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

Kentucky Opera will present two company premieres as part of its 2005-06 season. Tchaikovsky's most celebrated opera, "Eugene Onegin," will open the season Oct. 14 (and 16) in the Kentucky Center's Whitney Hall. Following that is Mark Adamo's adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women," Jan. 27 and 29. This two-act work was initially produced by the Houston Grand Opera, which unveiled the piece in 1998.
— Read more at courier-journal.com

Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women" is an American literary classic. In 1998, American composer Mark Adamo brought the story of the March sisters - Jo, Amy, Beth and Meg - to the opera stage with a Houston premiere. This weekend, Dayton Opera presents the regional premiere of Adamo's "Little Women," directed by Sandra Bernhard, chair of the opera department at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.
— Read more at news.enquirer.com

When the Metropolitan Opera's year-old production of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" returned to the house on Monday night, the cast was filled with names that most operagoers might not know, and also a few that they should. There was a new conductor, Philippe Jordan, and a new stage director, as Gina Lapinski took over for Marthe Keller. The other newness for many was seeing one of opera's longstanding Dons, Samuel Ramey, moving down the social ladder to become opera's favorite butler, Leporello.
— Read more at The New York Times

Opera star Bryn Terfel is to appear at a north Wales charity concert on Wednesday despite falling ill earlier in the week. A live broadcast of Wagner's opera The Valkyrie, due to be screened on BBC Two on Monday, was postponed after he was taken unwell.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

Cincinnati Opera's 2005 Summer Festival features some of the most popular Italian operas of all time - La Boheme (Giacomo Puccini), The Barber of Seville (Gioachino Rossini), and Rigoletto (Giuseppe Verdi). Experience the amore of Italian opera with CCM professor Hilary Poriss and Cincinnati Opera's 2005 Resident Ensemble, who will perform musical excerpts from the summer season.

When: Thursday, March 31, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Arnold's Bar and Grill, 210 East 8th Street, Downtown
Admission: Free, though reservations are requested. Please call (513) 241-2742.

— Learn more at cincinnatiopera.org

Opera Boston will present Gian-Carlo Menotti's "The Consul," Emmanuel Chabrier's operetta "L'Etoile," and Donizetti's "Lucrezia Borgia" for its 2005-2006 season. This is the same number of operas as this season, but the company will expand the number of performances in the Cutler Majestic Theatre from two to three for each production, adding Tuesday evening to the previous Friday night and Sunday afternoon performances. Company music director Gil Rose will lead all three works.
— Read more at Boston.com

An analysis of the Livermore Valley Operas La Traviata is best left to critics, but the enthusiasm of a soldout crowd on the opening day matinee leads to only one conclusion - it was a tremendous success. From the intermission chats to the post-performance cast party buzz, the message was the same, Wow!
— Read more at Inside Bay Area

Milwaukee's Florentine Opera has appointed William Florescu, general director of Lake George Opera, to its own general director post, the company announced. Florescu replaces Dennis Hanthorn, who became general director of Atlanta Opera last year.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

A live broadcast of Wagner's opera The Valkyrie, due to be shown on BBC Two on Monday, was postponed after leading man Bryn Terfel was taken ill. The Welsh baritone was due to sing the role of Wotan in the production, at Covent Garden's Royal Opera House.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

There are so many ways to perform Bizet's "Carmen," and so many of them have been tried, that it's almost noteworthy that both the Metropolitan Opera and the New York City Opera have revived their straight productions of the piece this season. Straight in either sense of the term: heterosexual (something that's hard to separate from Carmen) or by the book (the novel by Prosper MÃ©rimÃ©e). Both productions - Franco Zeffirelli's at the Met, which ran in the fall, and Jonathan Eaton's, which returned to City Opera on Saturday night - avoid gestures like updating the action to the 20th century in favor of simply depicting a sexy Gypsy with castanets seducing a country boy in 19th-century Seville.
— Read more at The New York Times

Deborah Voigt, arguably the leading dramatic soprano singing today, has a gleaming voice that easily soars over the largest Wagnerian orchestra. But big voices tend to come in big bodies, and Ms. Voigt, to her dismay, long fit the stereotype of the oversize opera singer.
— Read more at The New York Times

For young opera artists, the pitfalls are many and the road to success can be an arduous and circuitous one. Journeyman singers may train for a decade, only to spend months or even years in young-artist programs at major houses without ever setting foot onstage. Then there's Garrett Sorenson. Less than a year after leaving Texas Tech University, the affable tenor from Lubbock found himself making his New York debut on the Metropolitan Opera's opening night in October 2002 with Renee Fleming.
— Read more at Boston.com

Opera singer Deborah Voigt, who was sacked from a London production last year for being overweight, has undergone gastric bypass surgery. Voigt told the New York Times she lost 45kg (100lbs) following the operation last June.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

Deep in the heart of a very red state, Houston Grand Opera has just wrapped up a production with so much sexual innuendo and anti-war sentiment that it might have warranted a look by the Justice Department. But even today's most rabid, neo-Legion of Decency types would probably have found themselves savoring Mark Adamo's new opera, Lysistrata, freely adapted from the ancient satire by Aristophanes about Athenian and Spartan women using the ultimate weapon to stop continual wars between their men.
— Read more at baltimoresun.com

In Mark Adamo's Lysistrata, or The Nude Goddess, Houston Grand Opera boldly romps its way through the minefield of domestic and international politics. At once provocative, hilarious, bawdy and tender, Friday's world premiere - the company's 33rd - took the utterly engaged audience in a whirlwind tour through great themes:
— Read more at HoustonChronicle.com [Related news items]

The Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier is supposed to be no older than 32 - sensitive, sensual and emphatically sensible. Richard Strauss told us so. She is seldom played that way. Over the decades, the role has become the specialty of well-upholstered divas of a certain age who stress regal pathos at the expense of erotic allure. It wasn't like that, however, on Friday at the Met, where Angela Denoke basked in revisionist revelation.
— Read more at FT.com

Handel's opera "Orlando" is a seductive broadside against love, and New York City Opera's new production makes this distaste for romance seem irresistible for a while.
— Read more at Newsday.com

William Fred Scott, longtime artistic director of the Atlanta Opera, will found a new vocal training program after he retires next month, AccessNorthGa.com reports. On July 1, Scott will become an artist-in-residence at Brenau University in Gainsville, Georgia, where he will run the newly formed Brenau University International Opera Workshop.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

[Two new operas: Ruders's "Kafka's Trial," Adamo's "Lysistrata."]
The Danish composer Poul Ruders is one of contemporary music's free agents-a lover of sweet melodies with a yen for dark chords, a comedian with a flair for apocalypse. His previous opera, "The Handmaid's Tale," made sonic thunder out of Margaret Atwood's novel of a dystopian America ruled by Christian fundamentalists. His major orchestral pieces-"Thus Saw Saint John," the "Solar Trilogy," a First Symphony subtitled "Rejoicing from the Heavens, Grieving Unto Death"â??unfold hypnotically wayward narratives that reel from antic joy to frozen despair. (There are excellent recordings on the Bridge and Da Capo labels.) Ruders has a special knack for reinventing familiar tonal harmonies and styles; he uses them sometimes to mourn lost worlds, sometimes to suggest otherworldly innocence, sometimes to convey the banality of evil. All these devices are hurled at the audience in his latest work, "Kafka's Trial," which had its premiere on March 12th at the Royal Danish Theatre.
— Read more at The New Yorker

Four young singers were awarded $15,000 scholarships at the finals of the 51st Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions yesterday, the Associated Press reports.
— Read more at PlaybillArts: News

A Filipino is among four rising young opera singers who survived grueling auditions that could enable them to join the famed Metropolitan Opera House.
— Read more at The Manila Times

Cincinnati Opera's 2006 and 2007 seasons will include star-studded casts performing chestnuts from "Tosca" to "Aida," the company premiere of John Adams' "Nixon in China" and Chabrier's fizzy French comedy "L'Etoile" ("The Star"). Besides renowned opera stars such as Aprile Millo, James Morris and Richard Leech, guest conductors will include Kristjan Jarvi (brother of the Cincinnati Symphony's Paavo Jarvi), rising star Xian Zhang and Cincinnati Pops' Erich Kunzel, making his first visit to Cincinnati Opera since 1973.
— Read more at enquirer.com

SCOTTISH Opera is to return to the Edinburgh International Festival with a controversial opera about terrorism two years after its triumph with Wagnerâ??s Ring Cycle. The company, battered by a year of job cuts and tough budget measures, will perform The Death of Klinghoffer, a work inspired by the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro by Palestinian terrorists in 1984.
— Read more at Scotsman.com

An operatic feud at Milan's La Scala came to a head Wednesday when hundreds of workers called for music director Riccardo Muti to resign from the house he has run with an iron baton for almost 20 years. Backstage hands, bassoonists, baritones, ballerinas and others behind La Scala's glamorous image added mutiny to the theatrical ego battles and offstage maneuvering that have shaken the famed opera house for weeks.
— Read more at latimes.com

The producer of Jerry Springer - the Opera has called on regional theatres to book the show, despite objections from a Christian group. Christian Voice wrote to 250 theatres earlier this month urging them to boycott the controversial musical.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

Tobias Picker's "An American Tragedy" will be given its world premiere in December by the Metropolitan Opera, which also will present its first performances of Tchaikovsky's "Mazeppa" next season and new productions of Gounod's "Romeo et Juliette" and Donizetti's "Don Pasquale." The 2005-06 season opens Sept. 19 with a gala, the company said Wednesday. The program will include Act II of Puccini's "Tosca" with Angela Gheorghiu and Bryn Terfel, Act I of Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro" (The Marriage of Figaro) with Terfel, Dwayne Croft, Susan Graham and Isabel Bayrakdarian, and Act III of Saint-Saens' "Samson et Dalila" with Denyce Graves and Placido Domingo, who will sing his record 21st opening night. Met music director James Levine will conduct.
— Read more at Seattle Post-Intelligencer

The central image in Mark Lamos's production of Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" is a traditional Japanese house, magnified to the size of the New York City Opera stage. With its sliding doors, clean lines and open spaces, this set, designed by Michael Yeargan, is the very picture of clarity. And for Butterfly, everything within it - her life with Pinkerton, then the memory of that life and the promise of its resumption - is entirely clear. It's the more complicated world outside that has turned murky, and by avoiding the clutter that often accrues to a "Butterfly" staging, Mr. Lamos has emphasized that tragic delusion.
— Read more at The New York Times

WHAT is acceptable as a subject for opera? Would we countenance, for example, the suffering of a Jew in Auschwitz being put to music? We may say, in an age that denounces moral relativism, that such themes are, if not to our taste, at least not to be banned.
— Read more at Scotsman.com

With Glimmerglass Opera successfully staging underperformed works like Francis Poulenc's "The Dialogues of the Carmelites" in Cooperstown every summer, a second upstate New York opera company that turns out well-done productions of familiar, if overdone, operas is just as an important cultural asset to the region. If Syracuse Opera continues to stage operas as lyrically as they have Gioacchino Rossini's 1816 comic opera "The Barber of Seville," then the niche is theirs and the company can make a credible claim to being more than just upstate New York's only year-round professional opera company.
— Read more at The Oneida Daily Dispatch

The true story of Margaret Garner inspired Toni Morrison to create her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved and, in 1998, director Jonathan Demme adapted Morrisonâ??s work for the screen in a film starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover. Join us for this special screening of the film Beloved and a post-screening discussion. When: Thursday, March 24, 6:00 p.m.
Where: National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, One Freedom Way, Downtown
Admission: Free, though reservations are requested. Please call (513) 241-2742

— Learn more at cincinnatiopera.org

Baritone Thomas Hampson was inducted into the European Academy of Sciences and Art earlier this month, according to an announcement on his web site. The academy is made up of 1,300 top scholars, artists, scientists, and religious leaders. Sponsored by Austria and the European Union, it works to "contribute to the future of Europe and its unity by promoting knowledge, cooperation, and tolerance."
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Victoria Clark in the Goodman Theater's production of The Light in the Piazza photo by Liz Lauren Lincoln Center Theater will be celebrating St. Patrick's Day in Florence, Italy, as previews for the New York premiere of Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas' new musical The Light in the Piazza get underway. April 18 is the opening night for the ambitious work, which has already been seen in stagings at both Seattle's Intiman Theatre and, more recently, at Chicago's Goodman Theatre.
— Read more at Playbill News

Staff at Milan's world-famous La Scala opera house have overwhelmingly called for the resignation of their renowned musical director, Riccardo Muti. More than 700 orchestra members and staff voted against Mr Muti following weeks of conflict over the dismissal of a senior La Scala official.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

Junior Lisa Gabbai doesn't really remember how she began playing violin. Likewise, she can't really tell you what made her switch from that instrument - which she had played since she was eight years old - to one of an entirely different kind: her voice. Lisa Gabbai is an opera singer, a soprano who can sing octaves above any given American Idol. Opera requires a certain level of training, commitment and talent. It's a demanding craft, but for Gabbai, who only began singing in her junior year of high school, it's also soothing.
— Read more at The Tufts Daily

Judging from the inordinate number of Brits in Saturday's audience, word must have got out: Budapest is back as one of the world's greatest opera companies. With superhuman demands on orchestra and leading lady, Shostakovich's 1934 Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk has fought an uphill battle. Personally denounced by Stalin, the opera took more than 40 years to reappear in its original form. Now everybody's doing it, and I cannot think of another suppressed or neglected score more worthy of seizing its rightful place in the standard repertory.
— Read more at FT.com

It was an agonizing decision for a Tea Sipper to consider interviewing an Aggie. True, it's been a long time since the days at the University of Texas and, being a music critic, the jokes about students at Texas A&M University have mutated into jokes about violists.
— Read more at HoustonChronicle.com

Some operas sound out universal themes, while others capture the precise fears and longings of the worlds from which they were born. Strauss's "Rosenkavalier" does both, through the vehicle of a romantic comedy with a rapturous score that has been cherished by opera lovers since its premiere in 1911. It made a successful return to the Metropolitan Opera repertory on Friday in Nathaniel Merrill's popular production, conducted by Donald Runnicles.
— Read more at The New York Times

The Edmonton Opera's new season will feature the familiar and far-out, as announced yesterday by artistic director Brian Deedrick. "It will be wonderful to return to the refurbished Jubilee where we are able to produce opera of the scale and size that Edmonton audiences know and love,'' said general manager Mary Phillips-Rickey. First up is John Estacio's Filumena (opening Nov. 29), which premiered in Calgary in 2003. Set to a text by prize-winning playwright John Murrell, it tells a true story of Italian immigrants living in the Crowsnest Pass in the 1920s, of passion and murder, and of the last woman to be hanged in Alberta.
— Read more at canoe.ca

Toronto -- L'Opera de Montreal plans to break with routine next year by presenting three operas the company has never done before. Emanuel Chabrier's Etoile, Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito and Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex are all new works to the company, which will also perform Montrealer Rene Girard's staging of Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms. The remaining works are Verdi's Aida, Bellini's Norma and Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw, which will be staged by Rene Richard Cyr, director of Cirque du Soleil's erotic Vegas spectacle, Zumanity.
— Read more at theglobeandmail.com

Debates over whether Broadway musicals belong in opera houses generally lead nowhere, except perhaps to the old saw that there are only two kinds of music, good and bad. The latter test is one that Leonard Bernstein's 1944 musical "On the Town" has no difficulty passing, as the English National Opera's snappy new production exuberantly demonstrates. It may not be his greatest score, but the young composer takes the popular musical idioms of his day on a bracing symphonic adventure.
— Read more at iht.com

An expectant skepticism was the order of the day when Florida Grand Opera opened its 63rd season with Verdi's La Traviata in November of 2003. In the biggest gamble yet of the company's much-debated venture to place young singers in leading roles, 27-year-old Leah Partridge was making her debut as Violetta -- arguably the most challenging role in the soprano repertoire, in which a singer must encompass bel canto agility, dramatic weight and lyric flexibility
— Read more at South Florida Sun-Sentinel

The ovations rang long and loud at the conclusion of the Boston Symphony Orchestra's performance of Wagner's ''The Flying Dutchman" Friday night, and music director James Levine and the cast were repeatedly called back to the stage. This was a concert, not a semi-staging, but there was drama both onstage and behind the scenes. Reigning soprano Deborah Voigt had canceled earlier in the day, so the British-American soprano Elizabeth Byrne stepped in to sing the demanding role of Senta without any rehearsal with the orchestra. She displayed remarkable composure and delivered a solid, plucky, professional performance under supremely testing circumstances.
— Read more at Boston.com

When pondering Wagner, the opera stereotype is the first thing that might come to mind: the 600 pound Viking woman screaming her lungs out. And yes, "The Flying Dutchman" is set in Norway, so Vikings would not be completely out of place. However, at the performance of "Flying Dutchman" by the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), this is not all that viewers will get.
— Read more at The Tufts Daily

Opera purists may call it a faustian bargain, but in the first on-stage merger of classical opera and heavy metal the tragic tale of Faust and his existential struggle between good and evil has found an apt musical expression in this small western Norwegian town.
— Read more at designerz.com

The odds of becoming a professional opera singer are akin to those of playing AAA baseball: not good, but not soul-squashingly slim, either. The odds of achieving operatic superstardom are nearly nil. Even a stellar voice is no guarantee of success. It helps, but so do looks and luck and that intangible, uniquely human quality called charisma. A knack for strategic schmoozing can't hurt either. And great hair. Very important, that.
— Read more at suntimes.com

"In a way I feel like I've been an opera composer in disguise all my life and I've finally come out," says Richard Danielpour, sitting at the piano in his Manhattan studio. "At the same time, I'm glad that I've waited all these years. I knew deep down that I had to have all of my craft become second nature. You have to know yourself really well in order to make it work." At 49, it's harvest time for Danielpour. His audience-friendly scores have made him one of the most performed composers of his generation and earned him an impressive bullpen of A-list champions from cellist Yo-Yo Ma to soprano Jessye Norman. He promises to take another great leap forward in May when "Margaret Garner," his much-anticipated first opera, receives its world premiere at the Detroit Opera House.
— Read more at freep.com

At 24, Jonathan Biss is one of the world's most sought-after pianists, boasting a clutch of prestigious awards, an impressive EMI debut CD of Beethoven and Robert Schumann, and the kind of awestruck word of mouth that no puffery can generate. Tuesday's recital at Zankel Hall showed that the fuss is fully warranted, with Biss offering poised, wise-beyond-his-years readings of challenging works.
— Read more at nynewsday.com [thanks vilaine fille]

Irony of fate: Two music dramas involving Grand Inquisitors and public executions are playing at Lincoln Center. In the Met's "Don Carlos," Verdi thunders and weeps, blessing the Inquisition's victims with a heavenly voice. In New York City Opera's "Candide," Leonard Bernstein spins a giddy, sardonic chorus: "Oh what a day/ for an auto-da-f!?" Hooded, abused prisoners stagger across the stage in both shows. Is someone trying to tell us something?
— Read more at Newsday.com [thanks vilaine fille]

The Annapolis Opera will present two performances of Giacomo Puccini's best loved opera, "Madama Butterfly," at 8 p.m. Friday, March 18, and at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 20, at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts, 801 Chase St., Annapolis. The role of Madama Butterfly will be performed by soprano Yali-Marie Williams. This marks Ms. Williams second appearance for the Annapolis Opera. She performed Violetta in "La Traviata" during the opera's 2002-2003 season.
— Read more at HometownAnnapolis.com

As Kentucky Opera prepares to close its current season next weekend with a production of Puccini's "Madama Butterfly," we thought it would be fun to take four operagoers of varying backgrounds, ply them with food and drink (nonalcoholic, in case you're wondering) and have them chat about this peculiar and wonderful art form.
— Read more at courier-journal.com

A heavy-metal version of Gounod's Faust opens tonight in Kristiansund, Norway, the web site iAfrica reports. A local metal band called Pica Fierce has transformed Gounod's music into what is being called the world's first heavy-metal opera. Four heavy-metal musicians will perform with 15 classical musicians from the Kristiansund Opera Sinfonietta.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

WFPL, 89.3, will air an interview with the Kentucky Opera's Pinkerton [Pucinni's Madame Butterfly], tenor Stephen Mark Brown, on Dave Cronen's Off the Cuff. The show airs this Saturday at 8:30 PM and is rebroadcast Sunday, March 13 at 10:30 AM.
— Learn more at http://www.wfpl.org/otc.htm [thanks Alan Brandt]

Noted operatic soprano Deborah Voigt certainly has a following in Maine. The delirious applause and standing ovations at Merrill Auditorium Saturday, which led to four encores, would have done credit to a rock star.
— Read more at mainetoday.com

No opera begins with more tense expectancy than Die Walkure, as Wagner's orchestra depicts the fugitive Siegmund running desperately through a storm. Illustrating this breathtakingly dramatic music with strobe lighting is the first of many shallow theatrical cliches that mar Keith Warner's new staging - an infuriating mixture of the corny and chic, littered with gimmicky special effects (some of which went horribly wrong) to the detriment of grandeur and credibility.
— Read more at Telegraph

AT THE BBC we find ourselves between the trenches in a bitter war. And we have decisions to make. Do you transmit this documentary? Do you censor this feature film? Do you put this guest or this point of view on this discussion programme? Nor is there an obvious "safety first" option: nowadays, we get more complaints if we edit strong language from feature films than if we don't; decisions to withdraw programmes are just as likely to be scrutinised or pilloried as decisions to show them. Every contentious judgment is taken to have a wider meaning.
— Read more at Times Online

The memory was delicious: Women withholding sex to end a war. Surely, thought composer Mark Adamo, an opera lurked in that idea. Fresh from the success of Little Women, which Houston Grand Opera premiered in 1998, he was looking for new material. But when he returned to Lysistrata, the Aristophanes play that premiered in 414 B.C., he found his memory richer than reality.
— Read more at HoustonChronicle.com [Related news items]

The new Covent Garden production of Wagner's "Ring" revolved Saturday night into its second quadrant, with a performance of "Die WalkÃ¼re" every bit as exciting as the "Rheingold" in December. Once again, the excitement was thoroughly and fundamentally musical, its dual sources in the singing and in the pit, where the company's music director, Antonio Pappano, made the score consistently intense and animated.
— Read more at The New York Times

The operatic equivalent of the out-of-town tryout is the first act of opening night; Act II serves in lieu of Broadway's six weeks of previews, and a good opera production hits its stride after intermission. Fortunately, Verdi's "Don Carlo" is a very long piece, and after some initial flapping and gasping at the Met Thursday night, the performance finally plunged into marvelousness and remained immersed to the end.
— Read more at Newsday.com

Visiting critics are giving a mixed reception to Houston Grand Opera's latest world premiere, Lysistrata, or the Nude Goddess. Some have commended aspects of composer/librettist Mark Adamo's follow-up to his popular opera Little Women, but none (so far) have rated it a total success.
— Read more at HoustonChronicle.com

Beethoven's "Fidelio" is an opera about freedom that is shackled by a limited libretto. A great performance can unlock its treasures. A mediocre one can feel like prison, as the Collegiate Chorale's performance on Thursday night at Carnegie Hall underlined. It was a long and murky night, although there were many glints of bright light that tantalizingly shone through.
— Read more at The New York Times

The starter's pistol sounded, the forward leg hit the hurdle, and runner and dream came crashing down together. That was Canadian track star Perdita Felicien in Athens last summer, but as Ben Heppner stared at the agonizing replays on TV, he almost felt as if he were watching himself.
— Read more at The Globe and Mail

It was not so very long ago that the opera world seemed to be facing a cavernous void of world-class tenors. True, there were a handful of gifted artists such as Roberto Alagna and Ben Heppner. Yet the public image of the operatic tenor was largely dominated by the studio-simonized "popera" of Andrea Bocelli, and the increasingly uninspired Three Tenors spectacles.
— Read more at South Florida Sun-Sentinel

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD by Seymour Barab Description: "Grandmother, what a big voice you have!" A lively Little Red and a comical wolf join forces to share playful lessons on the importance of personal safety, proper diet, and good health.
Performance Dates:
Saturday, March 12 ~ 10:30 a.m.
Academy of World Languages
2030 Fairfax Avenue, Evanston

Saturday, April 9 ~ 10:30 a.m.
Villa Madonna Academy
2500 Amsterdam Road
Villa Hills, Northern Kentucky
Tickets: $3 ~ Call (513) 241-2742.
— Learn more at cincinnatiopera.org

The career of Mark Adamo is a small work of art in itself. Mr. Adamo is relatively young, presentable, a writer of imagination and intelligence with enough charm and personal wherewithal to convince substantial companies not only to produce his operas but to televise them nationally. His new piece, "Lysistrata, or the Nude Goddess," had its first performance at the Houston Grand Opera at the Cullen Theater in the Wortham Center on Friday. It will later be taken up by its co-producers, the New York City Opera and Opera Columbus in Ohio.
— Read more at The New York Times

Opera is an art form that many people equate with snootiness, boredom and glass-shattering, high-pitched notes. David Meyer, the new opera studio director at Western Washington University, hopes to dash those stereotypes with "Die Fledermaus."
— Read more at The Bellingham Herald

An understanding of how music-theatre works seems to come naturally to the composer Mark Adamo. His way of finding a drama's emotional nerve and projecting it to an audience is at the root of the success of his 1998 opera Little Women, which has had some 30 engagements in North America. At its world premiere by the Houston Grand Opera, his second opera, Lysistrata, or the Nude Goddess, proved no less effective, even if, or perhaps because, Adamo treats his source - Aristophanes' anti-war satire - as merely a point of departure. His own libretto is really a new play, with the characters fleshed out, in particular the title heroine, who, fed up with war between Athens and Sparta, leads the Greek women in a sex strike.
— Read more at FT.com

Having written a symphony, Howard Shore -- the prolific composer whose music spans from Middle-earth to Howard Hughes' Hollywood days - is now looking to opera. He's working on an opera version of David Cronenberg's horror film The Fly for a 2007 premiere by Los Angeles Opera, a collaboration with Cronenberg and librettist David Henry Wong of M. Butterfly fame.
— Read more at National Post

There is probably no opera composer currently before the public who can match Mark Adamo for cleverness or flexibility. Adamo, 42, scored a huge success with his first stage work, Little Women, in which he also displayed a deft hand as librettist, reducing the episodic Alcott novel to a taut, dramatically effective two hours.
— Read more at South Florida Sun-Sentinel

The voice of Creighton University's president, the vision of an internationally known ceramics artist and more original productions are all part of Opera Omaha's 2005-06 season at the Orpheum Theater. "What the public is going to see is a lot more originality in the creation of each opera," said Joan Desens, the company's executive director. In October, the Rev. John Schlegel, Creighton's president, will perform the off-stage voice of Paul Bunyan in a production of Britten's 20th century opera "Paul Bunyan." Desens said Schlegel loves the opera and the work of W.H. Auden, who wrote the libretto.
— Read more at Omaha.com

Despite the presence of Mozart, Verdi and Tchaikovsky, the State Duma has ordered its cultural committee to examine an experimental new opera by the Bolshoi Theater after one deputy slammed it as pornographic.
— Read more at themoscowtimes.com

Want to learn a little more about opera in a laid-back setting? Indianapolis Opera sponsors an educational program for potential opera fans, especially young professionals.
— Read more at indystar.com

Indianapolis Opera will announce tonight its 2005-06 season, including two company premieres, "The Pearl Fishers" and "Turandot." The company's 30th season will open Oct. 7 and 9 with "The Pearl Fishers," Georges Bizet's tale of best friends who spar over a woman. Opera Executive Director John Pickett said this will be a new production, and his company will be the second to stage it, after the Opera Company of Philadelphia.
— Read more at indystar.com

The Sarasota Opera plans to renovate its stage and orchestra pit, and the improvements could alter the looks of the artistic product. This well-run company's 1,000-seat theatre, built in the 1920s, is an agreeable place for opera and gives the lie to the notion that economic realities require American opera houses to seat thousands. But its stage has practically no depth, a defect especially conspicuous as the company continues its traversal of the Verdi canon, due for completion in 2013.
— Read more at FT.com

Ben Heppner has been astounding audiences in opera houses around the globe for almost 20 years, performing some of the most challenging roles ever written in the most prestigious of venues. This Wednesday, in what is his only scheduled Toronto appearance of 2005, he will perform a special recital to benefit The Lung Association at The Carlu.
— Read more at mirror-guardian.com

We're undeniably in the era of James Levine. The Cincinnati-born, 61-year-old conductor is right now art music's Great Enabler. As music director of the Metropolitan Opera for nearly the last 30 years and in the home stretch of his first season as chief conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, his potential for goosing the possibilities of 21st-century classical music performance is unique.
— Read more at villagevoice.com

The romance between Julius Caesar and Cleopatra has long been considered a love for the ages. So what could have been more romantic for Valentine's Day than retelling this classic love story? Opera Colorado's production of Julius Caesar did just that at its opening-night celebration and gala the Saturday evening of Valentine's Day weekend.
— Read more at Rocky Mountain News

Some 24 centuries after it first was performed to audiences, the Greek play "Lysistrata" has new life as an opera. Billed by Houston Grand Opera as "the original 'Battle of the Sexes,"' "Lysistrata" is named for the title female character who convinces Athenian and Spartan women to withhold sex from their husbands until they stop their yearslong war.
— Read more at Click2Houston.com

Valery Gergiev should go into corporate public relations. Before he took up his post at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, how many people outside Russia could have described the company's style, or what it stood for, or could claim that they were familiar with its performances?
— Read more at FT.com

Opera Colorado will open its new Ellie Caulkins Opera House on September 10 with a celebratory concert and gala, the company announced. Among the singers to be featured in the concert are soprano Renee Fleming, who will give the world premiere of a new work composed for the occasion by Jake Heggie, with lyrics by Terrence McNally. Heggie will accompany Fleming at the piano.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The New York City Opera said Tuesday that it would offer six new productions during its 2005-6 season, including two contemporary works: "The Little Prince" by Rachel Portman and "Lysistrata" by Mark Adamo.
— Read more at The New York Times

The controversial London hit Jerry Springer-The Opera will come to the Broadway stage despite recent protests in the U.K., according to production spokespersons. "While the widely covered but small scale religious protests in the U.K. surrounding Jerry Springer-The Opera have not been helpful in the completion of raising the capital for the Broadway production, they have by no means brought an end to our New York plans," said a spokesman for the New York production in a released statement. "We are looking to complete the finance process over the next six months and are planning a Broadway opening in the first half of 2006."
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Although the most famous musical mad scenes belong to women, opera does not lack its share of crazed gentlemen, including the title role of Handel's Orlando. New York City Opera's production opens on March 20.
— Read more at PlaybillArts [thanks vilaine fille]

On a recent Argentina vacation with his partner and fellow composer John Corigliano, Mark Adamo was finally able to relax and think normally after being obsessed with his opera Lysistrata for the last six years. "I turned to John and I said, 'Gosh, it's so great to be neither catatonic or a maniac.'"
— Read more at South Florida Sun-Sentinel

There are few works that are treasured by opera companies for endurance as much as they are beloved by audiences for the music. Charles Gounod's Faust is one of those titanium-like creations, an opera that usually can prevail over indifferent casting and wayward productions to make an impact and send audience members home happy.
— Read more at South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Like picking a growth stock, the Opera Company of Philadelphia showed shrewd judgment by engaging sopranos (for two of its four 2004/05 productions) who promptly became media darlings.
— Read more at FT.com

A NATIONWIDE tour by the musical Jerry Springer the Opera is in jeopardy with a big investor considering pulling out because of threats by a militant Christian group. The backer, who was to have provided 40% of the funding for the tour, was targeted by Christian Voice, an evangelical group that has condemned the musical -- based on the American television show -- as "filthy and blasphemous".
— Read more at Sunday Times