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

An opera is not supposed to be over until the fat lady sings. Or, in the case of a new work being premiered this week, until an atomic bomb explodes. Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Adams's latest opera ends with the biggest bang of all -- the detonation of the first A-bomb in the New Mexican desert in a test that changed the world.
— Read more at reuters.co.uk

Placido Domingo has been touting his desire to record Wagner's Tristan und Isolde for years, and now it has finally happened. The new EMI recording, conducted by Antonio Pappano and co-starring Nina Stemme, has been bruited around the world as "the last big-name studio recording of an opera ever" ? not just on the EMI label, but period.Is this serious or just a new marketing ploy for a triangular love story that dates back to the 12th century? Critics Scott Cantrell and Lawson Taitte discuss the merits of the chatter ? and the recording ? in this e-mail exchange.
— Read more at WFAA.com

Back in his days with Pink Floyd, Roger Waters took on the big issues of life. In high-concept projects like "The Dark Side of the Moon" and "The Wall," he grappled with such challenging topics as social oppression, the long shadows of war, the interplay of money and power, and the abuse of authority. Since 1989, Waters wrestled with many of those same concerns in a genre new to him: an opera, set during the French Revolution. The result, "Ca Ira," arrives in stores Tuesday from Columbia/Sony BMG Masterworks. Spread over two Super Audio CDs and accompanied by a "making of" DVD and a lavish 60-page booklet, the recording features a first-rate cast, including bass baritone Bryn Terfel, soprano Ying Huang and tenor Paul Groves.
— Read more at suntimes.com

Chinese conductor Xian Zhang had planned to write her doctoral dissertation for the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music on opera conducting. Now she's not so sure. She may write it on New York Philharmonic music director Lorin Maazel's new opera "1984" instead. "I hope that it will help people later to know this opera," said Zhang, who has come to know it well since its controversial world premiere in May in London.
— Read more at The Cincinnati Post

Talk about getting a big name. Opera Omaha opens its 2005-06 season with Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden's "Paul Bunyan." If Paul Bunyan, the legendary giant lumberjack who strode across frontier America, isn't enough, the opera has added another big name, to Omahans anyhow, landing the Rev. John Schlegel, president of Creighton University, to play the unseen Bunyan in a speaking role. The rest of the cast includes singing trees, wild geese, cowboy cooks, Swedish loggers, cats on rollerskates, a tap-dancing Western Union boy, a blues quartet, a country western balladeer, a chorus of lumberjacks, farmers and frontier women and Paul's daughter, "Tiny," played by Mara Bonde.
— Read more at Omaha.com

[Ex-Pink Floyd legend Roger Waters tells Jonathan Wingate about his latest project]
Although his reputation as a difficult interviewee certainly precedes him, Roger Waters seems in an upbeat mood when we meet to discuss his latest project. The only problem is that while keen to talk up Ça Ira, Pink Floyd's former creative leader is actually more interested in monitoring England's progress in the final Test.
— Read more at Telegraph

The girls in Bruce Ramsdell's class were captivated. The women on the Save Our Fine Arts of Winona committee almost swooned. Ruth Marg remembers Marc Schreiner as a scrawny 97-pound teenager. Today he's an operatic pop star - at least in the eyes of Winona's fairer sex - and a hunk.
— Read more at Winona Daily News

[Appearing almost ministerial in a gown of flowing red chiffon, Naples opera diva Steffanie Pearce stood solo at the Norris Community Theatre last month to announce what promises to be the biggest undertaking of her entire career: the launching of a new, self-producing opera company, Opera Naples (ON).]
The occasion, the finale production of the hugely successful Sizzling Summer Season of the Naples Opera Society (NOS), under the artistic direction of president Dr. Ron Bowman, could not have been more perfectly coordinated. Throughout the season, NOS showcased many of the young soloists from the Steffanie Pearce Studio and Bowman took great relish in baiting the audience that a surprise, historic announcement would be made at intermission. When he presented Pearce, the expectant audience welcomed her warmly.
— Read more at Naples Sun Times

The Scottish Opera is looking to appoint a new chorus director even though it recently laid off its chorus, the Herald reports. According to the Herald, an advertisement for the position was placed in Opera magazine.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Chris Sarandon has taken over the role of the debonair father, Senor Naccarelli, in "The Light in the Piazza," replacing Mark Harelik in the Lincoln Center Theater production. Sarandon is best-remembered for his Academy Award-nominated performance in "Dog Day Afternoon," playing Al Pacino's boyfriend. Among his other films are "The Princess Bride," "Fright Night" and "Protocol."
— Read more at miami.com

With "Ça Ira," his new opera about the French Revolution, just released on a Sony Classical recording, Roger Waters joins a parade of rock stars who apparently harbor dreams of tuxedos and podiums. Sir Paul McCartney has written a handful of orchestral and choral works, large and small. Stewart Copeland, of the Police, beat Mr. Waters to the punch with his own opera, "Holy Blood and Crescent Moon." Billy Joel has recorded an album's worth of piano pieces, and Elvis Costello, with a ballet behind him, has written an opera as well.
— Read more at nytimes.com

An opera scored for only 37 instruments that swells with Wagnerian voluptuousness, a would-be train-wreck of an entertainment that grapples with the headiest mysteries of art and desire: Richard Strauss' "Ariadne auf Naxos" traffics in paradox. "Ariadne" (1912, revised 1916) came late to the Metropolitan Opera, in 1962, but the company has always done right by this captivating work. Over the past decade, soprano Deborah Voigt and Met music director James Levine have figured in many a superb "Ariadne." Saturday's premiere carried on the tradition of excellence with a largely new cast and new conductor.
— Read more at nynewsday.com [thanks viliane-fille]

An assortment of 19th century European nobility sequestered in a sumptuous hotel: What could be the setup for a murder mystery or a reality show serves equally well for a comic opera, Rossini's "Il Viaggio a Reims." The title speaks of a voyage, but these pampered travelers aren't going anywhere: There's a shortage of horses, it seems. Instead, they while away a couple of acts in vocal arabesques. "Viaggio" is the Kate Moss of operas - long and thin, with a manic edge. It's a tribute, then, to director James Robinson and the cavorting ensemble that New York City Opera's production left the audience charmed and chuckling.
— Read more at Newsday.com

Before World War II, Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) belonged, with Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg, to the Holy Trinity of avant-garde composers. ``Cardillac,'' his fourth stage work, was, after its Dresden premiere in 1926, mounted by Vienna, Prague, Berlin and other opera houses.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

It's been a long time since Melbourne has seen a season of Benjamin Britten's chamber opera, The Rape of Lucretia - 34 years, in fact. One of the founders of Melbourne's Lyric Opera, Rod Scanlon, suspects much of the reason lies with the subject.
— Read more at theage.com.au

The Utah Symphony and Opera is ahead of schedule in its three-year plan for financial recovery, the organization announced this week. US&O has struggled since it was created by the merger of Utah Opera and the Utah Symphony in 2002, posting deficits of $1.8 million in 2003 and $1.6 million in 2004. Earlier this year, the group adopted a recovery plan calling for cuts in staff pay and expenses as well as a $10,000 donation from each of the 40 board members. Under the plan, the US&O projected a $571,000 deficit for the just-completed 2005 fiscal year, a $415,000 deficit in 2006, and a surplus in 2007.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters is the creator of numerous concept albums and "operatic" projects including the rock opera "The Wall." Now he's extended his horizons even further, writing his first opera. Called "Ca Ira," it is set during early years of the French revolution; characters include Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI, and Marie Marianne. The CD was released yesterday, and Roger Waters joins us to discuss its genesis. Also on the show, Joseph Arthur. He combines visual arts and vocal artistry to create records that combine his vision as a songwriter and a painter. The singer-songwriter stops by to perform selections from his latest recording.
— Read more at WNYC - Soundcheck

Pal Christian Moe, the former artistic administrator of the Paris Opera, has joined the Lyric Opera of Chicago as artistic advisor, the Lyric announced. Moe will remained based in Europe, where he will evaluate productions and singers for the Lyric, but he will travel to Chicago four times each year for planning sessions with general director William Mason and others.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The National Endowment for the Arts has announced the creation of a program that will send performances of opera and musical theater to military bases around the country. The tour, called "Great American Voices Military Base Tour: Unforgettable Melodies From Opera and Broadway" and produced in a partnership with the department of defense, will involve 24 professional opera companies performing at 39 military bases. The program includes excerpts from operas by Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, Gounod, Copland, Bernstein, and others.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Giuseppe Albanese presents "Viva Verdi," the fourth and final audio-visual lecture in his four-part "Joy of Opera" series. The Rutland Osher Lifelong Learning session will be from 1:30 to 3 p.m. Friday, Sept. 30, at the Godnick Adult Center.
— Read more at Rutland Herald

Since 1993, when she first sang the title role of Richard Strauss's "Ariadne auf Naxos" at the Metropolitan Opera, the soprano Deborah Voigt has pretty much owned the role at the house. But Ms. Voigt has other challenges on the horizon now. So the company brought back its alluring Elijah Moshinsky production of this Strauss favorite on Saturday afternoon with the Lithuanian soprano Violeta Urmana.
— Read more at New York Times

The days of the fat opera singer are waning. Opera has become an increasingly visual medium, because of the influence of television and film, and directors want singers to look the part, not just sing it. They now demand more physical prowess from performers ? a swordfight should resemble a swordfight, not a couple of guys vaguely lunging at each other. But singers who have jumped on the treadmill have discovered something else ? being fit makes them better singers. It's why mezzo-soprano Milena Kitic is in the basement gym of her expansive Pasadena, Calif., home gearing up for an intense hourlong workout with her trainer.
— Read more at mcall.com

Ca Ira, a new opera by rock star Roger Waters, was released on CD by Sony BMG today.
The recording features baritone Bryn Terfel, tenor Paul Groves, and other singers from the opera world.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The Utah Symphony and Opera announced Monday that it is climbing its way back into the black, just months after acknowledging that it was at the brink of financial crisis. "This is a pretty happy occasion," said Frank Joklik, US&O lifetime trustee. The organization is still operating with a deficit, but a much smaller one than was anticipated last spring, when "the outlook for the symphony and opera wasn't all that rosy."
— Read more at Salt Lake Tribune

Sony BMG is auditioning British teenagers for a new classical crossover group, the Scotsman reports. The record company placed an ad in the Stage, an industry newspaper, that read, "Are you the next Aled Jones or Charlotte Church? One of the UK's biggest record labels is looking for boys and girls aged 10-14 to form the next classical crossover band."
— Read more at PlaybillArts

If the Carmen now on view at Lyric Opera were any hotter, the company would have to station a fire marshal backstage at the Civic Opera House. Indeed, by building its revival of Bizet's ever-popular "Carmen" around the formidably alluring Denyce Graves, today's Carmen of choice, the Lyric came up with the best possible solution to the problem of making a thrice-familiar opera appear fresh
— Read more at Metromix

A FORMER chairman of both Scottish Ballet and Scottish Opera will today warn Jack McConnell that unless urgent action is taken on funding, Scotland could be forced to merge its national opera company with an English company to survive. In an address in Edinburgh today, Duncan McGhie will argue that Scotland should be funding its own opera and that a potential merger with Opera North in Leeds would be a "worst-case scenario".
— Read more at Scotsman.com

An Australian iteration of the popular British show, Operatunity, in which amateur hopefuls have the chance to perform before a panel of judges and win a contract with a major opera company, will come to televisions tuned in to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation sometime next year.
— Read more at metoperafamily.org/operanews

Opera Proibita (Forbidden Opera) is no Adam and Eve story. But it is, thanks to Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, an introduction to some of the extraordinary music written in Rome at the beginning of the 18th century. In the first decade, the pope banned public theatrical productions, including opera.
— Read more at HoustonChronicle.com

[Adams and Peter Sellars collaborate on the dramatic opera opening in LA next week]
'Doctor Atomic' is the long awaited new opera by John Adams and Peter Sellars. The premiere will take place on October 1 at the San Francisco Opera conducted by Donald Runnicles. The world premiere performance will feature a leading cast, which includes Gerald Finley and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson as scientist Robert Oppenheimer and his wife Kitty.
— Read more at soundgenerator.com

[The mighty Met inaugurated its season last Monday with the usual brouhaha, conspicuous social consumption and some operatic vaudeville, writes Martin Bernheimer.]
The first item on the programme - a bit of this and a bit of that - was Act One of Le Nozze di Figaro, with Bryn Terfel impersonating the amiable former barber of Seville and James Levine, the resident übermaestro, serving Mozart in the pit.
— Read more at FT.com

Fifty years later, the memory remains fresh in John Adams' mind. He'd crawled into bed, an 8-year-old boy snug and secure in his idyllic New Hampshire village, switched off the light, then heard a plane buzzing high overhead. "I wondered if that was the Russians coming to drop a nuclear bomb on us,'' recalled Adams, the celebrated Berkeley composer whose potent new opera, "Doctor Atomic,'' ponders the moral, political and spiritual complexities of the American decision to make the first atomic bomb and drop it on Japan at the end of World War II.
— Read more at sfgate.com

Sir Isaiah Berlin deemed Verdi the last of the great "naive" composers: simple, un-self-conscious, concealed by his work. There is truth to Sir Isaiah's claim, but it withers before the bittersweet fancy of "Falstaff" (1893), crafted by the 79-year-old Verdi as his farewell to the stage. As fleet and elusive as quicksilver, "Falstaff" is art about art. Its protagonist is "not only witty in [himself], but the cause that wit is in other men." Its last act reaches back to opera's origins, as Sir John, poked and thrashed by Windsor's merry wives, evokes Orpheus torn apart by the Bacchantes. And Verdi's score makes learned sport of everything from his own "Otello" (for Master Ford's jealous rage) to the fugues, scherzos and minuets that had been the stuff of European music for centuries.
— Read more at nynewsday.com [thanks vilaine-fille]

The curtain has not yet risen on "Doctor Atomic," but the work has already started arguments at the American Physical Society, founded in 1899 "to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics." And here things had started so well. Before assuming the presidency of the society, Marvin L. Cohen lobbied for the group to endorse the work, which was composed by John Adams and features a libretto by Peter Sellars. "When operas are good, they last an incredibly long time," Mr. Cohen said recently from his office at the University of California, Berkeley. "In 200 years, 'Doctor Atomic' may be the historical memory of the Manhattan Project."
— Read more at New York Times

"Are you ready to have some fun?" the director Francesca Zambello asked one day in late June as she entered a rehearsal hall at the New York State Theater, bestowing a round of hugs. But this was serious business - heart-pounding, stomach-churning business - to the seasoned performers waiting to audition, most of them barely out of middle school but already flaunting full-page credentials on the backs of their head shots. At stake were the lead children's roles, the Prince and the Rose, in the New York City Opera production of "The Little Prince." Adapted from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's beloved tale of a pilot downed in the Sahara and the golden-locked boy from a far-off planet who teaches him the secret of life, "The Little Prince," with music by Rachel Portman, libretto by Nicholas Wright and an original production by Ms. Zambello, will have its New York premiere on Nov. 12.
— Read more at New York Times

In the breathless prose of the press agent, the Carnegie Hall recital debut of the soprano Aprile Millo was to be a "fascinating collision" of the worlds of classical music and rock 'n' roll - mainly because the famed rock promoter Ron Delsener was presenting it. Collision is right. Mr. Delsener's office announced yesterday that the concert, scheduled for Oct. 14, had been canceled after Ms. Millo had declined to sing "crossover" music.
— Read more at New York Times

I am often asked how I got my start in opera, and indeed what tips I might have for those seeking some measure of the starlight I've basked in. People will tell you that years of vocal training are necessary, as well as more than a few lucky breaks. These are the same people whose mouths drop open when they hear that the only thing required is a few weeks of dedicated work at Red Lobster. Not Vienna or Milan but Ronkonkoma or Sioux Falls should be your proving ground. One might see lightning strike in Toledo or Secaucus, site of the newest member of the Red Lobster family (still hiring at press time). Another will follow in my footsteps, earning his operatic chops just off Highway 290 in Houston.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

San Francisco Opera has announced that its world premiere production of John Adams' new opera, Doctor Atomic, based on Manhattan Project physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer's development of the atomic bomb, has undergone yet another cast change. The company announced on Friday that the role of Robert Wilson will be sung by tenor Thomas Glenn, and not Tom Randle as had been previously announced.
— Read more at Opera News

Thomas Meehan has had a dream career. Actually, he's had several. His first time writing for television - a 1970 special for Anne Bancroft - he won an Emmy Award. His first time writing for Broadway - 1977's "Annie" - he won a Tony Award. But after writing some movies ("To Be or Not to Be," "Spaceballs") and a dry spell of shows that didn't pan out and movies that didn't get made, he won Tonys for "The Producers" in 2001 and "Hairspray" in 2003.
— Read more at thejournalnews.com

Diana Damrau smiled, giggled and pranced around the stage as her brilliant coloratura filled the Metropolitan Opera House. She needed only a few notes to show she has a big future. The 34-year-old German soprano made her Met debut Saturday as saucy Zerbinetta in the first performance this season of Strauss' "Ariadne auf Naxos," and when she finished her big second-act aria, "Grossmaechtige Prinzessin," she was rewarded with a 70-second cheering ovation.
— Read more at ABC News

There is a special buzz about the Boston Symphony Orchestra as it opens its 125th season, and that's because James Levine is entering his second season as music director. Already Levine has brought the orchestra to a new level of technical and insightful excellence. Because he is the leading American conductor of his generation and a major international figure, he has also attracted some of the most important soloists of our day, particularly singers. January's performances of Beethoven's ''Missa Solemnis," for example, feature four of the greatest singers in the world: soprano Deborah Voigt, mezzo Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, tenor Ben Heppner, and bass Rene Pape.
— Read more at The Boston Globe

"Is she decent?" asked Lyric Opera artistic director Bill Mason. Indeed, the star of Lyric Opera's opening night, Denyce Graves, was fully robed in her dressing room, submitting to makeup artists and hairstylists while her ever-present mother and toddler daughter looked on. Mason popped his head in and bid Graves -- the sexually exuberant Carmen of Lyric Opera's opening night Saturday -- a simple, "Have fun." That she did, writhing and sweating and seducing both poor Jose and the 3,560-strong audience. (Observed Lake Forest's philanthropic whirlwind Maureen Smith at intermission: "Isn't she a babe-a-tooti?!")
— Read more at Chicago Tribune

As bassist/singer/songwriter for Pink Floyd and in his solo work, Roger Waters has long been known for tackling ambitious projects with grand gestures and meticulous detail. So it shouldn't surprise that his new opera about the French Revolution was in development longer than the revolution itself.
— Read more at news.yahoo.com

The gadget, as the scientists are calling it, has been hoisted up its tower. Gen. Leslie Groves, the Army commander of the Manhattan Project, is beating up on the weatherman. Thunderheads have materialized from nowhere, threatening to set off the blast too soon. "The test will proceed as scheduled," Groves insists. "I demand a signed weather forecast. I warn you, if you are wrong, I will hang you."

The test in question - code name, Trinity - is the detonation of the first atomic bomb. And no one knows how it will go: the atmosphere itself could catch fire, scorching the planet, singeing the blue from the sky.

This glimpse may convey the apocalyptic suspense of the first-act finale of "Doctor Atomic," John Adams's new opera, his third, opening on Saturday night at the San Francisco Opera. The libretto is the handiwork of Peter Sellars, Mr. Adams's longtime collaborator, on board as director, as he was for "Nixon in China" (1987) and "The Death of Klinghoffer" (1991).
— Read more at New York Times

The role of Tristan in Richard Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" is generally -- and correctly -- considered the most strenuous part for tenor in the standard operatic repertory. The man originally intended to sing the first performance, George Ander, who had previously created the role of Wagner's Lohengrin, went mad while studying the part, and Ander's replacement, Ludwig Schnorr, died of a heart attack a month after the premiere, at the age of 29.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

[Andrew O'Hagan on why opera is not the kind of drama he can believe in when set in a modern context]
The heart lifts whenever the great opera houses try their hands at something modern. But why does it lift? Why are we so married to the notion that the arts must go forward? We are always scampering after something new and progressive, perhaps to feel refreshed, perhaps to see our own time's reflection, but the classic operas require no updating. They only require the constant attention of perfection-seekers, players and listeners who want to hear them better and see them manifested as something more true to themselves. Wagner's work alone could keep us busy with that for life, so why do we persistently want to drag opera's scale and dramatic values into an age that has no instinct for them?
— Read more at Telegraph

If there is one person who knows and respects mud, it is Senanu Agbley. Two days before Hurricane Katrina hit, Mr. Agbley, a 28-year-old marine engineer from Ghana, sailed into Atchafalaya Bay near Morgan City, La., to install a mud-measuring sensor that would let him build a computer model of the changing coastline.
— Read more at New York Times

Toledo Opera is the first area organization out of the blocks this fall as classical musicians worldwide begin a season celebrating the 250th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 1756 birth.
— Read more at toledoblade.com

The Springfield Opera Board of Directors announced it will replace the opera?s full-time executive director position with a part-time contracted artistic director position to cut costs. Executive Director Dr. Janice Fulbright will fill the new position. She joined the opera staff in 2004.
— Read more at Springfield Business Journal

It was a little bit opera, a little bit jazz and blues. Whatever the label, the talented voices of Three Mo' Tenors were delightful and innovative in a benefit performance for the Metropolitan Orlando Urban League yesterday at Carr Performing Arts Centre. The broader idea behind the show is to elevate the stature of African American tenors in the operatic world, but the real payoff for the audience was the rich array of music that ranges from Verdi to Alicia Keys. Delivered by these expressive, operatically trained voices, there's an emotional thread that unites it all: Passion.
— Read more at OrlandoSentinel.com

An opera makes its world premiere in the 2005 New York Musical Theatre Festival Sept. 25, when Don Imbroglio - billed as "an opera you can't refuse" - begins at the Lion Theatre Off-Broadway. Set in the world of the Italian mob scene, the show is already proving to be an offer theatregoers can't refuse: It's sold out.
— Read more at Playbill News

[ Fresh scandal from fraught fashionistas]
Rainer Werner Fassbinder's play The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant has been variously dubbed a lesbian love-story, a high-camp tragi-comedy, a social satire, and a critique of the (male) gay lifestyle. Cold and claustrophobic in its cinematic incarnation, this story of a bisexual fashion designer on the verge of a nervous breakdown is the very stuff of opera: a tale of lust, ambition, monstrous egos, and preposterous costumes. That the British premiere of Gerald Barry's adaptation coincided with the excesses of London Fashion Week is kismet.
— Read more at Independent Online

Don Jose finally got to be a hero; or at least the tenor singing him did. As the male lead in Bizet's "Carmen," American Mark Thomsen not only made his Lyric Opera of Chicago debut Saturday night, but he did it on the season's opening night - and as a last-minute substitute for the billed Neil Shicoff, who was recovering from laryngitis.
— Read more at belleville.com

The Metropolitan Opera's current production of Massenet's "Manon" has appeared only fleetingly, like some exotic bird with an odd migratory path. After its initial run in 1987, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's staging was sent into storage for a decade, turning up again in 1997 and 2001. It returned to the Met on Tuesday evening, with Renée Fleming in the title role and Marcelo Álvarez as the Chevalier des Grieux.
— Read more at New York Times

The opening-night performance of Lyric Opera of Chicago?s performance of Carmen will feature tenor Mark Thomsen instead of Neil Shicoff in the role of Don José. Shicoff is recovering from laryngitis, the company said, and hopes to appear in his other scheduled performances of the opera.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The Cleveland Orchestra opens its 2005-06 season, its 75th at Severance Hall, with a concert tonight featuring Brahms' Academic Festival Overture, Ives' Second Symphony, and Brahms' First Symphony. Music director Franz Welser-Möst conducts.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli's Opera Proibita made its first appearance on the Billboard classical chart this week at number one. Bartoli's album is a collection of music banned by the Catholic Church in 18th-century Rome; it includes works by Handel, Scarlatti, and Caldera. Conductor Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre accompany the singer.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Don Giovanni -- Listen to the ladies. One of the most amazing aspects of this colossal masterpiece, arguably the greatest opera ever written, is the way Mozart handles the female roles.
— Read more at citypaper.net

Opera Colorado President and General Director Peter Russell welcomed an impressive roster of opera artists to the grand opening gala for the new Ellie Caulkins Opera House. But the shining star of the night was Denver's "First Lady of Opera," Ellie Caulkins, for whom the $92 million facility was named.
— Read more at Rocky Mountain News

An imperiled British tour of trash TV-inspired musical Jerry Springer -- The Opera is to go ahead despite protests by a Christian group, producers say. This year, several regional U.K. theaters dropped plans to schedule the show after it was targeted by a small but vocal group, Christian Voice. The organization condemned the play -- which features a cast of strippers, transvestites, dancing Ku Klux Klansmen and a diaper-wearing Jesus Christ -- as "filth and blasphemy."
— Read more at OrlandoSentinel.com

The Metropolitan Opera's opening night, always a deluxe version of the old dinner-and-a-show combo, became more of an opera fair this year, a chance to demonstrate the company's most popular decors and powerful superpowered singers. The company rolled out one act each of three different operas - Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro," Verdi's "Tosca" and Saint-Saens' "Samson et Dalila" - but what the evening lacked in cogency, it made up in sheer impressiveness.
— Read more at newsday.com

By all rights, Giuseppe Verdi's "I Vespri Siciliani" ("The Sicilian Vespers") ought to be better-known than it is. This five-act opera is filled with Verdi's usual virtues -- sturdy melodies, sumptuous ensembles, fierce dramatic intelligence and plentiful opportunities for a stage director to indulge in spectacle. Yet it is more highly regarded among musicians and scholars than it has ever been by the general public -- "Vespri" (1855) is the least performed of all the operas Verdi wrote in the half-century after "Rigoletto" established him as the most significant force in Italian music since Rossini.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

"Manon" is another feather is Renee Fleming's cap - or more precisely, her hair: a big red feather in the third act and a white plume in the fourth. Singing and acting with touching passion, Fleming commands the stage in Massenet's story of the rise and fall of the heroine, who captivates Parisian aristocracy with her unmatched beauty.
— Read more at timesleader.com [Related news items]

Atlanta Symphony Orchestra music director Robert Spano and principal guest conductor Donald Runnicles have extended their contracts with the orchestra by two years, through the 2008?09 season, ASO officials have announced. Spano's contract calls for a minimum 14 weeks on the podium each year, with additional year-round administrative and fund-raising duties. Runnicles, whose main job is music director of the San Francisco Opera, will continue to conduct the ASO six weeks a year.
— Read more at andante.com

Jerome Hynes, the chief executive of Wexford Opera Festival and vice-chairman of the Irish Arts Council, has died aged 45. Hynes collapsed on Sunday night while addressing staff and performers at an event introducing the festival?s incoming director David Agler.
— Read more at The Stage Online

Any "nature vs. nurture" debate about whether Italians have singing in their blood should include Bruno Caproni. Now in his 40s, Caproni has established himself as one of the world's leading Rigolettos and a baritone who frequently appears at Covent Garden, La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera. His voice is described as being a beautiful, Italian bel canto. But things get confusing when you hear him speak.
— Read more at post-gazette.com

"The Italian Girl in Algiers" may have been the perfect choice for the San Francisco Opera's season-opening gala. Rossini's bel canto comedy is fleet, effervescent and full of toe-tapping tunes; and with Olga Borodina in the title role, Saturday's opening at the War Memorial Opera House boasted the kind of singer who can turn a trifle into a memorable night at the opera. Appearing as Isabella, the plucky heroine who finds herself stranded -- and romantically entangled -- in a strange land, Borodina was nothing short of ideal. The Russian mezzo-soprano gave the gala crowd all that they bargained for, and then some: when this Isabella says she has what it takes to tame any man, she makes good on the claim with looks, charm and seemingly unlimited vocal power.
— Read more at MercuryNews.com

Figaro prepared for his marriage, Tosca stabbed the villain in the heart, and a shorn Samson regained his strength just long enough to bring the temple crashing down on the Philistines. Oh, and along the way the Metropolitan Opera kicked off its 2005-06 season Monday, and Placido Domingo extended his own record by performing in his 21st opening night. (Enrico Caruso managed only 17.) The gala audience, which paid up to $1,000 a ticket, had to wait quite a while to hear Domingo. In a program that consisted of three acts from three different operas, his appearance in Act III of Saint-Saens' "Samson et Dalila" marked the finale.
— Read more at ABC News

PAMELA ROSENBERG joined the San Francisco Opera in 2001 with her signature piece, a smutty, misogynistic production of Handel's "Alcina," as a calling card. Undercast for the large War Memorial and boasting more dirty business than most porn tapes, it turned off more opera fans than it enraptured. Yet it is always a mistake to typecast an impresario, so if "Alcina" was a disappointment, Rosenberg's new production of Handel's "Rodelinda," which had its SFO premiere Saturday night, was a triumph.
— Read more at Inside Bay Area

N A HUGELY ambitious undertaking, tiny Oakland Opera Theater is producing an unusual, fascinating and rewarding version of Philip Glass' "La Belle et la Bete." Not your usual opera venue, the company's Oakland Metro home is located in a small, plain building, next to an "adult superstore" on Broadway, across the street from the picturesque and funky E&J Barbecue.
— Read more at Inside Bay Area

London's Royal Opera House said it has removed the name of troubled philanthropist Alberto Vilar from the building's spectacular atrium after he failed to honor a multimillion-dollar pledge. The decision follows a breakdown in the relationship between Britain's premier opera company and the Cuban-born financier, who was arrested in New York in May on charges of business fraud. Vilar, 64, has pleaded not guilty to those charges.
— Read more at Metromix

An imperilled British tour of the trash TV-inspired musical Jerry Springer -- The Opera is to go ahead despite protests by an evangelical Christian group, the show's producers said Tuesday. Earlier this year, several regional theatres dropped plans to schedule the raucous show after it was targeted by a tiny but vocal group, Christian Voice. The organization condemned the play -- which features a cast of strippers, transvestites, dancing Ku Klux Klansmen and a diaper-wearing Jesus Christ who says he is a "bit gay'' -- as "filth and blasphemy" and picketed the London theatre where it was running.
— Read more at www.ctv.ca

Skirball Center at NYU will present this week only the world premiere of Mabou Mines RED BEADS - a large-scale, highly theatrical and imaginative new music theater piece created by Lee Breuer, puppeteer Basil Twist, composer Ushio Torikai and featuring Ruth Maleczech, Rob Besserer and Clove Galilee.
The company of 85 includes an orchestra of 10, a singing chorus of 24, a "whisper" chorus of two dozen and two dozen puppeteers. Nearly 30 of the company are NYU students, faculty or alums.
There will be only four performances of this work in New York City, from September 20 - 24 (Tuesday at 7:30 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., and Saturday at 7 p.m.).
— Read more at http://www.skirballcenter.nyu.edu

The Metropolitan Opera opened its season on Monday night, which meant a traditional gala evening of people-watching, celebrity-spotting (Sean Connery was unmistakable in the general manager's box) and, for patrons who paid the top ticket price of $1,000, a post-performance dinner on the grand tier. Oh, and there was also opera, of course, a sampling of the season to come, with performances of Act I of Mozart's "Nozze di Figaro," Act II of Puccini's "Tosca" and Act III of Saint-Saëns's "Samson et Dalila," all conducted by the Met's music director, James Levine.
— Read more at nytimes.com

The EMI label's new version of "Tristan und Isolde," starring Plácido Domingo, has received weirdly apocalyptic advance publicity: it has been described as the final large-scale opera recording in history. "Twilight of the CD Gods? A Studio ?Tristan' May Be the Last Ever," read a headline in the Times. With its opulent production values and showy cameos in minor roles?Ian Bostridge as the Shepherd; Rolando Villazón, Domingo's heir apparent in the Italian tenor repertory, as the Young Seaman?the set is a throwback to the golden age of the nineteen-fifties and sixties, when EMI summoned all-star casts to make generally unsurpassed recordings of "Don Giovanni," "The Magic Flute," "Fidelio," "Tosca," and, under the helm of Wilhelm Furtwängler, "Tristan." They don't make them like that anymore, but they are still making them. Virgin Classics, which is distributed by EMI, just issued a glamorous recording of Vivaldi's previously unknown "Bajazet." Decca is releasing a sumptuous studio recording of Richard Strauss's "Daphne," with Renée Fleming in the title role. There's even a competing "Tristan" out, a feisty budget effort from the Naxos label. Where did the end-ofeverything story about EMI's "Tristan" get started? Probably in EMI's publicity department. Only in classical music would the alleged death of a genre be used to hype it.
— Read more at Alex Ross: The New Yorker

At first blush, Giuseppe Verdi's rarely performed "I Vespri Siciliani" seems a curious choice for opening the Washington National Opera's gala Golden Anniversary season. It's long and expensive to mount. Its sometimes unwieldy libretto has not won many partisans over the years. And its lead characters often seem like pawns in a plot run completely amok. But the music is heroic, the arias luminous, and the choral work often spine-tingling.
— Read more at The Washington Times

George Frideric Handel's "Rodelinda," had its San Francisco Opera premiere Saturday night at the War Memorial Opera House, 280 years after it was first heard in London. Designed as a "film noir," this production turns out to be one of the best "movies" of the year so far.
— Read more at San Francisco Examiner

Bellini's "Norma" is grand opera with all of its spectacle ? a big chorus and processions, virtuosic singing and lavish costumes and staging. It is also an opera masterpiece ? one with a powerful human story delivered through its music.
— Read more at Times Argus

The Washington National Opera signed new three-year contracts with its orchestra musicians and chorus members last week, on the eve of the opening of the company's 50th-anniversary season. WNO reached agreement with the American Federation of Musicians on the orchestra contract in just four days of talks, according to the company. Negotiations with the American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents the choristers, took two days.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The controversial Olivier Award-winning musical Jerry Springer: The Opera will tour the UK despite the number of vehement protests that condemned the show for its R-rated subject matter and language.
— Read more at BroadwayWorld.com

You wouldn't expect too much of an entrance from someone called Minnie, but, at the sound of gunshots, Puccini's "girl of the golden West" sweeps into the Polka Saloon to a thrilling deployment of one of the composer's most sumptuous tunes. This original spaghetti western is full of them. But there's only one Minnie - a woman alone in a world of men - and Puccini, that most natural of all musical dramatists, made certain that her entrance would be one we'd remember.
— Read more at Independent Online

The Metropolitan Opera opens its season tonight with a gala performance featuring Angela Gheorghiu, Bryn Terfel, Susan Graham, Denyce Graves, Plácido Domingo, and others. The program includes Act II of Tosca with Gheorghiu and Terfel; Act I of Le nozze di Figaro with Isabel Bayrakdarian, Graham, Dwayne Croft, and Terfel; and Act III of Samson et Dalila with Graves and Domingo. Met music director James Levine will conduct.
— Read more at playbillarts.com

Marco Tronchetti Provera, president of the Pirelli tyre company and a leading sponsor of La Scala, has resigned from the theatre?s governing body. His resignation follows a decision to hand over the running of the new theatre, the Teatro degli Arcimboldi, to the local authority, the commune of Milan. Pirelli?s sponsorship of La Scala is expected to continue.
— Read more at Gramophone

IN life as in fable, fate often strikes when a child is home alone. It did for Diana Damrau in her native Günzburg, a Bavarian town of 20,000 on the banks of the Danube, when she was 12. Flipping channels on the family television, with no prior exposure to opera, she happened to tune in to Franco Zeffirelli's film of "La Traviata," starring Teresa Stratas as Verdi's self-sacrificing courtesan Violetta Valéry.

"Kids have a prejudice against opera," Ms. Damrau said recently over lunch near Lincoln Center, en route to her first rehearsal at the Metropolitan Opera, where she makes her New York debut on Saturday as the flirtatious Zerbinetta in Richard Strauss's "Ariadne auf Naxos." "But the connection between the music and the acting and the visuals was so truthful. I was shattered. At the same time, I thought here was something I could do. That film started me on my path with a great deal of joy and love."
— Read more at nytimes.com

Even the happiest families eventually disperse. The quotidian tragedies and joys of such a family, and one member's stubborn, irrational resistance to the inevitable, lie at the heart of Mark Adamo's "Little Women." The 1998 opera after Louisa May Alcott's novel opened the Skylight Opera Theatre's season Friday.
— Read more at JS Online [Related news items]

Classical labels are offering up an autumnal harvest of enticing opera and vocal music recordings. Among the most hotly anticipated titles is a new studio recording of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (EMI Classics, September 13), with a cast led by 64-year-old tenor Placido Domingo, who waited until this point in his long career to record the opera. Conducted by Antonio Pappano, this recording is a milestone -- and, if whispers are to be believed, perhaps it will be the last new studio CD set of an opera of such size and scope.
— Read more at Reuters.com [Related news items]

There's "funny" and then there's "silly." There's "comedy" and then there's "fluff." The Grand Duchess, filling the stage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion through Oct. 1 with large quantities of colorful costumes, giddy sets and bouncy music, definitely falls in the category of "silly fluff." But don't blame Jacques Offenbach.
— Read more at LA Downtown News Online

[Maverick composer John Adams set off a chain reaction in the opera world with his explosive works on Nixon and the Middle East. Now he's taking on the father of the A-bomb.]
Construction of the atomic bomb will be complete in just a few weeks. At the moment, though, it resembles nothing so much as an oversize throw pillow. "This will all get coated in fiberglass," explains a sinewy man named Jay Kotcher, noticing that I'm not exactly impressed by his weapon of mass destruction. "We'll put on various dressings, and then it will get decorated."
— Read more at Wired

With some of our major music institutions ready to spring into the Performing Arts Center in 2006, South Florida's largest classical music organizations are bidding farewell to their old venues with an embarrassment of riches this season. Take one of the most enthusiastic new resident companies of the PAC, Florida Grand Opera. It will close its last season at Miami-Dade County Auditorium with Bizet's Carmen (opening April 22), an opera so beloved that even the most cultivated audiences find it hard not to sing along. Rinat Shaman promises to bring the right sex appeal to the title role of this opera about the clash between male erotic obsession and female erotic free will.
— Read more at Herald.com

Who goes to the opera? Does the Castleward regular - with bow- tie, champagne magnum and M&S hamper - expect the same as the audience that turned up at Belfast's Old Museum Arts Centre for Ian Wilson's Hamelin? And why don't more people seem to want to go? Here are the charges: there are too many big-busted women screaming; there's hardly any action on stage; it's impossible to understand what's going on. And, most worrying of all: it's for snobs.
— Read more at Belfast Telegraph

The Covent Garden season opened this week with the traditional line-up of revival and rarity: Puccini's La fanciulla del West and Donizetti's Dom Sébastien, Roi du Portugal. With dust-dry funerary drums, stirring hints of the Marseillaise, and Beethovenian wind writing of startling transparency, Donizetti's last opera is gloriously rich of colour and texture. Indeed, for the greater part of the first of two concert performances by Mark Elder, the Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House, and a regrettably Francophone-free cast, I was baffled as to why it had not been given a full staging.
— Read more at Independent Online

Listener-friendly blue-chip repertoire by Mozart, Puccini, and Leoncavallo should spur audience growth as Toledo Opera gets set to open its season at the Valentine Theatre. Those willing to travel to Cleveland and Detroit will find a diverse selection of generally mainstream productions from Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Strauss, and others. Toledo Opera productions begin Oct. 1 with a three-performance run of Mozart's elegant The Marriage of Figaro, a multi-dimensional opera in which lessons of politics, power, and fidelity are housed within a pair of love stories.
— Read more at toledoblade.com

Paul Kellogg said yesterday that he would retire as general and artistic director of the New York City Opera at the end of next season, in 2007, citing his age and the burdens of trying to attract new funds and new audiences. Mr. Kellogg, 68, is in his 10th season at the opera. He will also retire next year as director of the Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, N.Y., which he has led since 1979.
— Read more at New York Times

There's a crude old joke that compares the sexual treatment of the first lady by her husband, the president, to his handling of the American people. It can't be repeated here, but suffice to say that the popular conflation of the sexual act with abuse, particularly as practiced by the powerful, is the thrust of "The Banger's Flopera," an ungainly new rock update of John Gay's "Beggar's Opera."
— Read more at New York Times

Dispersed from Washington to San Francisco in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, members of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra will gather in Nashville in three weeks for their first concert anywhere since the storm struck. Organized and presented by the Nashville Symphony, the Oct. 4 benefit at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center is designed to help the New Orleans-based orchestra begin recovering ? financially as well as emotionally ? from Katrina's destruction.
— Read more at tennessean.com

The Lyric Opera of Chicago will sell tickets to a dress rehearsal of Bizet's Carmen on September 21 to raise money for the American Red Cross Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund. The production, which opens the Lyric's season on September 24, features Denyce Graves in the title role, Neil Shicoff as Don José, Ildebrando d'Arcangelo as Escamillo, and Andrea Rost as Micaëla. John Copley directs; music director Andrew Davis is the conductor.
— Read more at PlaybillArts: News

Cleveland Opera, which had planned to rent the set for its upcoming production of Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore (The Elixir of Love) from New Orleans Opera, will instead donate the $12,000 rental fee to NOO and improvise its own set. According to Cleveland Opera, the L'elisir set and many other sets stored in New Orleans Opera's warehouse were not damaged when the building was flooded by Hurricane Katrina. Nevertheless, a spokesperson said in a statement, "retrieving and shipping the set [would] be enormously difficult."
— Read more at PlaybillArts

New Jersey Opera Theater took on a lot this summer in its move from a student to professional theater organization. The company presented five productions in a two-and-one-half week period, plus a myriad of master classes and discussions on musical, production, and performance topics. In its move to McCarter Theatre, the company wisely stayed off the main stage, performing instead in the Berlind Theatre, a delightful space with stadium seating, so there is no bad seat in the house.
— Read more at Town Topics

Seven Attempted Escapes From Silence, an opera with a libretto by novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, debuts at the Berlin State Opera tonight. Foer's second novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, was published?to a great deal of media attention?this past April.
— Read more at playbillarts.com

Such is the combined star power of tenor Roberto Alagna and soprano Angela Gheorghiu that even Franco Zeffirelli's highly illuminated production of Ruggero Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci" cannot outshine them. Proof of that came Sunday afternoon, when the Los Angeles Opera revived the director's busy, modern-dress staging of this last word in circus blood lust. Alagna and Gheorghiu, who are married in real life, are individually among the world's great singers. Together they are an operatic phenomenon: gifted singing actors whose uncommon physical attractiveness is exceeded only by their ability to electrify a stage.
— Read more at LA Daily News

The Countess in Capriccio crowns a dazzling gallery of soprano heroines created by Richard Strauss. As New York City Opera opens its season with Capriccio, Kathleen Watt looks at some of the composer's most enduring roles. Composer Richard Strauss lived a long life crowded with splendid women. But he belonged to only one--his wife, soprano Pauline de Ahna--and she to him. This was so even though, as a rich and famous international conductor, Strauss enjoyed a considerable female following. And it was so even though his wife was a famously unpleasant harridan, and he himself would become identified with an impressive queue of "other women."
— Read more at PlaybillArts

New Zealand singer Anna Leese has won a favourable review as a "bold, bright soprano" in a London production by the British Youth Opera. Daily Telegraph writer Rupert Christiansen lamented the "deeply depressing" aspect that not one of the principal singers in the production of Gounod's Romeo et Juliette was British-born or educated. He said Leese scored high visually with her portrayal of Juliette and "displayed a bold, bright soprano" voice.
— Read more at Stuff.co.nz

Jeff Stamm doesn't want to scare you off. Stamm, former president of the Livingston Arts Council and an operatic tenor who has performed at New York's Metropolitan Opera, knows that opera is a turn-off for many people; however, the Harold Haugh Light Opera Vocal Competition coming to Howell High School next month has little to do with the initial images that the word may conjure.
— Read more at hometownlife.com

A Christian nation invades an Islamic desert state. The campaign gets bogged down. Their leader comes in for a bit of flak back home. Sound familiar? Donizetti penned his last opera, Dom Sébastien, roi de Portugal, for the Paris stage in 1843. It's rarely produced, and it's difficult to see why. Scribe, who concocted umpteen libretti, was at the height of his powers, and this one is neither slow nor stodgy. Portugal's 24-year-old monarch survives near-death in Morocco, only to succumb to the intrigues of his covetous family and Spanish neighbour, Philip II, who "eyes the country's riches like a vulture".
— Read more at Independent Online

"Normally speaking, we would never approve of torture," sings Colonel Joll. "But I think it's generally understood that this is an emergency." Philip Glass's newest opera is an allegory for our times. Waiting for the Barbarians tells a cautionary tale about the evils of imperialism, the moral quagmire of war and torture, about injustice masquerading as law and order, about individual responsibility. The work, a tidy 2½-hour music drama, received its world premiere in the Thuringian capital of Erfurt on Saturday.
— Read more at ft.com

The Maiden Tower is a new computer-enhanced chamber opera by Justine F. Chen.
The production features singers Matt Boehler, Jennifer Zetlan, Douglas McCormick, and actress Elizabeth Raetz and students from The Juilliard School conducted by Ryan McAdams.
8 PM
Friday September 16th, 2005
Admission Free (no tickets or reservations required)

The Juilliard School, Room 309
60 Lincoln Center Plaza
New York, NY 10023
This production lasts one hour with no intermission

Police brutality, torture, psychological damage, collusion and conscience are challenging themes for the opera stage. ``Waiting for the Barbarians,'' Philip Glass's new work, conveys them compellingly. That has much to do with the terse libretto, adapted by Christopher Hampton from the novel by South African author John M. Coetzee. Both the book and the opera, which premiered in the eastern German city of Erfurt on Sept. 10, are set in a nameless frontier town on the desert fringes of an ``Empire'' that serves as a symbol for all state oppression.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

Italian opera star Luciano Pavarotti received a medieval British honour Monday in recognition of his fundraising and humanitarian work with the Red Cross. Pavarotti, 69, was given the Freedom of the City of London, a privilege which in medieval times allowed recipients to trade within the commercial centre of the British capital. The largely symbolic honour formerly bestowed the right to drive sheep across London Bridge and be hanged with a silken cord if handed the death penalty.
— Read more at canada.com

THERE IS ALWAYS a question of how performance works of art translate from one medium to another. In the case of Robert Ward's operatic adaptation in English of the stage play "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller, the answer is: very well. Its premiere in 1961 deservedly garnered a Pulitzer Prize for music. It is an excellent modern work of art, based on one of the finest plays of the 20th century.
— Read more at Inside Bay Area

Flashing images on huge screens and lyrics that summon memories of the Beatles aren't what you might expect at the opera. But that's what composer Mikel Rouse calls "The End of Cinematics" -- which has its premiere Saturday at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in Urbana.
— Read more at kwqc.com

Los Angeles Opera will launch a training program for young singers in 2006, thanks to a $2-million gift from the Flora L. Thornton Foundation. The program will be named the Domingo-Thornton Young Artists Program, general director Plácido Domingo said at a cast party after a performance of "Pagliacci" on Sunday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

What a hoot! Here is a ludicrous opera that keeps the audience waiting four long hours to see its hapless lovers brought together and then sends them plunging to their doom in the last two minutes, when a rival cuts their rope ladder of escape. If only he had used his scissors a little earlier. No wonder the Royal Opera decided to present Donizetti's Dom Sébastien in concert performances. A staged production would surely have everybody rolling in the aisles at the improbable twists and turns of Eugène Scribe's libretto, whereas this concert version made quite a strong start to the 2005/6 season.
— Read more at ft.com

Randall Behr, who conducted 24 productions for the Los Angeles Opera and served as resident conductor of the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, Calif., has died. Behr, 53, died in his sleep Thursday of a heart attack at a hotel in Bloomington, Ind., according to his mother, Colleen Bare of Modesto, Calif.
— Read more at azcentral.com

If you had never been to an opera and decided to check out Opera for All, the two-night, season-opening event at the New York City Opera on Thursday and Friday, it seems you made a pretty good decision. For one thing, every seat in the house cost $25, a signal improvement over the $45-to-$120 price tag for performances during the regular season. For another, the offerings were quite respectable.
Thursday, they tell me, was a concert including everything from a performance by Rufus Wainwright to an excerpt from Puccini's "Turandot." On Friday the company presented straight opera - Puccini's "Madama Butterfly," in one of its best productions - and bedded it in introductions from Paul Kellogg (City Opera's general and artistic director), the actress Cynthia Nixon and a very good documentary film that gave a behind-the-scenes look, from singers, stagehands, the production team, etc., about what it's like to put this thing on.
— Read more at New York Times

Opera in the Park fans who thought they had heard, seen and tasted everything over the years had a new treat to savor Sunday afternoon in Golden Gate Park. In the first-ever appearance by a countertenor in the San Francisco Opera's annual free concert, David Daniels made silent captives of the picnicking throngs in Sharon Meadow. His high-pitch precision, caressing tone, heart-stopping soulfulness and lofty trills in the aria "Dove sei, amato bene?" from Handel's opera "Rodelinda" served notice that this was to be a musically charmed day in the park.
— Read more at sfgate.com

Composer Philip Glass has received a 15-minute standing ovation at the world premiere of his new opera, Waiting for the Barbarians, in Germany. The US composer earned the appreciation of the audience in Erfurt, as did his librettist Christopher Hampton.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

The San Francisco Opera's season-opening production of "The Italian Girl in Algiers" began with a nifty theatrical effect: a propeller plane that soared valiantly across the interior of the War Memorial Opera House before crashing to earth. It was not a bad metaphor for Saturday's opening performance, which began in a spirit of fizzy fun only to run slowly and dispiritingly out of gas.
— Read more at sfgate.com

As Mark Elder intimated on these pages last week, Donizetti's last opera, Dom Sébastien, really is something special. At what was probably its first full performance in Britain, the Covent Garden audience seemed to feel it was witnessing the long-overdue rebirth of a flawed but enthralling masterpiece. It dates from 1843, when Donizetti was 45. At the height of his powers a few months earlier, he had produced that perfect comic gem Don Pasquale.
— Read more at Telegraph

The 83rd season of the San Francisco Opera blew in sirocco-style Saturday at the company's opening-night gala. But neither fierce winds nor the added drama of a presidential presence and a cranky camel derailed the colorful caravan that was the Opera Guild's Midnight at the Oasis Opera Ball.
— Read more at sfgate.com

The days of the fat opera singer are waning. Opera has become an increasingly visual medium, because of the influence of television and film, and directors want singers to look the part, not just sing it. They now demand more physical prowess from performers ? a swordfight should resemble a swordfight, not a couple of guys vaguely lunging at each other. But singers who have jumped on the treadmill have discovered something else ? being fit makes them better singers. It's why mezzo-soprano Milena Kitic is in the basement gym of her expansive Pasadena home gearing up for an intense hour-long workout with her trainer.
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

There sits Julia Roberts, radiantly beautiful, dressed to the nines in an elegant off-the-shoulder gown, eyes wide, tears streaming down her cheeks. From a gilded box at the San Francisco Opera she looks on in total captivation, compassionately linked to the on-stage fate of Violetta Valéry, the tragic Lady of the Camellias in Verdi's "La Traviata."
— Read more at dailybreeze.com

The Light in the Piazza, the Tony Award-winning musical about motherhood, young love, middle-aged regret, innocence and the lure of fable-filled Italy, has been extended again ? now to March 2006. A spokesman confirmed Sept. 9 that tickets are now on sale to March 26. The show, a limited engagement at Lincoln Center Theater, was extended to Jan. 1, 2006, after winning Tony Awards, including Best Score (Adam Guettel) and Best Actress in a Musical (Victoria Clark).
— Read more at Playbill News

There's an autumnal whiff in the air as schools are back and the Proms draw to a close. But all is not lost as the capital's opera companies and symphony orchestras return to business with the start of a new season of high quality music making. These range from a surprisingly large number of rare bel canto operas to unusual Scandinavian choral works, from complete symphonic cycles of Beethoven and Shostakovich to the world premiere of a major new opera at ENO.
— Read more at musicomh.com

World premieres of operas by John Adams, Tobias Picker, Elliott Goldenthal and Kaija Saariaho will compete for attention this season with celebrations of the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth. After composing the much-discussed operas Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer, Adams shifts his attention to the development of the nuclear bomb with Doctor Atomic, which opens at the San Francisco Opera on October 1.
— Read more at andante.com

Most of us remember Louisa May Alcott's 1868 novel "Little Women" as the story of New England women bravely maintaining home and family while their men go off to fight the Civil War. Most of us are wrong, and we can thank Hollywood for that. Composer Mark Adamo has set the record straight.
— Read more at JS Online [Related news items]

WHEN Leonard Bernstein, just turned 40, became the first American-born music director of the New York Philharmonic in 1958, he was afire with the conviction that New York must have a major orchestra to match its young, restless and pace-setting civic character. He delivered on his promise. George Szell in Cleveland was a better orchestra builder. But during Bernstein's tenure the Philharmonic became the mission control center for classical music in America. Today the Philharmonic, though a technically great orchestra, is a staid artistic institution. Much the same could be said for the essential, sometimes glorious but mainstream Metropolitan Opera, the other behemoth constituent of Lincoln Center. Yet you cannot fault Lincoln Center for the timidity of these venerable organizations.
— Read more at New York Times

It's widely believed that the long and noble history of star-filled, big-budget, studio-made opera recordings is effectively coming to an end with the release this week of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde from EMI Classics. If so, the finale couldn't be much more satisfying. That the indestructible tenor Placido Domingo is singing the famously tough role of Tristan, complete, for the first time - the recording sessions in London wrapped up last January, a few weeks before he turned 64 - makes the release instantly newsworthy. Making it valuable is the fact that his performance ranks among the most compelling he has committed to disc.
— Read more at baltimoresun.com

he mesas stand in hushed majesty. The sky doesn't stop. The vistas, those astounding vistas, humble humanity. Native Americans revere this land. I'm driving through Bandelier National Monument, just outside Los Alamos. Peter Sellars is my passenger. We are quiet for a moment. "These mesas are incredible, you've got to give Oppenheimer that," Sellars, never quiet for long, finally says.
— Read more at calendarlive.com

The stars were a glittering sight in the Ellie Caulkins Opera House on Saturday ? both on the stage and above it. For those in attendance on this night of nights, it seemed a dreamlike, surreal vision as international opera greats Renée Fleming and Ben Heppner ended their love duet from Verdi's Otelloand turned upstage to gaze, arm-in-arm, at a scrim dotted with brightly twinkling stars.
— Read more at Rocky Mountain News

Through the opera festival held at Pasquerilla Performing Arts Center each year, local residents are finding out that opera is nothing to fear. ?Some are frightened by the name opera,? said Karen Azer, opera festival chairwoman. ?They come because they?re invited one year, then return for the next year.?
— Read more at tribune-democrat.com

Robert Ashens is heading into his sixth season as artistic director at Eugene Opera, which will stage "The Barber of Seville" in December and "Hansel and Gretel" in February. Ashens took over the opera two years after what was sometimes called the ``Graffeo affair,'' in which popular artistic director Frank Graffeo was fired by the opera board with little public explanation.
— Read more at registerguard.com

The Metropolitan Opera's radio broadcasts, which have spread the gospel of opera for more than seven decades but were threatened by a lack of financing, have won a temporary reprieve. A home-building company made flush by the housing boom has agreed to sponsor them, the Met said yesterday. The company, Toll Brothers, is making a rare foray into high-art philanthropy with the hope of adding a classy note to its image.
— Read more at New York Times

Shortly before joining a rehearsal for Jacques Offenbach's "The Grand Duchess," mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade relaxes at one of the Music Center's outdoor cafes, picking at a Caesar salad with finishing-school poise. She is simply dressed but chic and wearing sunglasses, her lapdog snoozing quietly at her feet. A casual observer not recognizing her might mistake her cool demeanor for divalike attitude. But he would be wrong. The New Jersey-born von Stade, though an internationally famous opera star, has forged her acclaimed three-decades-long career on a foundation of sound artistic judgment and a no-nonsense work ethic that begins with her own exemplary behavior.
— Read more at dailynews.com

The Metropolitan Opera announced Thursday that the Pennsylvania-based home builder Toll Brothers will be the new corporate sponsor for its Saturday live radio broadcasts, an institution since 1931. "I am delighted that Toll Brothers has agreed to support this landmark series, the longest running classical radio program in the history of American broadcasting," said Joseph Volpe, the Met's general manager.
— Read more at Newsday.com

New York City Opera opens its Opera-for-All Festival tonight with a performance of highlights from the 2005-06 season. Tonight's program includes excerpts from Strauss' Capriccio, Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience, Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia, Puccini's Turandot, Rachel Portman's The Little Prince, Frank Loesser's The Most Happy Fella, Mark Adamo's Lysistrata, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Bizet's Carmen, and Handel's Acis and Galatea.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Opera and opera houses get along just fine -- you might even say they were made for each other -- but there is something unbeatable about hearing arias, ensembles and even the occasional overture in the great outdoors. Especially when the music is free. The truth of that proposition should be in evidence once again Sunday afternoon, as the San Francisco Opera celebrates the opening of its fall season with the 32nd annual "Opera in the Park" concert in Sharon Meadow in Golden Gate Park.
— Read more at sfgate.com

World premieres of operas by John Adams, Tobias Picker, Elliott Goldenthal and Kaija Saariaho will compete for attention this season with celebrations of the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth. After composing the popular operas "Nixon in China" and "The Death of Klinghoffer," Adams shifts his attention to the development of the nuclear bomb with "Doctor Atomic," which opens at the San Francisco Opera on Oct. 1. "This is an awesome subject that can't be dealt with in a rational way," Adams said. "It's about flesh-and-blood people screaming at each other, and loving one another."
— Read more at kentucky.com

Erfurt, a small city in the eastern German state of Thuringia, will put itself on the world opera map this week with the premiere of a new work by American minimalist composer Philip Glass. "Waiting for the Barbarians," a harrowing allegory of oppressor and oppressed based on the novel by 2003 Nobel laureate John Maxwell Coetzee of South Africa, opens Saturday at the new Erfurt Theatre. The theater, under the direction of Guy Montavon, commissioned the work, Glass' 15th opera.
— Read more at yahoo.com

Joining companies including the Wiener Staatsoper and the Metropolitan Opera, Paris's Bastille opera house, one of the homes of the Opéra National de Paris, will introduce inexpensive "Standing Room" section tickets for its new season, the Associated Press reports.
— Read more at Opera News

New York City Opera opens its 2005-06 season tonight with a gala performance of Strauss's Capriccio. The production, directed by Stephen Lawless, stars Pamela Armstrong as the countess. Music director George Manahan conducts. Sets and costumes are by Ashley Martin-Davis, lighting by Pat Collins, and choreography by Seán Curran.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Glimmerglass Opera's 2006 season will include a new production of Janácek's Jenufa directed by Jonathan Miller and the world premiere of Stephen Hartke's The Greater Good, the Cooperstown, New York, festival announced. The festival takes place at the Alice Busch Opera Theater on Lake Oswego from July 7 to August 29, 2006.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The German government has commissioned an opera about soccer as part of a cultural program accompanying the 2006 World Cup, Bloomberg News reports. The opera will be a collaboration between director Robert Wilson, music producer Hal Wilner, and singer-songwriter Herbert Groenemeyer, and will have its premiere May 31, 2006, near Berlin's Staatsoper Unter den Linden, in an outdoor venue.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

New Orleans Opera Association's two fall productions have been abandoned in the wake of the massive destruction following Hurricane Katrina, The Grand Rapids Press has reported. Robert Lyall, who serves as general director of the New Orleans Opera Association, as well as artistic director of Opera Grand Rapids, has cancelled productions of Otello and The Marriage of Figaro, the paper has reported.
— Read more at metoperafamily.org

The pop singer and songwriter Rufus Wainwright knows that many of his fans are surprised to learn that he is an avowed opera buff. Yet the term "buff" does not tell the half of it. Mr. Wainwright is not your stereotypical opera fanatic with a weakness for big-voiced, big-boned divas and a head full of trivia. He is a musically discerning opera lover who can trace the seamless structure of the banquet scene from Verdi's "Macbeth" and discuss the subtleties of Gluck's lesser-known "Armide," his most recent passion, which he first heard at La Scala in Milan
— Read more at New York Times

Backstage at the War Memorial Opera House, an eerie midday calm prevailed. With a little over a week to go before the opening of the San Francisco Opera's 2005-06 season, Assistant Stage Manager Christian Eckels was the only person to be found in the 3,146-seat house. He greeted a visitor, chatted about the three productions set to open between now and Oct. 1, and offered a tour of the set for Rossini's "The Italian Girl in Algiers."
— Read more at sfgate.com

Given the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina, the musicians and managers from the Louisiana Philharmonic and those from the surrounding Gulf Coast Region will be displaced for an indefinite period of time... As such, they have an immediate need for temporary work. Adaptistration will serve as a clearing house for those from the LPO looking for work and those throughout the country who have work or other assistance to offer. Please contact Drew McManus at Adaptistration or post a comment to this page if you can help.
— Read more at Adaptistration

Conductor Stefan Lano has been named music director of Buenos Aires's Teatro Colón, the web site Musical America reports. Lano will take up the position immediately, and will work with artistic director Marcelo Lombardero. Both the administrative and artistic duties were previously held by one person, Tito Capobianco, who resigned in May.
— Read more at playbillarts.com

Arnold Weinstein, the poet and playwright who collaborated with William Bolcom on the operas McTeague, A View From the Bridge, and A Wedding, died on September 4, according to the New York Times. He was 78, and had suffered from liver cancer.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Rodolfo is a penniless young poet. Mimi is his quiet new neighbor. The pair meet by chance one cold winter night in a small apartment in Paris, beginning a great romance. But can the young lovers survive poverty, the bitter cold and the heat of jealousy? The answers to Giacomo Puccini's tender love story "La Boheme" will be played out by the El Paso Opera at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Saturday at the Abraham Chavez Theatre.
— Read more at El Paso Times Living

Opera as health promotion? That's exactly what Rimrock Opera is planning with "The Night Harry Stopped Smoking." This 45-minute, one-act musical comedy for elementary school children will be performed by a professional Rimrock Opera cast beginning in January 2006 and continuing into 2007. The plot involves the title character falling asleep while holding a cigarette. He wakes up to find himself inside his own lung where his heart and various types of cells explain to him why his smoking is hurting them.
— Read more at billingsgazette.com