, also dropped out of the show to be with her husband.
— Read more at StatesmanJournal.com

Cue the Chandelier! The Phantom of the Opera will play its milestone 7,000th performance on Broadway at 2 PM Nov. 10 at the Majestic Theatre.
The Cameron Mackintosh/Really Useful Theatre Company, Inc. production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's smash, directed by Harold Prince, becomes one of only two productions in Broadway history hit the 7,000 mark. Composer Lloyd Webber's Cats, also produced by Mackintosh, is the other.
— Read more at Playbill News

"Callas Forever," Franco Zeffirelli's worshipful cinematic tribute to his friend Maria Callas, is the kind of what-if movie you might have expected to be made about Elvis Presley but not about the quintessential opera diva of the 20th century. A lip-synching hall of mirrors, it is essentially a piece of highbrow karaoke.
— Read more at The New York Times

La Scala is back where it belongs.
After a three-year exile on the city's outskirts, the famed opera company is returning to its renovated 18th-century theatre in the heart of Milan in time for its traditional Dec. 7 opening night. The contested renovation was completed a few weeks ahead of schedule, giving conductor Riccardo Muti time for rehearsals of Antonio Salieri's Europa Riconosciuta, the opera that will inaugurate the 2004-2005 season as it did La Scala's first season in 1778.
— Read more at canada.com

"The Opera Lover's Companion," written by well-known music critic Charles Osborne, is an indispensable guide to the 175 most frequently performed operas.

Thomas Forrest Kelly's "First Nights at the Opera" tells the story of the golden age of European opera and takes the reader behind the scenes for the premiere performances of extraordinary operas by Mozart, Handel, Wagner, and others.

Joachim Kohler's "Richard Wagner: The Last of the Titans" explores Wagner's diaries and letters to create an astonishing reinterpretation of the great composer's life and music.

With over 1,900 entries, the "Encyclopedia of Opera on Screen" is an essential guide to more than 100 years of opera in film.

PORTLAND - The plot of "The Journey to Rheims" is as thin as a Parisian poodle, but the fun may prove as robust as the huge cast of characters who whoop it up in Paris. (They never make it to Rheims.) The Gioacchino Rossini opera is being staged by the Portland Opera for three performances, beginning Saturday in Keller Auditorium. It opens the company's 40th anniversary season.
— Read more at columbian.com

Thirty-four-year-old productions of incessantly repeated repertory are not likely to get the full attention of any major opera company. But it was a pleasure to discover, beneath the general onstage bellowing at the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday afternoon, the Met orchestra and its conductor of the day, Dennis Russell Davies, playing Mascagni and Leoncavallo with exquisite sensibility.
— Read more at The New York Times

At last an Aida. Cast changes in repertory works at the Metropolitan Opera usually come and go without printed mention, not least because there are so many of them. But Angela M. Brown's first Aida at the house, on Friday, partway into a run that lasts into December, was different: a young American making a Met debut in a major role that hardly anybody can sing anymore is worth a gander. And the fact that she can sing it made the night a major event.
— Read more at The New York Times

The surge of excitement that filled the War Memorial Opera House on Friday night for the U.S. premiere of Gyorgy Ligeti's opera 'Le Grand Macabre' -- a heady, convivial buzz that dovetailed nicely with the profusion of Halloween costumes among the audience -- was something almost vanishingly rare in an American opera house.
— Read more at sfgate.com

The double bill of Il Tabarro and I Pagliacci seemed the strangest possible coupling when it was announced last spring by Arizona Opera. The two operas are both darkly tragic, both Italian, but otherwise seemingly disconnected. Pagliacci is traditionally performed with Cavalleria Rusticana, while Tabarro is the first of Puccini's Trittico, or trilogy of one-act operas that also includes Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi.
— Read more at azcentral.com

The New York City Opera is reportedly in talks to abandon its cavernous home at Lincoln Center for a new building to be constructed on the site of the former American Red Cross New York headquarters. A. & R. Kalimian Realty bought the site, on Amsterdam Avenue between 66th and 67th Streets, this month for about $72 million and met recently with officials from the opera and the Department of City Planning to discuss the project, The New York Times reported Friday.
— Read more at Newsday.com

NEW YORK -- Since the glory days when Leontyne Price reigned over the Metropolitan Opera, many a young singer has arrived at the house with advance billing as a "promising Verdi soprano." Few have made as favorable an impression as Angela M. Brown, whose debut Friday night in the title role of "Aida" -- loudly cheered by a house seemingly filled with her admirers -- revealed a performer of considerable vocal gifts.
— Read more at Newsday.com

The Metropolitan Opera sometimes seems as impenetrable a place as the Pentagon. So naturally, mystified opera buffs are abuzz with speculation over the unexpected announcement that Peter Gelb, a recording executive who during years of economic woe for the industry kept the Sony Classical label afloat with hugely profitable crossover projects and film soundtracks, will be the Met's next general manager, succeeding Joseph Volpe in 2006.
— Read more at The New York Times

CHICAGO The Lyric Opera of Chicago celebrated its 50th anniversary last night with an all-star gala. Twenty top opera stars performed 23 arias, duets and trios. To add variety, the Lyric threw in a 10-singer ensemble piece, two choruses and an overture.
— Read more at kwqc.com

The composer Charles Wuorinen has long spoken with dismay about the populist push he sees shaping the world of serious music, a trend he wants no part of. He made similar comments recently in anticipation of the premiere of his opera "Haroun and the Sea of Stories." "Haroun" had its much-awaited premiere yesterday afternoon in a vibrant, colorful and well-received production at the New York City Opera, and Mr. Wuorinen, it can be reported, has stayed true to his sober aesthetic convictions.
— Read more at The New York Times

LANSDOWNE -- Ever wonder where the infamous statement "It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings" comes from? Don't know the difference between a mezzo-soprano and Tony Soprano? Want to see a rare opera but can't afford to rent a tuxedo for the evening? Fuggedaboutit!
— Read more at The Daily Times

Opera Music Theater International (OMTI), under the direction of James K. McCully, announced plans today to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Marjorie Lawrence with an international celebration which promises to memorialize the rich legacy of the Metropolitan Opera Star in 2007.
— Read more at emediawire.com

EVER since 9/11, I feel as if we are all in the same boat that used to be occupied only by Salman Rushdie," said the composer Charles Wuorinen. Mr. Wuorinen's opera "Haroun and the Sea of Stories," based on Mr. Rushdie's 1990 novel of that name, will receive its premiere today at the New York City Opera.
— Read more at The New York Times

NPR's Scott Simon remembers baritone Robert Merrill, who performed on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera more than 500 times. One of his less known performances, however, was of the Brooklyn Baseball Cantata, which imagines a Dodgers' victory over the Yankees.
— Read more at NPR

The Metropolitan Opera yesterday named Peter Gelb, a record company executive who was once an usher at the Met and went on to manage the career of Vladimir Horowitz, as its next impresario. Acting with relative swiftness in choosing Mr. Gelb as general manager, the board turned to a fairly young man with a pedigree in the arts and long experience in working with the opera. But Mr. Gelb, who turns 51 on Nov. 10, is untested in running an organization on the Met's scale, raising the kind of money needed to keep it afloat or negotiating with the plethora of unions that dominate the company's workings
— Read more at The New York Times