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

"I'm Tom Brady's best friend," joked David Daniels. "I'm sure he'd love to read that!" OK, the world's leading countertenor isn't really Brady's bud. "But I did meet him," Daniels continued. "It was when I sang (Handel's) 'Messiah' in Ann Arbor." Brady was quarterback for the University of Michigan football team when Daniels, now 38, was a graduate student there. "A lot of times the football players would come to concerts - they were always trying to enlighten them to the music world, arts and culture - and he came backstage and I got to shake his hand,'' Daniels recalled. "If you asked him, he might remember me as this guy who sang like a woman."
— Read more at BostonHerald.com

Just over a week has passed since ecstatic Republican merrymakers celebrated George W. Bush's second presidential inauguration here in the nation's capital. But not to be outdone, the Washington National Opera is mounting a festive inaugural event of its own tonight â?? the world premiere of Boston-based composer Scott Wheeler's brand new opera, "Democracy: An American Comedy."
— Read more at The Washington Times

THE diamond-bright voice of June Bronhill rang out to hundreds of mourners who gathered to remember the internationally-famed soprano at her funeral in NSW today. Ms Bronhill died in Sydney on Monday, aged 75. The operatic icon won praise worldwide for her roles in light opera productions, such as The Merry Widow and the Sound of Music and gathered such famous fans as former British prime minister John Major.
— Read more at The Australian

The forthcoming Wallace Shawn adaptation of The Threepenny Opera will see the Broadway stage next season, according to the attached director Scott Elliott. "Projects take a long time to develop properly," Elliott -- who is currently preparing for the Off-Broadway opening of his revival of Hurlyburly -- told Playbill.com. "One thing I don't like doing is rushing because it never pays off. We're taking our time."
— Read more at Playbill News

The 19th-century notion of "absolute music" is a historical aberration that still holds sway among critics. This viewpoint prizes the music itself and dismisses as "tainted" works that tell a story or paint a picture: operas, film scores, instrumental pieces such as Berlioz's opium-fueled "Symphonie Fantastique" or Heinrich Biber's violin sonatas based on the mysteries of the rosary. Composer Stephen Paulus chuckled when reminded of that view. "You do find in academic quarters a bit of snootiness, a concern with 'pure, abstract' music, but I mean, who cares?" The world premiere of the chamber version of Paulus' "Voices From the Gallery," a decisively non-absolute work, anchors a Sunday program by the Brooklyn Philharmonic exploring depictions of time in music and the visual arts.
— Read more at Newsday.com [thanks vilaine fille]

Elvis Costello has made a career out of confounding his fans. Over the years the man behind Oliver's Army has made a country album, worked with Burt Bacharach and made an unashamedly romantic album of love songs. Now he looks likely to baffle audiences again - by writing an opera. Costello is preparing to write a piece of lyric theatre based on the life of Hans Christian Andersen. It will premiere at the Royal Danish Opera in October.
— Read more at Guardian Unlimited

ASCAP award-winning librettist James Billings and composer Herbert Kaplan bring this charming wacky tale for the Young Artist Showcase at Cafe des Artistes. It is performed in a relaxed bistro-style setting with a chamber quartet.
— Read more at joplinglobe.com

Clapping and stomping, tossed bouquets, a shower of confetti: These are some of the ways listeners hail a fine concert. But the most grateful tribute of all may be a long, rapt silence - when audience members dare not applaud or even exhale out of reluctance to shatter the magic wrought by inspired musicians. That kind of quiet appreciation greeted Sunday's Carnegie Hall performance by the Met Orchestra of Gustav Mahler's song cycle "Das Lied von der Erde" ("The Song of the Earth"). Lusty applause eventually erupted, punctured by hollers worthy of a hootenanny, when conductor James Levine acknowledged his soloists. Still, the earlier silence, along with the magisterial music-making that preceded it, will linger in the mind
— Read more at nynewsday.com [thanks vilaine fille]

Jerry Springer said that he understood why thousands of Christians had protested about Jerry Springer the Opera. "I wouldn't have written it. I don't believe in making fun of other religions or in saying things that could be insensitive to other people's religions," Springer said in an interview with the Press Association.
— Read more at monstersandcritics.com

Beverly Sills, the hometown diva who became a major fundraiser for the Metropolitan Opera, resigned Tuesday as the organization's chairwoman, citing personal reasons. "It's the right time to leave and concentrate on my family," Sills, 75, said in a statement. "I know that I have achieved what I set out to do."
— Read more at latimes.com

Rodney Gilfry's Latest Work Took the Opera World by Storm. Look Out, Broadway: Here Comes Southern California's Blond Baritone
— Read more at campusapps.fullerton.edu

It finally happened: Record companies have gotten their image-obsessed claws into the opera world. And now more than ever, the opera "industry," if not necessarily the listening public, wants its sopranos to be ready to do a few (nonspeaking) minutes on Letterman. Some of these runway-model-type singers, like Opera Company of Philadelphia alumna Anna Netrebko, have genuine talent; several have crashed and burned almost as fast as television starlets. This situation has spun out of control. Opera should be about total theatrical conviction, not just silhouettes.
— Read more at citypaper.net

Somewhere in the middle of her five encores, as the audience ovation made Benaroya Hall sound like a sports arena after a playoff victory, RenÃ©e Fleming stood drinking in the applause the way a sunflower receives the sunlight. She gazed out into the standing crowd and confessed, "I love this." The Seattle Times

You know the old saying," a German diva once remarked. "The theater is a madhouse, and the opera is the ward for the incurable." She ascribed the remark to Mahler, who should have known. His symphonies are rife with turmoil, he did time running the snake pit known as the Vienna Court Opera, and he consulted Freud - just once - in a moment of existential anguish. Plenty of opera singers think they must cultivate their neuroses for the sake of their art, and so does much of the public. The Mexican tenor Rolando Villazon, 32, who began classical psychoanalysis nine years ago and made his leap to the stage three years later, has occasionally shared that superstition. "What if analysis makes me a normal person," he has wondered, "and I can't be an artist anymore?"
— Read more at The New York Times

A special concert to aid victims of the Asian tsunami will be given by the orchestra and chorus of the English National Opera on January 30. The program features Michael Tippett's oratorio A Child of Our Time, with soprano Susan Gritton, contralto Sara Fulgoni, tenor Timothy Robinson, and bass Brindley Sherratt. Martyn Brabbins will conduct.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Talk show host Jerry Springer, whose programme inspired the controversial opera shown by the BBC, has said he would not have written it himself. The BBC received 47,000 complaints before the musical was broadcast, and protesters demonstrated outside BBC buildings across the UK.
— Read more at BBC NEWS [Related news items]

Steven Weisenburger, author of Modern Medea: A Family Story of Slavery and Child-Murder from the Old South, presents the history of Margaret Garner 149 years to the day after her family's escape from Maplewood Farm to Cincinnati.
When: Thursday, January 27, 7:00 p.m.
Where: Xavier University, Gallagher Theatre
Admission: Free, though reservations are requested. Please call (513) 241-2742.
— Learn more at cincinnatiopera.org [Related news items]

Major contributors to Cincinnati Opera's Festival Campaign joined Cincinnati Mayor Charles Luken, civic leaders and opera trustees to raise the curtain on the opera's new headquarters, the Corbett Opera Center. The 14,000 square feet of new space, in the north wing of historic Music Hall in Over-the-Rhine, features a street-level box office, staff offices, multipurpose spaces for rehearsals, performances and meetings and an artist gallery. The next phase will be a 5,000-square-feet rehearsal studio.
— Read more at news.enquirer.com

Maybe Camille Saint-Saens should've chosen his friends more carefully. When he marshaled a singer to treat them to two arias from an opera he was working on -- about the biblical tale of Samson and Delilah -- they scoffed. So much for astuteness, not to mention loyalty. With those two arias of Delilah's, they brushed off music that has gone on to seduce generations of opera lovers. If it hadn't been for a fellow composer who encouraged Saint-Saens to stick with it, there might be no "Samson and Delilah" for Opera Carolina to stage beginning Thursday.
— Read more at Charlotte

Houston Grand Opera general director David Gockley says he has a non-negotiable demand in his talks with San Francisco Opera, where he's being wooed as new director: complete control. "I don't know whether they have decided whether that would be vested in one person or two people." If the power is split, Gockley said he won't take the job.
— Read more at HoustonChronicle.com

Last May, Opera Boston general director Carole Charnow saw a production of Andre Previnâ??s operatic version of "A Streetcar Named Desire" in Washington, D.C. She knew immediately she had found the director she wanted for the collaborative production of Gluckâ??s "Alceste" that Opera Boston and Boston Baroque will present this week.
— Read more at Boston.com

Ben Heppner sings arias by Beethoven, Weber, and Wagner with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra under Julius Rudel on Saturday 29 January at NJPAC.
— Read more at vilaine fille

COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- Elvis Costello, Britain's musical chameleon, is creating an opera based on Danish fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen's impossible romance with a Swedish woman, a spokesman for Copenhagen's new opera house said Thursday. "The Secret Arias" is based on songs written by Andersen for Jenny Lind, a soprano dubbed the "Swedish Nightingale," whom the Dane pined for, despite her never returning his affections, said Henrik Engelbrecht, head of dramaturgy at the Royal Theater.
— Read more at baltimoresun.com

With all due respect to Beethoven -- creator of those landmark piano sonatas, gripping string quartets and iconic Ninth Symphony -- opera was not his forte. "Fidelio,'' his sole foray into the form, which opened Tuesday night at Lyric Opera of Chicago, has its clunky patches. In Act II, he is so eager to emphasize his points about the value of freedom and selfless love that he belabors them mercilessly.
— Read more at suntimes.com

Two company premieres, a world premiere and the return of "The Marriage of Figaro," "Madama Butterfly," "Pagliacci" and "La Traviata" are among the highlights of the recently announced 2005-06 season at Los Angeles Opera. Departing music director Kent Nagano will conduct three of the eight productions in this, L.A. Opera's 20th anniversary season, which will also feature collaborations with director Julie Taymor, composer Elliot Goldenthal and the opera directing debut of filmmaker and "Happy Days" creator Garry Marshall.
— Read more at sbsun.com

The premiere of "Margaret Garner," plus a late Verdi masterpiece, and Figaro's twin adventures as told by Rossini and Mozart make up the Opera Company of Philadelphia's 2005-2006 season. For the second year, the company will present four operas with six Academy of Music performances each. "We hope that we will be able to return to five productions in the 2006-2007 season," said the company's general and artistic director Robert Driver as the '05-'06 season was announced yesterday.
— Read more at Philadelphia Daily News

The Opera Company of Philadelphia will give the East Coast premiere of Richard Danielpour and Toni Morrison's Margaret Garner and perform three other operas in 2005-06, the company announced yesterday.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The worst compliment you can pay an artist is to insist that he repeat himself. David Mamet's short, jolting blows to the solar plexus in works such as American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross have kept us so enthralled that the arch, artificial language in Dr. Faustus, his new play at San Francisco's Magic Theatre, has thrown everybody into a tizzie.
— Read more at theatermania.com

Renee Fleming came and conquered the full house Tuesday night at Benaroya Hall. Now 45, the soprano is in her prime, not only with that voluptuous voice but her musical acuity and dramatic instincts.
— Read more at seattlepi.nwsource.com

My friend Rebecca Paller, a brilliant writer and a curator at New York's Museum of Television & Radio, has organized some of the city's finest cultural offerings in recent years: the Balanchine and Sammy Davis, Jr. retrospectives; screenings of classic NBC Opera Theater telecasts; and tonight's sold-out tribute to George Jellinek.
— Read more at vilaine fille

While aging, unhappy opera fans bemoan the current day's supposed lack of great singers - as aging, unhappy opera fans have ever done - mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe makes a mockery of their grousing. In the star-studded vocal fest that was the Metropolitan Opera's production of Handel's "Rodelinda," Blythe upstaged her celebrated cast mates. Her voice is huge, flexible and voluptuously rich in color. The military crispness of her enunciation would put many a soldier to shame, and she seems to reach out and embrace her listeners with the warmth and generosity of her personality.
— Read more at nynewsday.com [thanks to vilaine fille]

Copenhagen's new $441 million opera house opened with a program of opera and ballet on January 15, hosted by Denmark's Queen Margrethe. The 1,700-seat opera house will serve as the home of the Royal Danish Opera, which previously performed at the Royal Danish Theater. Designed by Henning Larsen, the new building has a flat roof that extends dramatically past a glass bubble at its front.
— Read more at PlaybillArts.com

Lincoln Center's Great Performers series will include a wide-ranging celebration of Dmitri Shostakovich's centennial in 2005-06, Lincoln Center announced today. Other highlights will include a festival of Osvaldo Golijov's music, the world premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon's song cycle Orpheus and Euridice, and a celebration of the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth led by John Eliot Gardiner.
— Read more at PlaybillArts.com

THE ears and eyes of the classical music world will be turned on San Francisco on Oct. 1 when the San Francisco Opera presents the world premiere of "Dr. Atomic," a new opera by John Adams. This news, as well as the announcement of the eight other operas scheduled for the company's 2005-06 season, were revealed at a news conference Wednesday morning at the Opera House.
— Read more at insidebayarea.com

After the glory, pure elation yields to more complex emotions. Leonardo Balada's "The Death of Columbus," performed for the first time Friday night at Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland, is an uncommonly impressive and winning contemporary opera that visits the discoverer of the New World on his deathbed, where memory and imagination mix.
— Read more at PittsburghLIVE.com

The last time Renee Fleming sang a recital at Benaroya Hall, the enraptured audience demanded seven encores, and the beaming diva gestured to her pianist and jokingly announced, "We're moving here." Sadly, she is still in New York, but four years after that landmark recital, Fleming will at last return to Seattle for another recital on Tuesday. Since her previous appearance, the diva has kicked her career up another notch or two: a second Grammy (for "Bel Canto"), more high-profile opera debuts (in "La Traviata" and "Rodelinda," among others), and a new book ("The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer").
— Read more at The Seattle Times

The world premiere of John Adams' "Doctor Atomic" will share the spotlight with company premieres of operas by Handel and Tchaikovsky, as well as a new production of Verdi's "La Forza del Destino," during the San Francisco Opera's 2005-06 season. Like the current season, the new schedule -- announced by general director Pamela Rosenberg on Wednesday at a War Memorial Opera House press conference -- comprises six operas during the fall and another three in summer 2006. The season opens Saturday, Sept. 10 rather than the traditional Friday
— Read more at sfgate.com

Mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves will sing in the world premiere of Elliot Goldenthal's "Grendel" at the Los Angeles Opera on May 27, 2006. The opera, based on the poem "Beowulf" and John Gardner's novel "Grendel," has a libretto by Julie Taymor and J.D. McClatchy and will be directed by Taymor. Graves will play The Dragon when the work debuts at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the company announced Thursday, and the rest of the cast includes Eric Owens (Grendel), Richard Croft (The Blind Harpist), Jay Hunter Morris (Unferth) and Laura Claycomb (Queen Wealtheow).
— Read more at miami.com

Giacomo Puccini is a hit machine in the world of grand opera: "Madama Butterfly," "Tosca" and La Boheme" are among the most produced and popular operas on the planet. But his first success was "Manon Lescaut," a gritty slice-of-life opera with the composer's trademark romantic melodies, big arias and passionate duets that would mark his later operas.
— Read more at HeraldNet

Having led his country back into the international mainstream after renouncing ambitions to build weapons of mass destruction, Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi is now being immortalised by a leading British opera company, it said on Thursday. The as-yet unnamed work, commissioned by the English National Opera (ENO), "examines the creation of a myth", according to a statement by the London-based company.
— Read more at turkishpress.com

Sir Simon Rattle, arguably the leading conductor in the world, had never conducted at the Vienna State Opera until Wednesday night, when he made his debut with a bang, and with Wagner's five-hour "Parsifal." "Parsifal" is commonly labeled Wagner's Christian opera. At the very least it is a tale about redemption, and many conductors limn it in hovering clouds of mysticism.
— Read more at The New York Times

Sieglinde's Diaries comments about the New York Times commenting about blogs.
Charles T. Downey writes about a new opera DVD at Ionarts.
Mme. Grisi Pasta at Trrill raves about Victoria Litherland.
At vilaine fille "MLR" notes she has written about Juan Diego Florez for the eighth time!
Alex Ross travels to New Jersey to catch Neeme Jarvi at The Rest Is Noise.

Have a blog entry you'd like us to include? Click here to send us the info...

Cincinnati Opera has moved. Not far, but it now has a home of its own. In October, the company packed up and moved its headquarters from the south wing to the north wing of Music Hall. The move -- to the new $3.3 million Corbett Opera Center in the north wing -- frees up the south wing for the Cincinnati Symphony and May Festival, with whom it has shared scattered, cramped quarters since moving to Music Hall from the Cincinnati Zoo in 1972.
— Read more at The Cincinnati Post

Controversial musical Jerry Springer -- The Opera will embark on a nationwide tour, it was announced today. The musical will end its run at London's Cambridge Theatre on February 19, on its 609th performance.
— Read more at Scotsman.com

Auditions for Cincinnati Opera's 2005 Summer Festival Chorus are scheduled for Friday, January 14 and Saturday, January 15, 2005. AUDITION TIMES MUST BE SCHEDULED IN ADVANCE by calling Jared Doren at (513) 768-5568 or jdoren@cincinnatiopera.org. These auditions will fill roles for a 32-member African American chorus to be featured in Cincinnati Opera's presentation of Margaret Garner (July 14, 16, and 22, 2005), the new opera by Grammy Award-winning composer Richard Danielpour and librettist Toni Morrison, celebrated author and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Choral roles will also be filled for each of the additional 2005 Summer Festival season productions, including:

Giacomo Puccini's La Boheme (June 16, 18, and 24): men and women
Gioachino Rossini's The Barber of Seville (June 23 and 25): men only
Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto (July 21 and 23): men only

— Learn more at cincinnatiopera.org

Opera and film are invented art forms, cobbled together from disparate elements. It doesn't make much sense to talk of the invention of sculpture, or music, or dance, all of which have origins so far in the past as to be immemorial. But with both film and opera we can put a mark on the timeline and say, there, that's when the art form began. With opera, it's at the beginning of the 17th century, when the Florentine Camerata, a group of Renaissance intellectuals who thought they were reinventing Greek tragedy, put together the first recognizably operatic music dramas of modern times. With film, it's at the turn of the last century, as various inventors and tinkerers realized that by passing light through a sequence of transparent photographic images, one could capture the illusion of motion in real time.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

Little Women, the Mark Adamo opera commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera and premiered by the HGO Studio in 1998, gets its Asian premiere in May when New York City Opera performs the setting of the Louisa May Alcott novel during the 2005 World Exposition in Japan.
— Read more at HoustonChronicle.com

David Gockley, the visionary longtime general director of the Houston Grand Opera, has emerged recently as a leading candidate to take over the reins of the San Francisco Opera. Gockley, 61, was not considered a candidate through the fall as a 14- member search committee chaired by board member George Hume looked for a replacement for Pamela Rosenberg, who will step down when her five-year contract as general director expires in 2006.
— Read more at sfgate.com

Cultured Europeans were fascinated by the 1731 tale of Manon Lescaut, created by the writer Antoine-FranÃ§ois (Abbe) Prevost in his novel, "L'Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut." This story of passion, betrayal and death inspired two operas by major composers: Jules Massenet, who composed "Manon," and Giacomo Puccini, who wrote "Manon Lescaut." The Massenet "Manon" first brought American diva Carol Vaness to Seattle in 1985, the year after the young soprano's Metropolitan Opera debut catapulted her to international fame. Since then, Vaness has returned to Seattle to sing leading roles in Donizetti's "Anna Bolena," Puccini's "Tosca," and four Verdi operas: "La Traviata," "Il Trovatore," "Otello" and "Un Ballo in Maschera."
— Read more at The Seattle Times

There isn't always a clear claimant to the title Great American Soprano, and those who do hold it are not necessarily great sopranos at all. It is a name-recognition thing, a personality thing, a marketing thing, and only secondarily a musical thing. Beverly Sills was a Great American Soprano by virtue of a few good years of modestly distinguished singing and an effervescent public persona ("Bubbles," they called her). That was in the 1960s and '70s. Fast-forward to the 1980s, and Jessye Norman was a Great American Soprano, with a voice that drove audiences wild and seemed somehow to fit perfectly with the cultural moment: It was oversize and luxurious and perhaps a little bit decadent. Eventually it cloyed.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

Soprano Renee Fleming was not born with her stunning voice. Granted, she picked her parents carefully (both were music teachers) and had plenty of natural talent and ambition to match, but that unique, "instantly recognizable sound" was developed through self-discipline, resilience (nerves ruined many an audition), and incredibly hard work. Now, in The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer, Ms. Fleming tells us with intelligence, honesty, and the charm she projects on stage how she did it.
— Read more at The Washington Times

More than 1.7 million viewers watched Jerry Springer - The Opera on BBC Two on Saturday, despite the objections of protesters. At least 45,000 people had contacted the BBC to complain about swearing and religious themes in the opera. Most opera broadcasts attract an audience of about 1 million viewers, a corporation spokesperson said.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

A special U.K. edition of the Met Opera Quiz will be broadcast next month, according to the BBC. The quiz will be recorded at the Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio Theatre on January 31 and broadcast on BBC Radio 3, which carries the weekly live Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, on February 12.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Denyce Graves will sing Carmen to open the Lyric Opera of Chicago's 2005-6 season, which also will include new productions of Puccini's "Manon Lescaut," Tippett's "The Midsummer Marriage," Verdi's "Rigoletto" and Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice." "Carmen," which opens Sept. 24, features Neil Shicoff as Don Jose and Ildebrando D'Arcangelo as Escamillo, the company announced Thursday. Music director Sir Andrew Davis conducts. Karita Mattila sings the title role in "Manon Lescaut," with Vladimir Galouzine as Des Grieux. Artistic director emeritus Bruno Bartoletti conducts in the Olivier Tambosi production, which opens Oct. 31.
— Read more at The New York Times

The ant farm of opinion known as the Internet has been famously hospitable to amateur critics of television, film and pop music, commercial art forms that benefit from the notion that your opinion is as valid as my opinion, which is as valid as Roger Ebert's or Richard Roeper's. But even the so-called higher arts have their fan sites and bloggers, dishing on ballet or opera faster than you can say Television Without Pity. And as a group, they're as fractious and celebrity-obsessed as any claque of teen-pop fans. Here's a sampling of digitally published opinion of the Met Opera's recent "Rodelinda" (a "landmark production" starring a radiant Renee Fleming, Anthony Tommasini wrote in The New York Times).
— Read more at The New York Times

Intermezzo: The New England Chamber Opera Series adventurously alternates standard 20th-century chamber operas with new works. The company opened its third season last night with its sixth world premiere, "Verlaine and Rimbaud" by David Paul Gibson. In brief pre-performance remarks Gibson referred to his 15-year friendship with baritone John Whittlesey, founder and artistic director of the company, and thanked him for the opportunity to experience his own music in performance -- "now I can take it home and work some more on it." Let us hope he does, because the piece does need work, but it also has something going for it beyond the sensational subject matter, the erotic and artistic relationship between the established poet Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, the rebel genius 10 years his junior.
— Read more at Boston.com

London/UK Both the director general of the BBC, Mark Thompson, and star of the show David Soul have spoken out in defense of the controversial "Jerry Springer Opera," which the BBC is to air on terrestrial channel BBC 2. The state broadcaster has received thousands of complaint over its plans to show the adaptation of the popular show. Its religious themes and high level of swearing has sparked outrage among campaigners like clean-up group Mediawatch-UK.
— Read more at monstersandcritics.com

After the golden jubilee hoopla of Lyric Opera of Chicago's current 50th anniversary season, the company's 2005-06 season has a decidedly conservative bent. For the first time in 15 years, an American opera will be missing from Lyric's lineup. The quintessential operatic warhorse, Bizet's "Carmen," opens and closes the season, with performances in September and again in March. And, acknowledging the displeasure of some subscribers, Lyric is scrapping its controversial 2000 production of Verdi's "Rigoletto" and replacing it with a new, less cutting-edge production.
— Read more at suntimes.com

CURRENT United States Postal Service regulations are stern: "No living person shall be honored by portrayal on U.S. postage." In Italy, Verdi - whose life unfolded in seemingly fated synchronicity with his country's Risorgimento, or national unity movement - did not rate a stamp until 1951, half a century after his death.
— Read more at The New York Times [Thanks to vilaine fille]

On Saturday, more than 20 talented young singers will be vying for the ultimate recognition in the opera world, the opportunity to sing at the Met. The Iowa District of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions will begin at 1 p.m. in the Martha-Ellen Tye Recital Hall in Music Hall on the ISU campus. The National Council Auditions is a program designed to discover promising young opera singers and assist in the development of their careers. The auditions are held annually in 16 regions of the United States and Canada. Ames Tribune

Postmodern thought promotes mistrust of "grand narratives": versions of events that hew to certain foreseeable patterns. That artists' work develops inexorably from simple to complex, from orthodox to transcendent, with their final creations always topping their early efforts, is one example of a "grand narrative."
— Read more at Newsday.com [Thanks to vilaine fille]

Four years ago Thomas Kelly, professor of music at Yale University, published First Nights: Five Musical Premieres, which gave the social, political and musical backgrounds leading up to the first performances of Monteverdi's Orfeo, Handel's Messiah, Beethoven's Choral Symphony, Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.
— Read more at telegraph.co.uk

For Italian conductor Daniele Gatti, 2004 included opening the Boston Symphony Orchestra's season and a Tchaikovsky recording with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, for which he's been music director since 1996. But for certain aggrieved concertgoers, he's remembered best for an infamous February performance in Naples, Fla., where he blew his stack.
— Read more at ctnow.com

TV standards campaigners have urged the BBC to drop a broadcast of hit stage musical Jerry Springer -- The Opera. The musical has been described as the most expletive-laden programme ever on British television. The BBC said it "contains language and content which won't be to some tastes" but it must cater for all audiences.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

Catch some "LiveBlogging" of last Saturday's Met broadcast over at Sieglinde's Diaries.
Charles T. Downey writes about Chopin's Last Concert in Paris at Ionarts.
Mme. Devereux at Trrill remembers her Top Dozen Most Memorable Moments from the Velvet Seat in 2004.
At vilaine fille we're reminded that Ben Heppner will be at NJPAC on January 29th.
Alex Ross remembers composer Frank Martin at The Rest Is Noise.
Lisa Hirsch ponders Classical Radio in the Bay Area at Iron Tongue of Midnight.

Have a blog entry you'd like us to include? Click here to send us the info...

In 2003, the problems affecting the classical recording business seemed daunting: markets flooded with multiple versions of the standard repertory; declining sales; widespread layoffs in the offices of the major labels; ill-conceived moves by controlling conglomerates to cut losses that only made matters worse. Still, during that sobering year, many companies, to their credit, adjusted their priorities, focused anew on releasing albums that added something of artistic merit to the discography, and generally realized that smaller could in fact be better
— Read more at The New York Times

Boston Baroque presented Pergolesi's operatic farce "La Serva Padrona" ("The Maid Mistress") at its New Year's Eve and First Day Concerts, and it was the perfect offering for the occasion. More than venerable masterworks, an audience looking forward to (or recovering from) the First Night festivities wants an entertainment, in the best sense of the word. It's in the mood for fun.
— Read more at Boston.com

More Americans are going to see live opera now than ever before, but when mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves performs for kids, they're still in for a surprise. "More often than not, I hear from young people, 'I had no idea that that's what the opera was. I had no idea that it was like this. I was expecting something very boring. I was expecting something that I wasn't going to understand at all, and I really had a great time,' " Graves said.
— Read more at ABC News

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer William Bolcom will return to the Indiana University Opera Theater in February for the first collegiate production of A View from the Bridge, his full-scale opera adapted from the Arthur Miller tragedy. It's the second time Bolcom has awarded IU's School of Music the distinction of being the first collegiate program to produce one of his works. In 1996, the IU Opera Theater delivered a critically acclaimed performance of the composer's McTeague.
— Read more at newsinfo.iu.edu

The highest fees paid to artists at the Metropolitan Opera in New York thisa season are USD 15,000 for a performance (around EUR 11,000). Director Stewart Pearce told Helsingin Sanomat that fees at this level are paid to 25 singers and five conductors. Surely Karita Mattila, the Met's celebrated star soprano, who has in recent years been performing in leading roles in Fidelio, Salome and Katya Kabanova, must be among them?
— Read more at Helsingin Sanomat

Johann Strauss Jr.'s sparkling operetta "Die Fledermaus" never fails to delight an audience when it is well done. Its effervescent waltzes and hummable tunes engage even the most languid listener, and its old-fashioned disguises and jokes never seem tiresome. Add to these delights the grand ball in the second act, which includes a vibrant tribute to champagne, and "Die Fledermaus" has become the opera of choice for New Year's Eve.
— Read more at The Register-Guard

Soprano Amanda Forsythe has sung so often with baritone David Kravitz that she was only mildly surprised recently when she Googled her name, and up popped a reference to "Amanda Kravitz." Tonight and tomorrow afternoon, Forsythe is paired with Kravitz again for Pergolesi's delicious little opera "La Serva Padrona" ("The Maid as Mistress"), presented by Boston Baroque as part of its annual New Year's Eve/New Year's Day gala at Sanders Theatre.
— Read more at Boston.com

PITTSFIELD -- Shaker Mountain Performing Arts Festival is suspending operations for at least one year in order to regroup and restructure its administration, according to founding artistic director Denes Striny. Striny hopes to reopen the festival in 2006 with a season that will include a fully mounted production of Wagner's "Ring" Cycle, a dream he has harbored since he began his festival in the summer of 2001 at the Darrow School in New Lebanon, N.Y. The festival has made its home in the Robert Boland Theater at Berkshire Community College since the summer of 2002.
— Read more at Berkshire Eagle Online

Finnish soprano Karita Mattila was named 2005 Musician of the Year at Musical America's annual awards ceremony at Carnegie Hall last night, according to an article on the organization's web site.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

One of the literary world's strangest and most passionate love affairs has become the subject of a new chamber opera that has its world premiere Jan. 7 -- the relationship between the French poets Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud. New England Chamber Opera opens its third season with "Verlaine and Rimbaud" by David Paul Gibson in the David Friend Recital Hall in the Berklee College of Music at 8 p.m. on the 7th, with a repeat performance Jan. 9 at 4 p.m.
— Read more at Boston.com

On a raked stage in a flatly lit, warehouselike building, a woman in a tricorn hat sings voicelessly. From rafters above, another woman in a horned helmet looks on. This could only be the world of opera, where nothing is what it seems. The woman in the tricorn hat is Fiordiligi, or rather, she's Jane Jennings, one of two sopranos who'll sing the role of Fiordiligi in this month's Arizona Opera production of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte. The lady in the horns is actually the image of Brunnhilde on a gigantic banner that lies face down above the rehearsal area, a memento of the company's 1998 production of Wagner's Ring cycle.
— Read more at azcentral.com

January 15, 2005 will see the opening of the Copenhagen Opera house at Dokoen in the Copenhagen Harbour. Naturally, the opening will be marked by a festive concert programme the contents of which is still to be determined in detail, but already the programme for the 2005 opera season has been determined.
— Read more at europeetravel.net

Soprano Renee Fleming, star of opera and concert stages, recording artist and single mother, has added the role of author to her off-stage repertoire. "The book is not the story of my life, but the autobiography of my voice," Fleming, 45, says of her new book "The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer," published in the United States in November. Written with younger singers in mind, her goal was to answer questions like: How do singers know what they know and who teaches them? How do they survive early auditions, rejection and stage fright? Listening to Fleming's seamless singing in the current Metropolitan Opera production of Handel's "Rodelinda" makes it hard to imagine that this confident artist has also experienced some the less glamorous aspects of life behind the footlights: rejection, anxiety and stage fright.
— Read more at metronews.ca

For a recent rehearsal at the Camden Opera House, the cast of "Die Fledermaus" was bundled in hats, scarves, long underwear and gloves. One actor wore a down vest over his character's silk dressing gown. Another had her neck wrapped in a colorful wool scarf. The wintry outfits were not part of the costume design. The opera house was cold. But temperature, these professional singer-actors said, is the only difference between performing in companies in urban centers and the Maine Grand Opera, which will present Johann Strauss' comic opera 7 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 1, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 2, at the Camden Opera House.
— Read more at bangornews.com