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

When interviewing most singers, you first inquire about their roles, their interpretations, their inspiring teachers. Maybe, if you're nervy enough, you query them about their love life. When talking with soprano Andrea Gruber, however, you first ask to see the tattoos.
— Read more at sfgate.com

Under the right conditions, "Norma" can be one of the most potent and moving operas in a company's repertoire. The new San Francisco Opera revival has plenty of the vocal power needed to ignite Bellini's bel canto masterpiece from 1831. But the staging, unveiled Sunday afternoon at the War Memorial Opera House, undermines the singers as often as it supports them.
— Read more at MercuryNews.com

Glen Nelson and Murray Boren wanted to write an opera about Joseph Smith, but they weren't interested in presenting a portrait of the LDS Church founder as polished and perfect and larger than life. They wanted to show him as an ordinary man to whom extraordinary things happen. Boren hopes they have succeeded, even to the extent that "The Book of Gold" would appeal to people who don't belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
— Read more at Salt Lake Tribune

Othalie Graham proved she could trumpet out huge high Cs in Puccini's Turandot and Strauss' Elektra. Now Boheme Opera is giving the Canadian soprano the chance to show a more lyrical side to her art when she sings the title role in Verdi's Aida Nov. 4 and 6 at Trenton's War Memorial.
— Read more at CourierPostOnline

Like the package holidays that serve as its backdrop, John Lunn's operatic thriller Tangier Tattoo is aimed at 18 to 30 year olds. "Which 18 to 30 year olds?" I hear you ask. Let's set that question aside for now. First, a disclaimer. Having cordoned off its target audience by age, Tangier Tattoo is effectively critic-proofed. It follows, therefore, that whatever I might dislike about it can be dismissed as a by-product of my relative wrinkliness; though while we're on the subject of lost youth, it seems fair to point out that I was 30 more recently than Glyndebourne's creative team, not to mention Derek Laud of Big Brother, who was, with his younger housemate Eugene Sully, shipped down to Sussex to lend last Saturday's premiere some tabloid pizzazz.
— Read more at Independent Online

THE new general director of Scottish Opera is considering box office price increases in order to keep the company within its budget. Alex Reedijk , who will leave the same position at New Zealand Opera to take over next February, said he would exploit every avenue apart from the public purse to get the company out of its financial troubles.
— Read more at Sunday Herald

Citing a need for more arts programs in the Jane Street and Finch Avenue community, Judy Kopelow and Sabatino Vacca started up the Opera is Cool kids program to engage youth in the music genre. The pair thought up the program, which is funded by ProAction Cops and Kids, after organizing an opera concert in February at the York Woods Library Theatre, said Kopelow, program co-ordinator. "I thought wouldn't it be extraordinary to offer the same program for that area," she said.
— Read more at insidetoronto.ca

The elegance, grandeur and gaiety of Paris in the early 1900s will be the setting when Valley Light Opera presents "The Merry Widow." The comic operetta, which premiered 100 years ago in Vienna, Austria, marks a rare departure for the VLO, which traditionally offers a Gilbert and Sullivan production at this time of year.
— Read more at masslive.com

Opera lovers will enjoy "Callas Forever," a film playing at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Wealthy Theater, 1130 Wealthy St. SE, sponsored by Friends of the Opera. "Callas Forever" is a fantasy about opera legend Maria Callas directed by Franco Zeffirelli, who also co-wrote the script.
— Read more at mlive.com

Ashville Lyric Opera will open its its seventh season at 8 p.m. Nov. 4-5 at Diana Wortham Theatre, Pack Place, with its annual Opera Gala, featuring fully-staged acts from three separate operas.
— Read more at CITIZEN-TIMES.com

Opera star Renée Fleming, renowned for her distinctive voice, stylistic versatility and captivating stage presence, will be the featured guest artist for this year's Christmas concerts by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square.
— Read more at sltrib.com

Love. Lust. Power. Wit. Switched identities. Melancholy. Betrayal. Forgiveness. All played out with beautiful voices, live music, lavish costumes and scenery. "The Marriage of Figaro" has it all. Next weekend, the Greensboro Opera Company returns from a one-year hiatus to stage Mozart's comedic masterpiece.
— Read more at News-Record.com

Singers toil for years to establish their niche in the highly competitive world of opera. The lucky ones gain regional and national attention. The really lucky ones make it to the international level, and can expect steady employment. And then there are the truly select few ? those who surpass success and enter a world inhabited by superstars such as Domingo, Fleming, Pavarotti, Netrebko, Voigt. For the latter, it is their name on the marquee, as much as the composer?s work that draws crowds and guarantees extra performances. Breaking into that select group is every opera singer?s dream, but few achieve it.
— Read more at emediawire.com

The American Express Company today announced $1.3 million in grants to be awarded to American arts organizations including the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Washington National Opera.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The second album from violinist Janine Jansen, a recording of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, debuted on the Billboard classical chart this week at number five. The 27-year-old violinist, who has appeared as a soloist in her native Holland and elsewhere in Europe since the late 1990s, makes her first American appearances this season. In a battle of star singers, mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli reclaimed the top spot on the chart from soprano Renée Fleming. Fleming's Sacred Songs, which had dethroned Bartoli's Opera Proibita last week, dropped down to number two.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

["Mines of Sulphur" offers suspense; Olga Borodina sang heroically]
Newcomers to opera sometimes don?t get the appeal of a dramatic form with so few surprises. Audiences know how "Tosca" ends before the performance even begins. Earlier this month, though, two operas provided some measure of suspense. A work actually billed as a thriller is "The Mines of Sulphur," an opera that had its world premiere in 1965, when its composer Richard Rodney Bennett was only 28 years old. The libretto, by Beverley Cross, tells a gothic tale that might be described as ?The Lady?s Not for Burning? meets "Six Characters in Search of an Author," with a liberal dash of Roger Corman. A Gypsy servant, her lover, and his sidekick murder and rob a wealthy aristocrat. Dressing themselves in stolen finery, they welcome a troupe of strolling players who turn out to be Not What They Seem.
— Read more at gaycitynews.com

South Shore Conservatory's Opera by the Bay presents two performances of the operatic comedy, "Die Fledermaus," Friday, Nov. 4, at 8 p.m. in Hingham, and Saturday, Nov. 5, at 8 p.m. in Duxbury. Hingham vocalist Julie Collinge performs in this amusing production. This light, frothy comedy, set in 1874 Vienna, tells of the hilarious shenanigans of husband and wife Gabriel and Rosalinda Eisenstein, their friend Dr. Falke, a sassy chambermaid, a very bored Russian Prince, a drunk warden and jailer.
— Read more at TownOnline.com

Alberto Vilar, once a high-flying tech fund manager and philanthropist, gained notoriety this spring after being charged with multiple counts of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. But Vilar is still getting a puff of recognition from one of his old stomping grounds. The Metropolitan Opera's revival of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte brought with it a special acknowledgement for Vilar in the Playbill, for his "generous and deeply appreciated gift" in helping put the production together.
— Read more at Forbes.com

Scottish Opera has found their man for the post of Music Director who will succeed Sir Richard Armstrong who left the job earlier this year. 44-year-old New Zealander Alex Reedijk was previously the Music Director at the New Zealand Opera.
— Read more at soundgenerator.com

An Irish opera company vowed last night that the show would go on after a lorry carrying its theatrical equipment - and driven by a Co Down man - was impounded in a drugs raid. A search of the truck in Dover revealed that it was also carrying 11 kilos of cocaine worth an estimated £561,000.
— Read more at belfasttelegraph.co.uk

While the Lehigh Valley is blessed with plenty of classical music of many types ? chamber, orchestral, solo instrumental recitals ? opera is an infrequent visitor. The reasons, I believe, are financial and logistical. Staging an opera is complicated, requiring accomplished soloists, stage settings, costumes, an orchestra and often a choir. Not surprisingly, even major cities often lack an opera company. It is, therefore, refreshing that someone is doing something to fill this void.
— Read more at mcall.com

Howard Baetzhold has had a few nights at the opera. He has performed in more than 80 productions of the Indianapolis Opera Company since 1977. He will have a supporting role in the Indianapolis Opera Company's production of the ?The Merry Widow? at Clowes Hall on the Butler University campus at 8 p.m. Nov. 18 and again at 2 p.m Nov. 20. Baetzhold has been involved with the opera company since its inception, but he can't quit his day job.
— Read more at The Noblesville Daily Times

On Saturday, October 29, 2005, at 6:30 PM, New Jersey Opera Theater (NJOT) will present its inaugural "Celebrate Opera" Gala at the Doral Forrestal Conference Center and Spa in Princeton, NJ. Tickets are available through NJOT at (609) 799-7700. The evening will be a star-studded celebration of opera and its foremost representative in the Princeton area, New Jersey Opera Theater. Metropolitan Opera stars soprano Elizabeth Futral and tenor Allan Glassman will join other NJOT artists to mingle and entertain guests with arias and ensembles from favorite operas, operettas and musicals, including excerpts from NJOT?s 2005 and 2006 seasons. The highlight of the evening will be the announcement of NJOT's SummerFest 2006 season and the surprise musical finale.
— Read more at NJOT.ORG

A Dark and Stormy Night, With Doings to Match New York Times
REVIEW: "The Mines of Sulphur" at City Opera sequenza21.com
REVIEW: The Mines of Sulphur, New York City Opera FT.com
Tricky Gothic horror is timely treat nj.com
Not One, But Two Surprises gaycitynews.com

On October 27 & 28, American Opera Projects and Making Books Sing will present The Orphan Singer, an exciting and moving multimedia musical production, based on the book by award-winning author Emily Arnold McCully, and adapted for the stage by Making Books Sing?s Artistic Director Barbara Zinn Krieger. Commissioned by Making Books Sing, this extraordinary, visually beautiful musical introduces young audiences to the life and work of Antonio Vivaldi and features a live, all-female chamber ensemble and a Broadway-quality cast. Music is adapted by Rick Erickson.
— Read more at operaprojects.org

Once again City Opera's fall schedule features a contemporary modernist opera. Last year we had Wourinen's overwrought "Haroun and the Sea of Stories." This year the company presents Sir Richard Rodney Bennett's 1965 work "The Mines of Sulphur." A hit at Glimmerglass a few summers ago, let's hope it draws in crowds at the State Theater as well: the opera is very, very good.
— Read more at sequenza21.com [Related news items]

For those opera lovers tired of concept productions that are all the rage these days, it is nice to know that realistic productions are still alive and well. Opera Ontario opened its fall season with an old-fashioned Romeo et Juliette with sets and costumes from L'Opera de Montreal. No postmodern deconstruction or socialist agenda here, just the retelling of a celebrated love story. So if you like a tree to look like one, this is the production for you. The sets are starting to show its age, but the romanticism remains undiminished.
— Read more at scena.org

The East Village Opera Company channels both Mozart and Freddy Mercury when they perform. And that's not a bad thing. The 11-person group rearranges opera arias and overtures to add electric guitars, keyboards, bass, drums and leather pants. The result is a hybrid of 70s arena rock and classical music that sounds something like Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" or maybe Guns N' Roses "November Rain," only smarter.
— Read more at Potomac News Online

The stage is bleak, shadowy, scary. The orchestral writing, quite massive, is dissonant, descriptive, percussive. The vocal lines are wide-ranging and awkward yet poignant. The plot examines the wages of murder, retribution and guilt. The totality - challenging yet accessible - is Richard Rodney Bennett's The Mines of Sulphur. The New York City Opera discovered it on Sunday, some 40 years after its premiere at Sadler's Wells in London. It was a stimulating afternoon at the State Theater.
— Read more at FT.com [Related news items]

The Irish Repertory Theatre's world premiere production of the rock opera Beowulf has been extended to Nov. 27 in Manhattan. "Beowulf," the circa eighth-century English verse epic that is the bane of college students the world over, was reimagined as a rock opera by "Saturday Night Live" musician Lenny Pickett. The IRT staging opened Oct. 16 after previews from Oct. 7. It was previously scheduled to run to Nov. 13.
— Read more at Yahoo! News

Melbourne Opera and Melbourne City Opera will merge into one company called VicOpera, the Melbourne Age reports. Dr. Joseph Talia, Melbourne City Opera's managing director, will direct the new company. The new entity has declared its willingness to coordinate its schedule with local productions presented by Opera Australia, a national company based in Sydney that performs in Melbourne in fall and spring. The Age calls this development a ?truce? in a longstanding disagreement over the terms of a A$1.7 million bequest from Edith Melva Thompson.
— Read more at PlaybillArts: News

An opera headquarters planned as a freestanding building opposite the Miami Performing Arts Center could form part of a mixed-use development that may be completed late in 2007. The opera company is in talks with an undisclosed developer. The Florida Grand Opera Anderson Opera Center is to occupy land on Northeast 15th Street between Northeast Second Avenue and Biscayne Boulevard. The opera company had planned that a freestanding venue would be ready at the same time as the arts center, which is slated to be completed Aug. 4.
— Read more at miamitodaynews.com

The Metropolitan Opera has established a new award named for legendary soprano and former Met chair Beverly Sills. The $50,000 Beverly Sills Artist Award will be given annually, starting next year, to an American singer between the ages of 25 and 40 who has appeared as a soloist with the Met. It is intended to support the singer's career by funding voice lessons, travel, and other costs. A panel of judges, chaired by Sills and including Nathan Leventhal, former president of Lincoln Center, will select the winners.
— Read more at playbillarts.com

[Soprano Deborah Voigt and tenor Ben Heppner join forces for Lincoln Center's Fall Gala on November 9.]
What makes a gala great? The recipe sounds simple: Take the world's preeminent dramatic soprano and heldentenor, whose combined vocal and dramatic resources constitute a force of nature and whose mutual respect and admiration radiate a palpable warmth, add the genius of Beethoven and Wagner, and there you have it.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The plot is familiar: a desolate and decaying manor house in the lonely English countryside, a group of unlike characters trapped for a night, a bayonet-wielding murderer on the loose, and the question of who will survive until morning. But this is not the latest slasher film. This is 20th-century opera, the revived 1965 work of Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, called "The Mines of Sulphur," which opened Sunday afternoon at Lincoln Center.
— Read more at nj.com

In the overwhelming majority of Giuseppe Verdi's grand operas -- even an elaborate, four-act spectacle such as the Egyptian-based blockbuster Aida -- the Italian-born composer often went to great lengths to provide his audiences with some relief from the pomp and pageantry and show us the human side of his characters.
— Read more at Gringoes

Handel's 1725 opera "Rodelinda" is a tale of opportunism, deceit and treachery set in 7th century Milan. The convoluted plot finds Bertarido, the Duke of Milan, deposed by Grimoaldo and believed to be dead. Grimoaldo breaks an engagement to Bertarido's outraged sister Eduige, and now wants to marry the presumed widow, Rodelinda, who cunningly resists his advances. But Bertarido is alive in exile. With the help of his loyal aide Unulfo, plus the dubious two-way dealings of Garibaldo, who will do anything for his own advantage, fidelity ultimately rules the day. With all the complexity and double-dealing, the Canadian Opera apparently assumed that an authentic 7th century setting might make the 31/2-hour opera tough sledding for some viewers. Therefore set/costume designer Dany Lyne and stage director Tim Albery have added many touches of levity.
— Read more at Buffalo News

The SF Opera schedule makes it look like as if, when Dr Atomic reaches the pantheon of the opera repertoire, it will be greeted at the gate by Norma. Bellini's most famous opera opened yesterday at the War Memorial Opera House, bringing back the comfort of familiarity after the more adventurous world premiere of John Adams' composition, and we absolutely loved it.
— Read more at SFist.com

The opera gods giveth and taketh singers with merciless capriciousness. And certainly they tooketh the Opera Company of Philadelphia's last season of well-laid plans demolished by cancellations. Yet at Sunday's opening production of the new season, Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera arrived with the gods rewarding us for our patience.
— Read more at Philadelphia Inquirer

OPERA babe Katherine Jenkins's management team are taking out a £10m personal insurance policy ahead of the star's Christmas visit to Iraq. The new forces' sweetheart is flying out to Basra to perform for the 8,000 British troops based in the southern city.
— Read more at icNorthWales

The Scottish Opera has appointed Alex Reedijk general director, the company announced today. Reedijk is currently general director of New Zealand Opera. Reedijk will assume the post in February 2006, replacing interim director Richard Jarman. Jarman, a former director of the company, returned after CEO Christopher Barron resigned in April.
— Read more at playbillarts.com

The New York Philharmonic and Louisiana Philharmonic's joint benefit concert on October 28 will be broadcast on two New York radio stations and syndicated across the country. In New York, the concert, which begins at 8 p.m., will be heard on 96.3 FM WQXR and 93.9 FM WNYC. Elsewhere, it will be carried on the WFMT Radio Network (check local listings) and on XM Satellite Radio. In addition, it will be broadcast on WWNO in New Orleans, and can be heard through WNYC's web site, www.wnyc.org.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The New York City Opera, sensibly enough, regards its large repertory of standard works in efficient, mostly traditional stagings as its box-office bread and butter. But if you think back over the company's productions of the last 15 years, contemporary works - Zimmermann's "Soldaten," Hindemith's "Mathis der Maler," Carlisle Floyd's "Of Mice and Men" and Hugo Weisgall's "Esther" among them - have been the clear highlights. They have typically had short runs and they rarely return, but they are the soul of this company.
Its latest adventure in contemporary opera is Sir Richard Rodney Bennett's "Mines of Sulphur," a Gothic horror tale from 1965. A hit in its early productions, it inexplicably fell off the operatic map until last summer, when the Glimmerglass Opera - City Opera's country cousin, in Cooperstown, N.Y. - presented the staging that made its way to the New York State Theater on Sunday afternoon.
— Read more at New York Times

Houston's opera scene is entering a new era. A well-known reason is Anthony Freud, the new general director/CEO of Houston Grand Opera. He'll arrive in March but, because opera stars are booked in advance, his impact on programming won't be seen until the 2008-09 season.
— Read more a HoustonChronicle.com

At this stage of his presidency, George W. Bush might not enjoy Boris Godunov , despite the stirring production now at Houston Grand Opera. In Modest Mussorgsky's striking opera about weighty matters of state, the populace is restless. Approval ratings are down. Attempts to deal with a natural disaster haven't gone well. Pretenders to the throne are emerging, threatening power and visibility. A nasty rumor is undermining authority.
— Read more at HoustonChronicle.com

After 25 years of touring the country on little more than a wing and a prayer, English Touring Opera's most endearing characteristic is its consistent refusal to allow economics to inhibit ambition. In the past, such idealism has brought mixed results. With Verdi's Falstaff, however, this plucky little company has triumphed. The humour is gentle, the characterisations warm, the diction first-class, and the music, courtesy of Jonathan Dove's exquisite arrangement for chamber orchestra and Stuart Stratford's vividly detailed conducting, utterly absorbing.
— Read more at Independent Online Edition

Hundreds of people jockeyed for a position to sift through two tons of the Seattle Opera?s wardrobe that went on sale this weekend. The selection included peasant blouses, robes of madmen, covered with stage blood, the fine, sheer skirts of ballerinas and the silver headgear of Roman warriors. It was the first time in 20 years the Opera offered some of its collection to the public. A private sale for subscribers and donors was held Friday.
— Read more at Corvallis Gazette-Times

Perhaps I always thought I was incapable of appreciating an evening at the opera. The occasional friends or relatives who raved about the various aspects of art and performance created some personal guilt, but it?s still hard to picture myself emerging from an auditorium with similar enthusiasm. So, while I?m intimidated about the possibility of fully appreciating the significance of, say, Claudio Monteverdi?s "Orfeo," I sensed a completely different depth might be found in "Nancy and Tonya: The Opera." With a story based on the figure skating rivalry between Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding that engulfed the nation more than a decade ago, performances of the new show are set to begin at Tufts University in Massachusetts next spring.
— Read more at ColumbiaChronicle.com

"Così Fan Tutte" was such an impressive starter that it gave me high expectations for this opera season, but Friday's performance of Charles Gounod's "Roméo et Juliette" raised those expectations even further. Not only was the opera well-chosen for its excellent music, but every aspect of this performance was well-executed enough to create another world on the stage and draw the viewer into it.
— Read more at idsnews.com

In Scott Joplin's Treemonisha: An Opera in Three Acts, there is more to the music than meets the ear. But just what that "more" is will never be known for sure. That's because Treemonisha's original orchestra parts were lost more than 40 years ago. The one bit of published sheet music that has survived is a piano-vocal score that Joplin published at his own expense so he could sell his opera to would-be producers.
— Read more a RelishNow

Audra McDonald will head back into the recording studio in the coming weeks to record her fourth solo album, her musical director Ted Sperling told Playbill.com. The new album will concentrate on the generation of singer-songwriters that emerged in the American music scene during the late '60s and early '70s. Among the composers whose work will be covered are Randy Newman, Laura Nyro and Loudon Wainwright.
— Read more at Playbill News

Houston Grand Opera's national radio broadcasts resume this fall on National Public Radio?s World of Opera, beginning on Saturday, October 29, 2005. Audiences nationwide will be able to enjoy Houston Grand Opera's 2004-2005 season, Celebrate!. Highlights include title role performances by American soprano Patricia Racette in Madame Butterfly, Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel in Falstaff and the world premieres of Daniel Catán's Salsipuedes, a tale of Love, War and Anchovies and Mark Adamo's Lysistrata, or The Nude Goddess.
For a free radio guide, please e-mail radio@houstongrandopera.org, call 1-888-62-OPERA (67372), or mail your name and address to 2005-2006 Season and Radio Broadcast Guide, Houston Grand Opera, 510 Preston, Houston, TX 77002.

A FEW days after Hurricane Rita had blustered along the coast of Texas late last month, Houston Grand Opera found itself in a different kind of swirl. It was the first run-through for a revival of "Le Nozze di Figaro," which opens on Saturday, and just after breakfast, singers, directors and stage managers gathered in a rehearsal studio at the Wortham Center to make up for time lost to the storm. At their center stood the New Zealand baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes, who had blown in two nights before by way of Sydney.
— Read more at New York Times

[Daniel Felsenfeld reveals how the chilling delights of Richard Rodney Bennett's Gothic shocker The Mines of Sulphur echo his scores for films such as Indiscreet. The opera comes to New York City Opera this month.]
The Mines of Sulphur is a page-turner, a barn-burner, a gothic shocker if there ever was one. Think Edgar Allan Poe, think Alfred Hitchcock, think Agatha Christie. Its roller-coaster-like excitement begins with screenwriter Beverley Cross' libretto--a fast-paced story of murder, thwarted flight, and a crew of itinerant theatricals--to which composer Richard Rodney Bennett was exceedingly well matched. His experience as the composer of many film scores serves him splendidly in Mines, as he manages to capture clearly every twist and turn of this ripping yarn about an enslaved Gypsy needing her freedom, whatever the price. The plot clips along at an excellent pace in the libretto, but it is the music that causes it to seethe, snap, snarl, and ultimately to shock.
— Read more at playbillarts.com

English singers are often seen as vulnerable and even frail. The contralto Kathleen Ferrier and the tenors Peter Pears and Ian Bostridge come to mind. But the notion does not hold for the latest generation of English baritones. Take Christopher Maltman, whose buff physique and robust stage presence compete for attention with his vibrant singing. Though less familiar to American audiences than his friend and rival Simon Keenlyside, another athletic English baritone, Mr. Maltman, 35, has been garnering increasing attention here
— Read more at New York Times

If a story about a man trapped alone in a cave 100 feet underground doesn't sound like promising musical theater material to you, think again. As evidenced by the College Conservatory of Music's stellar staging of "Floyd Collins," the 1995 off-Broadway musical by Adam Guettel (music and lyrics) and Tina Landau (book), this tale of human endurance and dreaming is compelling.
— Read more at news.enquirer.com

Partenope was not a highly regarded work in its day, though it subsequently enjoyed the distinction of being among the first Handel operas to receive a decent recording with period instruments. That was Sigiswald Kuijken's in 1979, with La Petite Bande and a cast that included Krisztina Laki, Ren Jacobs and Helge Miller-Molinari, and its quality and many wisdoms were sufficient in themselves to attract attention at a time when the Handel opera revival was yet to get under way. The work has not been recorded again until now, when greater general familiarity with Handel's output renders it not only less of an exotic stranger but also reveals it to be one of its composer?s more interesting dramatic creations.
— Read more at Gramophone

If you can, imagine a world where the current pope, in a move to preserve public morality, bans - of all things - opera. No "parental advisory" stickers, no ratings system, just an all-out prohibition against that musical corrupter of our youth. That world was Rome, a little more than 300 years ago, and it's a world that holds a particular fascination for one of the world's most beloved artists, mezzo Cecilia Bartoli, a proud native and still a resident of the Eternal City.
— Read more at BostonHerald.com

Opera lovers live for those rare, cherishable moments when singers transcend the artifice of the art - I mean, who sings their way through life, anyway? - to actually become their characters in flesh, in blood and in voice. So while the program at last night's performance by Opera Boston of Gian Carlo Menotti's "The Consul" listed soprano Joanna Porackova in the lead role of Magda Sorel, we saw no opera diva parading across the stage of the Cutler Majestic Theatre.
— Read more at BostonHerald.com

Since the triumphant premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti's "The Consul" on Broadway in 1950, the opera has been repeatedly staged all over the world. In Opera Boston's adventurous season, it stands as the old fashioned repertory piece, and the company did pretty well by it last night.
— Read more at The Boston Globe

A Handel opera is still sufficiently rare that one looks forward to it immoderately. If it is one of the great ones, such as Rodelinda, it is not to be missed.
— Read more at The Globe and Mail

THE history of opera is filled with stories of great works that were received indifferently at their premieres and then slipped into oblivion, only to receive their due many years later. But this was not the case with "The Mines of Sulphur."
— Read more at nytimes.com

Even the most ardent fans of the mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli must sometimes question whether she is making full use of her remarkable gifts and extraordinary popularity. By the late 1990's, the opera world wondered what she would do next. Expand her operatic repertory and take on touchstone soprano roles in Bellini operas? There was talk that Debussy's Mélisande might become a signature part
— Read more at New York Times

[Houston Grand Opera opens its season with the tale of Boris]
If opera seems a bit too schmaltzy for you, consider this plot line: Fifteen years after the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the Russian czar Boris Godunov uses treachery and corruption to come to power. Once he's claimed the throne, though, enemies use -- you guessed it -- treachery and corruption to try to overtake him. Death, war, famine -- and not a warbling diva in sight.
— Read more at houstonpress.com

Soprano Renée Fleming's Sacred Songs moved into the top spot on the Billboard classical chart this week, its third week on the chart. Sacred Songs is a collection of religious music by Bach, Handel, Mozart, Schubert, and others, recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Guest artists include mezzo-soprano Susan Graham and violinist Mark O'Connor. Violinist André Rieu's The Flying Dutchman dropped from number one to number three in its third week on the chart, and Cecilia Bartoli's Opera Proibita moved from number three up to number two.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Whatever you call the East Village Opera Company, please don't call it a crossover act. The band, founded by Peter Kiesewalter and lead singer Tyley Ross, does take opera and recast it in a rock idiom, but not in a Three Tenors/Josh Groban/Charlotte Church-on-PBS kind of way. Kiesewalter and Ross produce something genuinely fresh that combines classical beauty with rock energy.
— Read more at BostonHerald.com

These are not the typical components of a community outreach program, but the staff at the Pensacola Opera Inc. thinks those elements will enhance tourism and culture in Pensacola. And the opera staff hopes members of IMPACT 100 Pensacola Bay Area will agree. Proposing a world premier opera for families called "The Widow's Lantern," the 22-year-old opera company is one of five finalists for one of two $125,000 grants from IMPACT 100.
— Read more at pensacolanewsjournal.com

Opera Longview intends to get too big for its britches. A new name - Opera East Texas - and a new collaboration - with the East Texas Symphony Orchestra in Tyler - reflects this push. "We wanted to expand our reach" from greater Longview to Northeast Texas, said Opera East Texas General Director Derrith Bondurant. "And we needed to change the name to be all-inclusive."
— Read more at news-journal.com

In a continued effort to promote the love of classical music and the arts for African American youth, CAAPA (Coalition for African Americans in the Performing Arts), in cooperation with Washington National Opera, is delighted to offer CAAPA members and students discounted tickets for the upcoming production of Porgy and Bess at Washington, DC?s Kennedy Center during selected performances in the month of November.
— Read more at emediawire.com

The NBR New Zealand Opera's 2006 season ranges from the crowd-pleasing entertainment of Mozart's The Magic Flute to Bela Bartok's dark, Freudian work Bluebeard's Castle.
— Read more at nbr.co.nz

Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti is confident his retirement will not affect the popularity of opera. The 70-year-old is in Melbourne for the start of the Australian leg of his farewell tour. He is retiring to teach music and spend more time with his young daughter.
— Read more at abc.net.au

On October 27 & 28, American Opera Projects and Making Books Sing will present a concert reading of The Orphan Singer, an exciting and moving musical production, based on the book by award-winning author Emily Arnold McCully, and adapted for the stage by Making Books Sing's Artistic Director Barbara Zinn Krieger. Commissioned by Making Books Sing, this musical introduces young audiences to the life and work of Antonio Vivaldi and features a live, all-female chamber ensemble and a Broadway-quality cast. Music is adapted by Rick Erickson.
Performances will be held Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005 at 6pm at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church (3 West 65th Street in Manhattan) and Friday, Oct. 28, 2005 at 11:30am & 7:30pm at Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church (85 South Oxford Street in Brooklyn). Tickets are $15 for adults and $12 for students and seniors (suggested donation for Thursday's performance). For ticket reservations and more info, call 718-398-4024.
— Read more at operaprojects.org

Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli will perform tonight at the Ferguson Arts Center in Newport News in what is a major coup for the new performing arts venue at Christopher Newport University.
— Read more at hamptonroads.com

TORONTO - As far as the Canadian Opera Company knows, its current production of George Frideric Handel's Rodelinda marks the work's Canadian premiere. It opened Tuesday night at the Hummingbird Centre, where it runs through Oct. 30. This is a production that makes it hard to understand why it has taken so long for Canada to get a look at the 1725 masterpiece, even in its somewhat abridged state.
— Read more at jam.canoe.ca [Related news items]

Alexander Pereira recently celebrated his 58th birthday for 40 hours in many time zones. The head of the Zurich Opera was on a trip to Japan for talks about his company's tour there in 2007 and their acclaimed series of DVDs funded by NHK, the Japanese Broadcasting Corp. Then it was on to San Francisco to visit his son and then to Cleveland last week to hear Cleveland Orchestra music director Franz Welser-MÖst, who is his general music director at the Zurich Opera, conduct a concert at Severance Hall.
— Read more at cleveland.com

It may come as a surprise to some but the Fine Arts, Opera in particular, is alive and well in East Texas. "Every year opera directors from across the country, especially Ft. Worth and Shreveport, come to Longview and hire our actors for their opera," says Derrith Bondurant, General Director of Opera East Texas. For the past few years, Longview Opera has welcomed several distinguished conductors and directors, such as: Robert Lyall of the New Orleans and Grand Rapids Opera, Prentice Loftin of the El Paso Opera and Civic Chorale, Stephen Aiken of Opera Memphis and Ben Malensek of Dallas Opera and Opera Theatre St. Louis.
— Read more at East Texas Weekly

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.
— Read more at The Journal Times Online

[S.F. guild program, 'Pirates' show help students develop music, art appreciation]
An auditorium full of young students applauded and laughed repeatedly as they watched 10 of their peers perform opera with professional singers at Frank Otis Elementary School on Tuesday. The 400-plus students, with school staff and a few parents in the audience, were for the most part captivated by a 40-minute version of Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance."
— Read more at Inside Bay Area

The long goodbye to the fifth general director of the San Francisco Opera has begun. Over the coming months, the Bay Area not only will have to get used to the reality of Pamela Rosenberg's departure, but, more importantly, will have a chance to consider what an extraordinary legacy she will leave when she departs for Berlin in January.
— Read more at sfgate.com

The links between a renowned engineer and the town he helped put on the map are to be celebrated in an opera. Swindon rose to prominence in the 19th century as the home of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Western Railway.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

Dr. Atomic, the transfixing new opera by the composer John Adams in collaboration with the director and librettist Peter Sellars, calls to mind William Carlos Williams' lines in Asphodel, That Greeny Flower: "It is difficult/ to get the news from poems/ yet men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there." The opera, which had its premiere in San Francisco on Oct. 1 (and closes Oct. 22), centers on the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer at the culmination of his leadership of the laboratory at Los Alamos, N.M., that designed and constructed the first atomic bombs. It is set at Los Alamos, at the end of June 1945, several weeks before the first nuclear explosive was tested at Alamogordo, N.M., and then at the test site during the anxious, rainstormy hours preceding the detonation at 5:30 a.m. on July 16, 1945.
— Read more at slate.msn.com [Related news items]

Hey, rock star! Yeah, you?the one with the slouch-ass, thin-wale, faded corduroys and slim-fitting American Apparel T-shirt. Let's go check out an opera! What's that, you say? Gogol Bordello's in town? OK, well, screw that, then ... but how about tomorrow night instead? Here's the thing: Opera isn't just for crusty old fusties. It's also for crusty young fusties and people who say, "Oh no, opera isn't for me"?the same people who think they know whether they like the soup before they taste it. You yourself have probably come to expect certain things from opera: large-hipped matrons in Viking horns, mustachioed men in brocade jackets and distraught, warbling women in chiffon dresses darting about the stage, beating their breasts. Worst of all, it isn't even ironic.
— Read more at weeklydig.com

Without even a puff of wind in the Shreveport area, Hurricane Katrina has sent production costs soaring through the rafters at Shreveport Opera. SO planned to rent scenery from the New Orleans Opera for its Oct. 29 production of "Faust." Saddled with unknowns after Katrina hit, SO's general and artistic director Eric Dillner turned to the Montreal Opera Company for sets, which caused production costs to spike dramatically. Shreveport Opera's $750,000 budget initially was set with the in-state perks that help keep costs low, including service donations from regional trucking companies and generous scenery discounts from the New Orleans Opera.
— Read more at The Shreveport Times

Jake Heggie's "The End of the Affair," given its West Coast premiere by Seattle Opera at McCaw Hall, is an opera of intimate scale, engrossing ideas and a comfortable musical palette. Its lyricism is frank and tender, even haunting on occasion.
— Read more at seattlepi.nwsource.com

THERE AREN'T many operatic baritones in the world who can give a concert one night and run a foot race the next day. But the fit and feisty Rodney Gilfry plans to run the U.S. Half Marathon (a formidible 13.1 miles rather than the whole whopping 26.2) later this month after giving a solo recital the night before in Santa Rosa. A few days before that, on Oct. 18 in San Francisco, Gilfry will join other musical luminaries to perform a gala concert benefiting the Camphill Communities in North America.
— Read more at Inside Bay Area

Soprano Deborah Voigt and tenor Ben Heppner will perform in concert at Avery Fisher Hall on November 9 in a gala benefit for Lincoln Center. The two opera stars will be accompanied by the Orchestra of St. Luke's, led by Asher Fisch. Soprano Margaret Jane Wray will also appear.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

I was 12 when I made my entree into opera. I auditioned for -- and sang in -- the children's chorus of the Washington National Opera in Puccini's La Bohème. I loved being part of the music, the singing, the performance and the costumes. That's when I realized it was possible to make a career of music. After six years at Juilliard, where I earned a bachelor's and a master's degree in music, I spent a year in Miami in the Florida Grand Opera's young-artists program. I made $180 a week as an understudy.
— Read more at kiplinger.com

Temporarily detached from its parent company, the Orchestra of Scottish Opera and its conductor, Sir Richard Armstrong, launched a concert series in Glasgow yesterday with a programme from which opera was largely excluded. But what were we given instead? What gap in our lives was Sir Richard's puzzling selection of music meant to fill? If the concert - like some of those to follow - had been entitled The Art of Transcription, its purpose might have been clarified, though not perhaps with much conviction. Neither Bach's Third Brandenburg Concerto nor Walton's Second String Quartet (in its guise as his so-called Sonata for Strings) benefited from being inflated by souped-up strings the way they were.
— Read more at The Herald

Soprano Jennifer Welch-Babidge, a Metropolitan Opera regular and native of the northeastern North Carolina town of Aulander, is known for keeping audiences on the edge of their seats. That was never truer than at a Greensboro Opera performance in November 2003 in which Welch-Babidge sang "Lucia di Lammermoor," which called for her to be thrown to the floor several times and to crawl around during the famous "Mad Scene" -- all while eight months pregnant.
— Read more at newsobserver.com

WHEN you live in a country of only 5.2 million people and your native tongue is unintelligible to virtually everyone outside your borders, you'd better learn to converse with the rest of the world if you don't want to end up talking to yourself. This is the problem faced by the Finns, and among their many admirable traits has been shrewd adaptation to this exigency. While they hold dearly to the foundations of their national culture, such as the "Kalevala" epic, they also compete internationally in an eclectic array of fields, from cell phone technology to javelin-throwing, and from contemporary architecture and design to ski-jumping.
— Read more at The Seoul Times

New York City Opera opened in February, 1944, at the height of the battles of Anzio and Truk. If skeptics thought it frivolous to start an opera company in the middle of a world war, Fiorello LaGuardia straightened them out: the music-loving Mayor believed that opera was essential to city life, and he wanted lower- and middle-class New Yorkers to have it at affordable prices, without pretension. The company was then part of City Center, on West Fifty-fifth Street, which now concentrates on dance and musical theatre. The composer-critic Deems Taylor called the City Center Opera "democracy in action, a democracy realizing the work of the individual." Tickets started at eighty-five cents - nine and a half dollars, in today's currency - and topped out at $2.20. These days, you have to pay quite a bit more to get through the doors of what LaGuardia dubbed "the people's opera company." Tickets go up to a hundred and twenty dollars, which is more than most orchestra seats for "Spamalot."
— Read more at Alex Ross: newyorker.com

PBS's upcoming Great Performances season will include soprano Renee Fleming in concert, a documentary about the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and a broadcast of Peter Eötvös's 2004 opera Angels in America. The Fleming concert, to be broadcast November 30, was recorded at Germany's Mainz Cathedral. The program includes sacred Christmas music; the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen accompanies Fleming, with Trevor Pinnock conducting.
— Read more at PlaybillArts [Related news items]

Washington National Opera's November 6 performance of Porgy and Bess will be simultaneously broadcast to a large video screen in the National Mall. The free performance, presented as part of the opera company's 50th anniversary, will also be broadcast live by National Public Radio to stations across the United States, and to 23 European countries.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Who would think that 20 years after two struggling artists performed new compositions for their friends in a small apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan that they would be presenting a world premiere song cycle along with a 110-member symphony orchestra in Michigan? Those two artists, composer Ricky Ian Gordon, and soprano Melanie Helton, will reunite on the campus of Michigan State University at 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 29, in the Cobb Great Hall, Wharton Center, to present a song cycle for soprano and orchestra.
— Read more at newsroom.msu.edu

Something special is going to take place in Amsterdam on October the 27th: The first ever Dance Opera will premiere in De Beurs van Berlage. A fascinating event merging the worlds of different music styles and different generations.
— Read more at gomagazine.nl

SO, what does a full-time, contract opera orchestra do when its raison d'etre, playing opera, is removed from the agenda? It jolly well has to get out there and look for enough work to fill a year-long gap in its playing schedule. That is the predicament facing the Orchestra of Scottish Opera, which has had to sit on the sidelines in recent months and watch its parent company being dismantled around it. We recently outlined in detail the extent to which Scottish Opera has been taken apart.
— Read more at The Herald

With Romanian dignitaries in attendance and only two full rehearsals completed, the University's Sinfonia da Camera production company presented the American premiere of George Enescu's opera, "Oedipe," in a semi-staged performance Saturday evening. Sponsored by the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts and the College of Fine and Applied Arts, the opera was performed in the Foellinger Great Hall in the Krannert Center.
— Read more at The Daily Illini

Stage and screen actor Paul Sorvino will star in the title role of Frank Loesser's The Most Happy Fella for New York City Opera. Directed by Philip Wm McKinley, Fella will begin performances March 4, 2006, with an official opening set for March 7. The limited engagement will play through March 25.
— Read more at Playbill News

Meet Cincinnati Opera's new Artistic Director Evans Mirageas as he presents highlights from the 2006 Summer Festival featuring Tosca, L'Etoile, A Masked Ball, and The Tales of Hoffmann.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Music Hall, Corbett Tower
1241 Elm Street, Downtown
7:00 p.m.
Free, but reservations requested. Please call (513) 241-2742

FOR several months before releasing its new recording of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde," EMI Classics, in tones both momentous and ominous, stoked stories in the news media that it could well be the last studio recording of a major opera ever made. At least EMI refrained from affixing a label to that effect on the packaging of this deluxe release.
— Read more at New York Times

A performance by Israel?s only opera company received standing ovations from two full houses at the Deutsche Opera house in Berlin. The financially strapped Tel Aviv-Yafo Company put on the production of Doninzetti?s 1832 composition L?Elisir d?amour last week at the Deutsche Opera house.
— Read more at EJP

Twenty-five singers take the stage at Beall Concert Hall on Friday for preliminary judging at Eugene Opera's second - well, not annual, since the first one happened earlier this year - Belle Voci National Competition and Concert.
— Read more at The Register-Guard

When the Virginia Opera stages Verdi's "La Traviata" in Richmond next weekend, theatergoers will see about half the people responsible for putting on the show. Eighty-six artists -- 33 singers, six supernumeraries (silent actors), three dancers and 44 instrumentalists, conducted by Peter Mark -- will perform.
— Read more at TimesDispatch.com

In his "Account of Events in Salem," author and law professor Douglas O. Linder describes the events of June-September 1692 when 19 men and women, convicted of witchcraft, were taken to be hanged at Gallows Hill, a barren slope near Salem Village.
— Read more at al.com

For all her self-confidence and career success, Renée Fleming has mostly shied away from the touchstone roles of the operatic repertory, especially its Verdi and Puccini wing. She has said more than once that she has been hiding for years behind unfamiliar repertory. But by seeking out unfamiliar repertory, like the leading roles in Bellini's "Pirata" and Handel's "Rodelinda," Ms. Fleming often takes admirable risks. This is certainly true of her latest venture, the title role of Strauss's "Daphne," which she sang in a much-anticipated concert performance on Saturday night at Carnegie Hall, with a strong cast and the WDR Symphony Orchestra of Cologne, conducted by Semyon Bychkov.
— Read more at New York Times [Related news items]

Before, they barely needed to talk. Boston Lyric Opera, the city's largest opera company, could program the company's traditional productions for the Shubert Theatre. Opera Boston, the upstart, could focus on presenting more contemporary works at the nearby Cutler Majestic Theatre. BLO did "Carmen on the Common." Opera Boston put on "Nixon in China."
— Read more at The Boston Globe

"Rememer me," sings Dido, the widowed queen of Carthage, as she prepares her suicide in Henry Purcell's 300-plus-year-old opera "Dido and Aeneas." But in the Handel and Haydn Society's production that opened last night at the Cutler Majestic Theatre, she really didn't have to worry. I can't imagine that anyone in the audience will be able to forget her or anything about the remarkable evening.
— Read more at BostonHerald.com

Few press fanfares have played longer and louder than those celebrating the establishment of the Stephen & Mary Birch North Park Theatre on the San Diego cultural map. The hoopla ? and the gradual transmogrification of a nearly forgotten 1928 movie and vaudeville house into a little jewel of a performing arts center-- has been going on for five and a half years now. The prime mover of this project, in concert with the City of San Diego and developer Bud Fischer, has been Lyric Opera San Diego, always destined to make the theatre its home. With Gilbert and Sullivan?s The Mikado, last night?s inaugural production in Lyric Opera?s new house, the San Diego arts scene enters a new era. It was a modest show, hardly an atom blast of an opener, but a rich fallout of blessings is certain to affect all those who love theater, dance and music.
— Read more at sandiego.com

The Annapolis opera will open its season with "Opera auf Deutsch," a concert of musical highlights from German operas and operettas, at 8 p.m. Oct. 22 at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 333 Dubois Road, Annapolis.
— Read more at HometownAnnapolis.com

"Beowulf," the circa eighth-century English verse epic that is the bane of college students the world over, is now a rock opera by "Saturday Night Live" musician Lenny Pickett, opening Oct. 16 in Manhattan.
— Read more at Playbill News

David Devan is walking off the Island stage, after eight years as executive director at Pacific Opera Victoria. He was head-hunted and hired by the prestigious Opera Company of Philadelphia, home of the oldest opera theatre in the United States, and leaves Dec. 23 to become its new managing director.
— Read more at canada.com

[Toronto Opera Repertoire founder and director also leads Giuseppe Verdi Choir]
Maestro Giuseppe Macina, tenor and director of Toronto Opera Repertoire and of Giuseppe Verdi choir, minces no words in pinpointing the defects of young Italian operatic singers. We recently interviewed baritone Vittorio Vitelli who raised enthusiasm in Toronto singing as Macbeth.
— Read more at Tandem

With its opening of "The Mikado" on Friday night, Lyric Opera San Diego completes a long-in-the-works transformation. In the years since its founding in 1979, the company has changed leadership, changed repertoire, changed conductors, changed names and ---- most recently ---- changed locations from its longtime home at Balboa Park's aging Casa del Prado Theatre to its new permanent artistic home, the Stephen and Mary Birch North Park Theatre. 1994.
— Read more at North County Times

How about something filled with murderous ambition, manipulation and insanity? It may sound like The Apprentice, but, in fact, Verdi's Macbeth offers all of that, plus witches and ghosts. And Opera Verdi Europa will bring it all to life at 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Anderson Center of Binghamton University. 1994.
— Read more at pressconnects.com

If you never got around to taking a German literature class, maybe it's time to acquaint yourself with one of Western civilization's more enduring legends at the Nashville Opera's production of Faust, which opens tonight.
— Read more at Nashville City Paper [Related news items]

If you've ever loved anyone who was completely wrong for you, then the opera "Carmen" is perfect for you. With a libretto (that's opera-speak for script) by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy and a musical score by Georges Bizet, "Carmen" is considered by many opera buffs to be one of the greatest operas of all time.
— Read more at Arizona Daily Wildcat

Alban Berg's controversial opera "Lulu" will open the opera series at the Athens Concert Hall next Wednesday. A Greek premiere, "Lulu" will also inaugurate the Alexandra Trianti Hall as an opera venue. Directed by Eike Gramms, the production has been rated unsuitable for anyone under 15, as it contains scenes of nudity.
— Read more at ekathimerini.com

There's simply no other way to describe "Carmen" the opera, or Carmen the woman. The story drips with sensuality and tragedy, and the music seethes with passion, temptation and opulence.
— Read more at The Arizona Daily Star

An opera based on the rivalry between figure skaters Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding will premiere at Tufts University in spring 2006, the Boston Herald reports. Kerrigan was attacked in the knee by an associate of Harding's at the Olympic trials in 1994.
— Read more at playbillarts.com

History's unholy Trinity nynewsday.com
Performers are stronger than roles in 'Doctor Atomic' San Francisco Examiner
'Doctor Atomic' Misfires MercuryNews.com
It's not a bomb, but production doesn't have much pop WFAA.com
Countdown to the Eve of Destruction nytimes.com
... S.F. Opera confronts our age's most terrifying topic sfgate.com
An explosive premiere calendarlive.com
All About the Bomb opinionjournal.com
Worthy music in John Adams' new opera undone by convoluted libretto, silly staging SouthFlorida.com
Heroic A-bomb opera will generate fallout Philadelphia Inquirer
EDITORIAL: A 'Doctor' for our age sfgate.com
'Dr. Atomic' radiates fiery melodic flair yaledailynews.com
John Adams Writes an Opera for the Atomic Age NPR

For several weeks, the folks at Austin Lyric Opera must have been convinced that the vengeful gypsy Azucena -- the pivotal character in Verdi's "Il Trovatore" -- had cast an especially evil eye on their production of the piece. The rented set from New Orleans Opera had suffered irreparable flood damage after hurricane Katrina; shortly afterwards, a quickly arranged alternative from another company was ruined by a faulty sprinkler system.
— Read more at mysanantonio.com

Soprano Renée Fleming was one of ten women honored today as Distinguished Daughters of Pennsylvania. The award's 58th annual presentation was hosted by Pennsylvania governor Edward G. Rendell and first lady Judge Marjorie O. Rendell at the Governor's Residence. The Distinguished Daughters, each nominated by Pennsylvania organizations, received medals and citations.
— Read more at playbillarts.com [Related news items]

Heather Carbo, a matter-of-fact librarian at an evangelical seminary outside Philadelphia, was cleaning out an archival cabinet one hot afternoon in July. It was a dirty and routine job. But there, on the bottom shelf, she stumbled across what may be one of the most important musicological finds in years. It was a working manuscript score for a piano version of Beethoven's "Grosse Fuge," a monument of classical music. And it was in the composer's own hand, according to Sotheby's auction house. The 80-page manuscript in mainly brown ink - a furious scattering of notes across the page, with many changes and cross-outs, some so deep that the paper is punctured - dates from the final months of Beethoven's life.
— Read more at nytimes.com

Despite the flurry of attention over the continuing announcements of this year's Nobel Prizewinners, many previous recipients in the prizes' 104-year history remain unfamiliar. So it is not surprising that many Americans are unaware that Fritz Haber won the 1918 Nobel in chemistry for the invention of a process used to manufacture cheap fertilizer, which helped feed billions. Or that he made modern chemical warfare possible with his development of chlorine gas and personally oversaw its use in World War I. Or that his first wife, also a chemist, seemingly distraught over his work on poison gases, shot herself through the heart. Or that Haber, a Jew, fled his beloved Germany because Nazi race laws made it impossible to live and work there, or that his relatives were later gassed with another of his inventions - Zyklon B - in concentration camps. But the details of Haber's tumultuous life will soon become much more familiar with a new play, a new biography, a new short film and even a new opera that are either out or in the works.
— Read more at New York Times

At a recent press conference for Dr. Atomic, a new opera about the events leading up to the first nuclear test on July 16, 1945, at Los Alamos, N.M., I made the mistake of asking the chief architects of the work, director and librettist Peter Sellars and composer John Adams, about how they planned to stage the detonation scene. My question was followed by an uncomfortable silence during which Adams shuffled and looked down at his feet and Sellars smiled as one does at a small child describing his pet goldfish. Instead of answering my question directly, Sellars launched into an impassioned lecture about modern culture's unhealthy obsession with flashy special effects. Dr. Atomic, he said, would have less to do with the literal, physical explosion of the bomb than with its impact on the consciences of those who brought "The Gadget" into being. The most dramatic combustion, in other words, would be internal.
— Read more at sfweekly.com

In an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde, rock musician Roger Waters said he would like to see his new opera Ça Ira performed at the Opéra Bastille in Paris.
— Read more at PlaybillArts [Related news items]

Most opera companies aren't all that gleeful to have a bomb, but the San Francisco Opera's bomb is doing very well, thank you. The John Adams/Peter Sellars "Doctor Atomic" is selling very well, the Opera-tors tell me, and some sections of the Opera House are actually sold out for certain performances. sfgate.com [Related news items]

An adventurous fall is under way at the New York City Opera, with new productions of seldom-heard works like Paul Dukas's "Ariane et Barbe-bleue" and, later this month, Richard Rodney Bennett's "Mines of Sulphur." But as is the case with the major classical record labels, risk-taking is typically balanced by a steady stream of dependable staples. In that spirit, "Tosca" returned on Sunday afternoon, with John DeMain conducting and Carla Thelen Hanson making her company debut in the title role.
— Read more at nytimes.com

This year marks the bicentenary of the birth of one of Denmark's national icons, Hans Christian Andersen, so it's no surprise that the National Opera would wish to commission a work to celebrate the occasion in their brand new house. What is unusual is that their chosen composer is not Danish or has any operatic pedigree - it's Elvis Costello.
— Read more at Independent Online [Related news items]

For all its ravishing melodies, delectably tart orchestral writing and across-the-board happy endings, Rossini's "La Cenerentola" remains a tricky opera to stage. This "Cinderella" teeters on the edge between farce and morality tale. The opera's subtitle is "Goodness in triumph." Its characters include Alidoro, or "Golden Wings," an angel in disguise who brings Cinderella a message of heavenly comfort couched in Rossini's most majestic strains. Cinderella, otherwise known as Angelina, is a creature of angelic virtue, taking revenge on her wicked stepfather and stepsisters through forgiveness.
— Read more at newsday.com [thanks viliane-fille]

Jake Heggie was fighting enough trouble to fill another opera, but he refused to believe that his opera ?The End of the Affair? was cursed. The first young playwright that Heggie enlisted to write the libretto died unexpectedly of cancer months later. The first director dropped out to do a high-profile movie. Librettist Heather McDonald had private family problems that delayed her by a year, leaving Heggie only 10 months to write all the music.
— Read more at TheNewsTribune.com

[ Since 1951, the festival has built itself a solid reputation. Now, by extending its theatre into a state-of-the-art venue, it is moving into a different league, says Roderic Dunnett]
Wexford is surely the last spot on earth you'd expect to bump into an international opera festival. A small, sleepy southern Irish port founded by the Vikings, nestling on a coastline of secluded coves and quiet beauty spots, Wexford has a distinct old-world charm. It's a place where you'd expect to see milk bottles on every doorstep, plus the odd cow prowling the side streets.
— Read more at Independent Online

Leonard Bernstein was on his honeymoon in 1951 when he began composing his one-act opera "Trouble in Tahiti," a curious time, you would think, for a young man to write a wry, jazzy and jaundiced portrait of a troubled suburban marriage. In introducing a production of "Trouble in Tahiti," presented in the Music Room of the House Museum at Caramoor on Saturday night, Michael Barrett, the chief executive and general director of this center for music and the arts, said that the work could be seen as a bittersweet look at the troubled marriage of Bernstein's parents.
— Read more at New York Times

Light Opera Works in Evanston, Illinois, opens a revised revival of Jule Styne and Yip Harburg's musical comedy, Darling of the Day Oct. 7, marking the first fully-staged American production since its flop Broadway run in 1968. Fans have long treasured the score, which was preserved on a Broadway cast album. The staging's revisions are by Erik Haagensen, the American librettist and lyricist who fell in love with the material years ago (he bought the cast album when he was a student). He has written additional book and lyric material for it; the original librettist was Nunnally Johnson, who drew from the Arnold Bennett novel "Buried Alive."
— Read more at Yahoo! News

"Beowulf," the circa eighth-century English verse epic that is the bane of college students the world over, is now a rock musical by "Saturday Night Live" musician Lenny Pickett, getting its world premiere by The Irish Repertory Theatre in Manhattan Oct. 7-Nov. 13. The musical Beowulf opens Irish Rep's 2005-06 season. Artistic director Charlotte Moore stages the production, written by "Saturday Night Live" musical director Lenny Pickett (composer and lyricist) and Lindsey Turner (lyricist).
— Read more at Yahoo! News

Euan Morton - who starred as Boy George in Taboo - will play the title role in Tony Kushner and Maurice Sendak's New York-bound operas Brundibr and Comedy on the Bridge. Tony Taccone (bridge & tunnel) directs the co-production between Berkeley Repertory Theatre and Yale Repertory Theatre. The work will debut in California (Nov. 11-Dec. 28) then play the New Haven, Connecticut venue (Feb. 10-March 5, 2006) prior to its New York run at The New Victory Theater (April 26-May 21).
— Read more at Yahoo! News

Elvis Costello?s opera about fairy-tale writer Hans Christian Anderson had its first semi-staged performance last weekend at the Copenhagen Opera House, the Associated Press reports. Costello sang the roles of Anderson and P. T. Barnum in The Secret Arias, which tells the story of Anderson?s unrequited love for legendary soprano Jenny Lind. Gisela Stille sang the role of Lind.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Streetwise Opera is something else. It teases, surprises, takes risks, and tackles the unexpected. Like Birmingham Opera Company, it lures you where you haven't been before and sends you home enriched. If you'd stumbled across its staging of Mahler's Five Rückert Lieder, you could have been forgiven for fearing you'd entered a bizarre fashion show. A magnificent Town Hall ballroom; a catwalk in place; a sleazy cabaret feel; the audience tucked amid tables festooned with cocktail glasses of blue Curaçao; a parade of strangely dressed figures you might encounter at a Sally Bowles soirée.
— Read more at Independent Online

BOTH musically and financially, it would seem that our Welsh cousins have more notes than they know what to do with. While cash-strapped Scottish Opera languishes in its 'dark period' with no absolute guarantee of ever seeing dawn break, Welsh National Opera goes from strength to strength. The Principality is alive with the sound of music: the WNO is putting on nine major productions a year, is staying within budget and has a brand new opera house in which to perform, built at a cost of £85m.
— Read more at scotsman.com

It looks like a giant warrior's helmet fashioned from concrete, steel and crushed ceramic tiles. But Valencia's new 4,000-seat opera house, which opens tonight after nine years in construction, is meant to be more than just another surrealist design by architect Santiago Calatrava. It is the centrepiece of what local politicians hope will be a cultural renaissance for this resort region, better known for its beaches than for its love of Verdi.
— Read more at Guardian Unlimited

Italian conductor Renato Palumbo will become the new musical director at Berlin's Deutsche Opera. Palumbo will take the job at the beginning of the 2006-2007 season, the opera house said Thursday. He will replace Christian Thielemann, who quit last year in a dispute with city authorities over scarce funding.
— Read more at news.yahoo.com

SWEEP AWAY the hype, and the San Francisco Opera still has ample boasting rights for its world premiere of "Dr. Atomic," a piercing look at J. Robert Oppenheimer and the team of physicists he led in creating the atom bomb.
— Read more at sfgate.com

It's big news when a major opera company commissions a new opera, and the frenzy surrounding the October 1 premiere of John Adams's "Dr. Atomic" in San Francisco has reached fever pitch. The much-anticipated opera has been on the radar since it was announced in 2002 -- and judging by Adams's previous two, this was an occasion not to be missed.
— Read more at yaledailynews.com

[Performance Today, October 7, 2005] The eagerly anticipated third opera from John Adams, Doctor Atomic, premiered Oct. 1 at the San Francisco Opera. Based on Richard Rhodes' book The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Adams' work focuses on physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the project he led to create -- and detonate -- the first atomic bomb.
— Read more at NPR

Rachid Sabitri grew up in Orpington, Kent, with football on his mind. He was small, skinny and promising. As a boy, he pretty much had his life planned out: he would be playing for Morocco in the World Cup in 2002. Life, however, has a habit of springing surprises. When one of his classmates fell ill, Sabitri was asked to take his place in a school play. There was a girl he wanted to walk home, so he agreed. He had to act and sing, to prance around the stage, to risk the wrath of his football mates. He loved it.
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In its first production of Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball), Piedmont Opera Theatre is making a compelling case for one of those operas that comes and goes, but probably deserves to be staged more than it is. The show opened last night at the Stevens Center. It marks the second time in two seasons that Piedmont Opera has staged a Verdi opera that local audiences haven't seen the company do before. Let's hope that similar repertory choices are made in the future.
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The Bulgarian ensemble Opera Verdi Europa began its "opera's greatest hits" gala at the University of Notre Dame's DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts with the overture from Gioacchino Rossini's comic opera "The Barber of Seville." Thursday's event then featured three arias from the work. Soprano Dessislava Stefanova soloed "Una voca poco fa," expressing her delight upon discovering a love letter. Stefanova, smiling shyly at times, coquettishly at others, electrified the audience with her enthusiastic rendering of the piece.
— Read more at SouthBendTribune.com

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said of Carmen: "It's the perfect opera to serve as an antidote to Wagnerian neurosis." Whether you agree with the philosopher's opinion, Thursday's season-opening performance of Georges Bizet's Carmen so enchanted the Arizona Opera audience that it became easy to overlook the production's slight weaknesses, all due to inadequate stage direction.
— Read more at azcentral.com

About two-thirds of the way through Mercury Opera Rochester's performance on Friday of Mascagni's L'Amico Fritz, it suddenly dawned on me that a new age of opera had finally emerged in Rochester. Perhaps future music historians will refer to it as the "Age of Good Opera."
— Read more at democratandchronicle.com

At the end of Act 1 of John Adams' "Doctor Atomic," the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer stands alone onstage with the murderous bomb he helped create. It hovers in midair, suspended behind a shroudlike canvas, with the aura of power and death all around it.
— Read more at sfgate.com

Knox County third-graders were treated to an adaptation of "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" when Opera Columbus came to Memorial Theater on Sept. 29 as part of the Youth Enrichment Series. Students from St. Vincent de Paul School assisted in the performance by servng as the chorus. Using the melodies of familiar operas such as Mozart's "The Magic Flute" and Rossini's "The Barber of Seville," the opera company and chorus told the tale of a typical bully and his intended victims in both song and dialogue. Classic opera harmony, arias and point/counterpoint combined with touches of humor encouraged the audience to play nice with others and consider their feelings.
— Read more at mountvernonnews.com

This weekend, the musician is celebrating the 200th anniversary of author Hans Christian Andersen's birth by performing a new opera in Copenhagen, Denmark. On Oct. 15, Costello will help celebrate the 150th anniversary of Butler University by giving a private lecture to students, then a public concert at Clowes Hall.
— Read more at IndyStar.com