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

The good news is that Lorraine Hunt Lieberson has returned from her months-long absence looking perfectly healthy and sounding - well, I gave up trying to invent new superlatives for this supreme musician some time ago. Peter Lieberson's new cycle Neruda Songs is dizzyingly beautiful music, and not only because Lorraine sings it; I'll say more when I review the composer's big new Philharmonic piece in the spring. The bad news, for music criticism at least, is that Richard Dyer is leaving the Boston Globe. Read his review of Neruda Songs for a sense of what will be missed; no one writes with more authority or passion.
— Read more at Alex Ross - therestisnoise.com

GERMAN civilization has had a lot to answer for in the last 200 years, but Exhibit A in its defense might be Carl Maria von Weber. No one else's music could be purer of heart and yet so unmistakably German. People confuse moral behavior and art at their peril, but Weber's last opera, "Oberon," like so much of his music, tempts us to do just that. It emits an uncomplicated humanity: an implied goodness that in our more cynical time is received with undeserved wariness.
— Read more at nytimes.com

Manfred Honeck will be the next music director of Stuttgart Opera, the Deutsche Presse-Agentur reports. Honeck has signed a four-year contract running from fall 2007 through 2011. He replaces Lothar Zagrosek, who is moving to the Berlin Symphony.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The Canadian Opera Company ran a surplus of C$42,000 in 2004-05, the Toronto company announced at its annual meeting last week. The COC balanced its budget in 2003-04 only by transferring C$1.4 million that had been raised for the construction of its new home into its general fund. This year, board president J. Rob Collins said, the company "produced a surplus without the aid of Canadian Opera House transition funding."
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The performance features two satirical anti-World War I operas, a staging of Kurt Weill and Paul Green's Johnny Johnson (1936), excerpts from Robert Kurka and Lewis Allen's Good Soldier Schweik (1958), and an "antiwar cabaret" of songs by local jazz pianist and composer Mary Watkins. The show is Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 1:30 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. "Peace Through Song" will be conducted by Oakland Opera Theatre Musical Director Deirdre McClure, who has worked with the company since 2001.
— Read more at Berkeley Daily Planet

William Fred Scott, founding director and artist in residence at the new Brenau International Opera Workshop, spoke to the Gainesville Kiwanis Club last week. Between laughter at his jokes, Kiwanians heard statements to ponder, and began looking forward to Gainesville's first local opera production. Scott, who spent 20 years with the Atlanta Opera and was associate conductor of the Atlanta Symphony, has developed quite a reputation in the music world. Brenau's telephones reportedly rang off the hook as soon as his appointment there was announced. His longtime friend, Dr. Ed Schrader, after becoming president of Brenau University, invited Scott here.
— Read more at gainesvilletimes.com

Under the motto Home at Last, the Canadian Opera Company announced the inaugural season Tuesday for its new venue, the first in the country built specifically for opera. The company opens the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts next September with Wagner's Ring cycle.
— Read more at CJAD

Sean Doran, the chief executive officer and artistic director of the English National Opera since 2003, has left the company, ENO announced today. Executive director Loretta Tomasi becomes chief executive; director of opera programming John Berry has taken over as artistic director. Doran will act as a consultant for the remainder of the season. A press release from the company did not say whether Doran had resigned or had been fired, but the abruptness of his departure suggested the latter.
— Read more at playbillarts.com

The news that anonymous donors had promised the Yale School of Music $100 million came too late for Stephanie Teply, a violinist who graduated from the school with a master of music degree in 2003. The gift, announced this month, will enable the school to offer free tuition to all students starting next year.
— Read more at New York Times

Soprano Renee Fleming will appear on PBS's Great Performances series on November 30 in a special titled "Renee Fleming: Sacred Songs and Carols." The program was recorded live at Mainz Cathedral in Mainz, Germany. Fleming is accompanied by the Deutche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, conducted by Trevor Pinock.
— Read more at PlaybillArts [Related news items]

[Bryson to perform Sunday after a 22-year hiatus]
Douglas Bryson's breathing is very important to him. While it's important for every living creature to breathe, for the San Ramon resident it helps him do what he loves ? sing. "If you can't breathe properly, you can't sing properly," Bryson explains. "If your breath isn't there, then your voice won't be there."
— Read more at Inside Bay Area

On Friday, the day the Metropolitan Opera's "An American Tragedy" opens in New York City, the Herkimer County Historical Society is encouraging people to watch a segment about the production on NBC's "Today" show taped last month in Herkimer.
— Read more at uticaod.com [Related news items]

IT'S not often that a cliché spawns a professional medical hypothesis - but such is the case with the oft-quoted, "It ain't over till the fat lady sings." In recent weeks, the name of Peter Osin, a consultant at London's Royal Marsden Hospital, has been popping up in newspapers and on arts-related websites because the doctor has a new theory: Chubby opera singers - ladies as well as gentlemen - may be the victims of their own art form.
— Read more at calendarlive.com

More than a century after its premiere, all four operas of Richard Wagner's "The Ring of the Nibelungs" will be staged locally for the first time in July 2006 by Opera Theater of Pittsburgh. "The success of last summer's performances of the first two 'Ring' operas, 'Rheingold' and 'Valkyrie,' led us to offer the complete 'Ring,'" says company artistic director Jonathan Eaton.
— Read more at PittsburghLIVE.com

Lisa Vroman, Karen Murphy and John Scherer have joined the cast of the New York City Opera's upcoming production of The Most Happy Fella. Vroman will play Rosabella with Murphy as Marie and Scherer as Clem. The trio of actors join the previously announced Paul Sorvino as Tony, Eddie Korbich as the Doctor, Leah Hocking as Cleo and Ivan Hernandez as Joe. Directed by Philip Wm McKinley, Fella will begin performances March 4, 2006, with an official opening set for March 7. The limited engagement, which plays in repertory with La Boheme and Lysistrata, ends March 25. (For the March 4 matinee only, the role of Tony will be played by T. Doyle Leverett.)
— Read more at Playbill News

As a boy in New York, composer Tobias Picker recalls the extreme fondness that his father, a radio newswriter and later publicist for CBS, had for the 20th century American novelist Theodore Dreiser, particularly the dark tale of love and murder, "An American Tragedy."
— Read more at nj.com [Related news items]

Days before the world premiere of one of the most anticipated works of the Metropolitan Opera season, composer Tobias Picker still hadn't decided how to end "An American Tragedy." With rehearsals at fever pitch for the Dec. 2 opening, "I realized one day that there are three ways to end it," Picker said Wednesday, opening a score and pointing to notes that may, or may not, be performed.
— Read more at ABC News [Related news items]

[With few opportunities at home, our singers are storming the stages of Europe. The problem is everyone thinks they are German, or French, or American, or . . .]
First the good news: Canadian opera singers are hot in Europe. While there's nothing new about singers from this country performing overseas -- they've been crossing the Atlantic since Emma Albani, from Chambly, Que., boarded a ship for Paris in 1868 -- this season there's a bumper crop of Canadians on European stages.
— Read more at The Globe and Mail

[As the Metropolitan Opera prepares for next month's world premiere of Tobias Picker's An American Tragedy, Charles Sheek reveals some of the true-to-life events upon which the opera and Theodore Dreiser's novel are based.]
Danny Pelosi, Scott Peterson, Robert Blake, O.J., and the BTK murderer. There's probably not an adult in America that could not describe at least some details of the trials and supposed crimes that these names and places embody. The fascination of Americans with the salacious and gory details of scandal and murder is far from new and newspapers in the late 19th and early 20th century were well aware that a good scandal and sensational reporting of murders and accidents made for better copy than mere dry politics and social reporting.
— Read more at PlaybillArts [Related news items]

A GENERATION of opera singers between the world wars had as their ideal the smooth and impregnable voice that all would admire. They were professionals, occupying opera stages for the years that vocal health allotted them. They sang "Tosca" and "Carmen" and earned the public's attention, and sometimes its respect or even affection. A handful are remembered as stars. Some have afterlives on the occasional recording or in the recesses of an opera fanatic's memory. Mostly, they are forgotten.
The fame of Florence Foster Jenkins, on the other hand, will live forever. Jenkins, the rich woman with the bad voice, mesmerized a select public with a series of semiprivate recitals during the 1920's and 30's, culminating in a famous Carnegie Hall debut in 1944. At these events, shock and amusement, barely stifled, greeted her disastrous intonation, hooting timbre and crippled rhythm. You can hear all three in Judy Kaye's endearing impersonation (along with recordings of the real thing) in "Souvenir: A Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins," on Broadway at the Lyceum Theater.
— Read more at New York Times

A little of the language and most of the story of "Romeo and Juliet" make it into Charles Gounod's opera, but it's best not to dwell on Shakespeare's play when seeing and hearing Gounod's adaptation. This is a 19th-century melodrama in music, lushly orches trated, punctuated with high-powered choruses and, most of all, displaying substantial voices voicing big emotions.
— Read more at TimesDispatch.com

Every artistic creation begins, as Georges Seurat states in "Sunday in the Park With George," with a blank page or canvas. In the theater, a production begins with a blank stage. Perhaps no one realizes the reality of the artistic cycle better these days than the folks at Cleveland Opera. Last season, the company signed a contract with New Orleans Opera to borrow sets from the latter's production of Donizetti's "The Elixir of Love" for performances this week and next at the State Theatre in Playhouse Square.
— Read more at cleveland.com

Welsh operatic superstar Bryn Terfel says he's considering taking a year off to pursue radio and TV roles. Terfel, 40, told BBC Radio Cymru he is finding his worldwide travels are keeping him away from his wife and sons and their home in Bontnewydd near Caernarfon, and he doesn't want the life of an absentee father.
— Read more at United Press International [Related news items]

The difference between opera and "popera" is just one little letter. But the debate over the mass popularization of the form for mainstream film and theater audiences divides opera fans into camps as sundered as Madame Butterfly's splintered heart.
— Read more at DenverPost.com

In between rehearsals at the Metropolitan Opera, composer Tobias Picker laughingly recalled another opera orchestra - which shall remain nameless - whose violinists, protesting his penchant for writing in the instruments' extreme range, greeted him in rehearsal in mock submission, waving white handkerchiefs on the end of their bows. Nothing of the sort awaits him on his latest project, "An American Tragedy," based on Theodore Dreiser's 1925 novel about a notorious murder. In fact, Picker was inspired to give the Met Orchestra, one of the finest in the world, something they could really dig their teeth into.
— Read more at Forward Newspaper Online [Related news items]

It would appear to most that soprano Renée Fleming has done it all. The Metropolitan Opera regular has written her autobiography, won two Grammy Awards and has a string of invitations to perform on stages all over the world. But she's never been on a holiday tour. She'll change that this year - and she'll start the tour in Omaha.
— Read more at Omaha.com

Musically, it doesn't get more celestial than the "Debbie & Ben Show," which is how opera aficionados affectionately referred to the Lincoln Center Fall Gala concert given by tenor Ben Heppner and soprano Deborah Voigt at Avery Fisher Hall on November 9. La Voigt made a sensational entrance that had fans screaming, looking ultra-svelte in a ball gown - a fabulous rebuke to those idiots at Covent Garden who fired her last year because she was thought too fat to wear the little black cocktail dress that 'naturally' figures in every respectful production of Strauss - "Ariadne auf Naxos."
— Read more at gaycitynews.com

Most opera singers are familiar with the high "C." But Charles Temkey is one who knows the deep sea, too. When he's not performing some of the world's most famous operas at venues such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, Temkey earns a living as a commercial fisherman off Long Island. "I love the outdoors, and I've always tried to do my own thing," said Temkey, 30.
— Read more at Boston.com

WELSH opera stars Katherine Jenkins and Bryn Terfel will headline next year's 60th Llangollen International Eisteddfod. Organisers lined up the two chart-busting Welsh singers to celebrate the festival's special anniversary. After a 10-year break, Pantglas-born bass baritone Bryn is set to take centre stage for the Tuesday July 4 opening night.
— Read more at icnetwork.co.uk

[COC has profit as move approaches But TSO shortfall climbs alarming]
They are the city's two flagship music institutions. Between them, they have an audience of close to 150,000 people. Yet their most recent annual reports show they couldn't be more different. At its annual general meeting yesterday, the Canadian Opera Company announced a surplus of $42,000 for the year ended June 30. Earlier this month, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra showed a $2.19 million loss for the same period.
— Read more at thestar.com

The Bayerische Staatsoper presents a new opera by Arnaldo de Felice, the Florentine composer who won a 2000 Composer's Competition held by the Bavarian house in conjunction with the Zurich Opera. Nov. 13 (premiere), 16, 18 and 20 at 8:30 p.m. in All Saints Court Church, Munich. In the original Greek myth, the hero Perseus fights Medusa. She has snakes for hair, a golden-scaled body and a gaze that turns men to stone. Perseus, using the winged sandals of Hermes and the shield of Athena, beheads Medusa, avoiding her gaze by letting it reflect harmlessly into the golden shield. Finally, the head is given to Athena, who affixes it to her breastplate.
— Read more at International Herald Tribune

Conducted by Bertrand de Billy, with Ramon Vargas as Roméo, Natalie Dessay as Juliette, Stéphane Dégoût as Mercutio, Joyce DiDonato as Stefano and Kristinn Sigmundsson as Frère Laurent. Nov. 17, 21, 25, 28 and Dec. 1, Feb. 21 and March 1 and 9 at 8 p.m.; Feb. 25 at 8:30 p.m. and March 4 at 1:30 p.m. at the Metropolitan Opera, New York. Today, Charles Gounod is best known as the 19th-century French opera composer who brought the most successful version of "Faust" to the operatic stage. Yet the "Faust" that Gounod made famous is radically different from the poem by Goethe,so different that when performed in Germany, the opera's title is changed to "Marguerite."
— Read more at International Herald Tribune

Every opera house should be doing this. Munich's Bavarian State Opera and the Zurich Opera joined forces five years ago to found an opera competition for young composers. Six finalists wrote six short operas for both cities.Two went on to pen full-length works. Arnaldo de Felice's Medusa had its world premiere on November 13 in Munich, and Edward Rushton's Harley hit the stage a week later in Zurich.
— Read more at ft.com

Sebastian Weigle will replace Paolo Carignani as music director of the Frankfurt Opera in 2008, the company announced.The Berlin-born Weigle has been music director of Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu since fall 2004. He was on the staff of the Berlin State Opera from 1997 to 2002 and has led the Landesjugendorchester Brandenburg since 1993.
— Read more at playbillarts.com

Opera News, the magazine published by the Metropolitan Opera Guild and sent to all Metropolitan Opera subscribers, has presented its first awards ceremony.
This year's honourees are James Conlon, music director of the Ravinia Festival and the music director designate of the Los Angeles Opera; tenor and conductor Placido Domingo (general director of both the Washington National Opera and the Los Angeles Opera); soprano Regine Crespin; and mezzo-sopranos Susan Graham and Dolora Zajick. All of the recipients were on hand at New York City's Pierre Hotel to accept their awards.
— Read more at gramophone.co.uk

Tony Kushner doesn't mind when critics call him a "political" playwright, a polemicist who mines humor, hypocrisy, and condoling human truths from the rougher chapters in world history. But when he decided to translate a 1938 Czech opera about a greedy town bully who meets his match in a pair of poor children, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Angels in America" knew the project called for restraint. As an allegory on Hitler's rise to power and a story once performed by Jewish children who would eventually be killed by the Nazis, the last thing "Brundibar" needed was a heavy rhetorical hand.
— Read more at mercurynews.com

MY WIFE and I saw the New York City Opera production of Puccini's "Turandot" the other night. It was a riveting evening. Seven of the nine soloists had been born in this country, continuing an emphasis on American talent in which the City Opera takes justifiable pride. The music was foreboding, the singing terrific, the costumes gorgeous, and the story, of a virgin Chinese princess bloodily resistant to smitten suitors, was unexpectedly engrossing.
— Read more at bergen.com

Talk about your before and after snapshots. Soprano Deborah Voigt returned to the Bay Area on Sunday afternoon with a recital program almost identical to the one she performed here a year and a half ago. The vocal results were generally similar, too -- Voigt's potent, gleaming sound, her effortless precision and her winning, expressive stage demeanor all remain gloriously intact.
— Read more at sfgate.com

Angelika Kirchschlager, one of the most appetizing singers in the world, gave a recital at Alice Tully Hall on Sunday afternoon.The Austrian mezzo-soprano stands out in both opera and song.With Susan Graham, she is probably the leading Octavian ("Der Rosenkavalier") in the business, and she is known for the Mozart roles as well. In recital, she sometimes appears with the baritone Simon Keenlyside, and she sometimes collaborates with Jean-Yves Thibaudet, the first-class pianist who likes to perform with singers (Renee Fleming is another of his partners). Miss Kirchschlager has shaped an admirable career.
— Read more at The New York Sun

How delightful that a government paper recommending a rise in the retirement age to 67 should be made public on the very day that Charles Mackerras was celebrating his 80th birthday, hard at work in the pit at the Royal Opera House. Somebody in the pensions business has a sense of humour.
— Read more at ft.com

Chicago Opera Theater will present a rare performance of Charles Dibdin's The Padlock and the Chicago premiere of John Adams' Nixon in China in 2006, the company announced. The Padlock, a one-act 1768 satire with a libretto by Isaac Bickerstafff and songs by Dibdin, an English songwriter, was last seen in the United States in 1769. The COT will perform the world premiere of an orchestration and adaptation by conductor Raymond Leppard.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

American soprano Cheryl Studer suffered a mild heart attack last week in Leon, Spain, the Associated Press reports, citing a report in the newspaper Diaro de Leon. Studer was scheduled to perform at the Auditorium of the City of Leon on November 18. The performance has been postponed indefinitely.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

James King, a tenor who appeared regularly at the world's top opera houses in the 1960s and '70s, has died. According to the Vienna State Opera, where he held the honorary title of Kammersänger, King died in the United States. He was 80. Born in Dodge City, Kansas, King studied at Louisiana State University and Kansas City University. Originally a baritone, he switched to tenor in the late 1950s and made his debut at San Francisco Opera as Don José in Carmen opposite Marilyn Horne in 1961; the same year he appeared as Cavaradossi in Tosca in Florence.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Katie Clarke will follow Kelli O'Hara into the role of Clara in the Lincoln Center Theatre production of Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas' The Light in the Piazza. Clarke will assume the role on Dec. 16 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. Kelli O''Hara, who originated the role of Clara?a mature but mentally naive young woman who impetuously falls in love with a native Florentine boy while vacationing with her mother?will play her final performance on Dec. 4. Jennifer Hughes, who understudies the role, will perform the role from Dec. 6 to Dec. 15.
— Read more at playbill.com

For those who just don't get it, opera will always be silly and unfathomable, the singers mad, its unrestrained diva worship craziest of all. What, one wonders, do these unbelievers make of Florence Foster Jenkins? More than 60 years after her death, Lady Florence remains an imperishable legend among those who rejoice in the improbable aspects of the art. Whatever she may have lacked - say, a voice - Florence Foster Jenkins had what the Italians call il sacro fuoco, "the sacred fire," more than enough to animate the sweet portrait Stephen Temperley draws of her in his new play, Souvenir.
— Read more at nymetro.com

The premiere of the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Gounod's "Romeo et Juliette" a week ago was a palatable affair even without its star soprano, Natalie Dessay, who was laid low by a cold. Maureen O'Flynn gave a perfectly creditable performance in her stead, but there is no denying the artistic boost Ms. Dessay gave the enterprise when she joined the cast at the second performance on Thursday evening.
— Read more at The New York Sun

Aging rockers don't fade away; nor, apparently, do their followers. So two decades after Roger Waters broke with Pink Floyd, as bassist, lead singer and composer, fans flew here from across Europe to hear his latest creation. And it seemed to matter little that he had written a 19th-century-style opera called "Ca Ira," or "There Is Hope."
— Read more at nytimes.com [Related news items]

There are several compelling reasons to head over to the Civic Opera House and buy a ticket for Lyric Opera of Chicago's first-ever performance of Sir Michael Tippett's 1955 opera, "The Midsummer Marriage." Chief among them is the extravagant, often meltingly lyrical, beauty of the score itself. Andrew Davis, Lyric's music director who conducts the new production that opened Saturday night in the Civic Opera House, loves the British composer's music and has long experience with it. "The Midsummer Marriage" overflows with mellifluous choruses and rousing dance interludes. The orchestra's brilliant, intricately woven colors tell us much about the complicated psychology of the two troubled young couples at the center of the story.
— Read more at suntimes.com

[Skip The Little Prince and take your kids to a real opera instead. They'll thank you later.]
Since its premiere in Houston in May 2003, Rachel Portman's operatic version of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's classic kiddie fable The Little Prince has traveled far and seems to be a great hit. Most recently, a faithful replica of the original production arrived at the City Opera, directed by Francesca Zambello and designed by the late Maria Bjornson. I caught two matinee performances, both received with apparent delight by busloads of children, many of whom were probably seeing their very first opera.
— Read more at New York Magazine [Related news items]

Making one of those debuts people are likely to be talking about for a long time, Violeta Urmana triumphed as Tosca in the Los Angeles Opera revival of Puccini's opera Saturday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The Lithuanian soprano began life as a mezzo, singing Verdi's Princess Eboli at the Metropolitan Opera as recently as 2004, although she made her soprano debut as Maddalena in Giordano's "Andrea Chénier" at the Vienna State Opera in 2003.
— Read more at calendarlive.com

[Flaws in the execution]
The title page of the programme was discreetly etched with balloons. On the inside pages, greetings from the great and the good of classical music displayed an almost competitive enthusiasm. Sir Charles Mackerras - the musicians' musician - is 80, and he chose to spend the evening of the big day in his rightful place, on the podium of the Royal Opera House, conducting Verdi's Un ballo in maschera with an urgency that had nothing to do with the vanishing years and everything to do with dramatic imperative.
— Read more at Independent Online

News flash: Classical musicians, in their elegant tuxedos, sometimes like to vary their styles. They might even try a madcap move such as operatic improvisation. The Charleston Symphony Orchestra will provide a mix of opera and improv when The Have Nots! stage "The Marriage of ... Carmen?" combining aspects of Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro" and Bizet's "Carmen." This unorthodox collaboration will take place Nov. 29 at the Sottile Theatre. "It's part of our 'Out-of-the-Box' series to show how versatile the CSO can be, and to reach different segments of society," says CSO Marketing Director John Girault. "I think the results will be hilarious."
— Read more at The Post and Courier

ASKED to imagine how we might spend our 80th birthday, most of us would say: taking it easy. But conductors tend to be of tougher mettle. Pierre Boulez turned 80 this year with scarcely a change in his working schedule. And on Thursday evening, if all went as planned at press time, Charles Mackerras did the same, marking the event by slipping quietly into the pit of the Royal Opera House as he has done countless times during the last half-century, to conduct a revival; in this case, Verdi's "Ballo in Maschera."
— Read more at nytimes.com

The Metropolitan Opera's new production of Gounod's "Roméo et Juliette" opened on Monday without the star for whom it was created: the French coloratura soprano Natalie Dessay, who was to sing Juliette but was sidelined with a bad cold. By Thursday evening, Ms. Dessay had recovered enough to sing the second performance, and she sounded wonderful. Some aspects of Guy Joosten's production fell into place with Ms. Dessay's taking the role. Yet paradoxically, her riveting performance made the staging concept seem almost irrelevant
— Read more at New York Times

The same American soprano who got booed at Milan's La Scala a few years ago went to Paris this month to receive the Légion d'Honneur. After recording three new albums--the jazz-inspired Haunted Heart, the Strauss opera Daphne and a collection of sacred songs--Renée Fleming, 46, spoke with TIME's Terry McCarthy about practicing in front of the mirror and learning to sing in Elvish.
— Read more at TIME.com [Related news items]

ROGER WATERS awoke yesterday to reviews judging him not as the famous co-founder of Pink Floyd but as an aspiring composer of opera. Back in the summer the long-estranged Waters and Dave Gilmour played together for the first time in a quarter of a century, at the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park. This week Pink Floyd were inducted into the Hall of Fame at Alexandra Palace, with Waters taking part by satellite link from Rome.
— Read more at Times Online [Related news items]

Cincinnati Opera artistic director Evans Mirageas knows a lot about opera. A lot.
He also knows a lot about symphony orchestras, broadcasting, recording, flight schedules and how to say no, which is what he said twice to Cincinnati Opera general manager Patty Beggs when she asked him to take over the artistic direction of the company.
— Read more at The Cincinnati Post

For all its scenes of dancing fairies, woodland revels and hapless rustic mortals who fancy themselves tragedians, Britten's "Midsummer Night's Dream" is a disturbing opera. Britten makes you confront the twisted conflicts that lurk just below the surface of Shakespeare's fantastical play.
— Read more at New York Times

A recording of Mozart violin concertos by Anne-Sophie Mutter and a new La traviata with Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón debuted on the Billboard classical chart this week.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

"The Little Prince," by French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, is a book whose mystique may be greater than its content. But it is a genuinely touching work that has been translated into an enchanting opera by Rachel Portman. Portman is best known as the Oscar-winning composer of the soundtrack for 1996's "Emma." At times, her score for this children's opera has a Hollywood aura to it, but I have no complaints about that.
— Read more at New York Daily News [Related news items]

The people have spoken, letting loose with a consistently unhappy voice in response to my column last week soliciting opinions about the new Ellie Caulkins Opera House. I offered some gripes about the Ellie and expected a mix of cheers and boos from readers for the $92 million facility. More than 60 of you responded, either by phone or e-mail. I was shocked and in many cases saddened after reading the experiences of those attending Colorado Ballet's The Sleeping Beauty and those who paid big bucks for Opera Colorado's Carmen.
— Read more at Rocky Mountain News

Emotionally, it's "a direct whammy." That's how "Law & Order" star Sam Waterston described the power of opera, before co-hosting the first Opera News magazine awards. The awards, to be presented Sunday [2005-11-20] at Manhattan's Pierre hotel, go to three Americans _ mezzo-sopranos Susan Graham and Dolora Zajick, and conductor James Conlon _ plus Spanish tenor Placido Domingo and French soprano Regine Crespin. Presenters include Broadway star Patti Lupone and playwright Terrence McNally.
— Read more at newsday.com

Two Houston performers too young to drive have claimed significant roles with the New York City Opera. In The Little Prince, running through Sunday, 12-year-old soprano Jeffrey Allison from Friendswood alternates with another boy in the title role. The demanding role requires the golden-haired child to be onstage for almost all of the performance's two hours, and singing for much of that time.
— Read more at Chron.com

When he played Othello in the Sixties, Laurence Olivier would spend two-and-a-half hours a night coating his body with black grease, dyeing his tongue red and using drops to whiten his eyes. Such transformations, known as 'blacking up' and long since banished from British television and classical theatre as racially insensitive, have stubbornly continued in opera - until last week. The Royal Opera has been forced into a last-minute U-turn over the casting of a white mezzo-soprano in the role of a black woman. Stephanie Blythe was blacked up during rehearsals of Un Ballo in Maschera (The Masked Ball), but when the production opened at Covent Garden last Thursday her skin colour was its natural white.
— Read more at The Observer

Instead of a splashy opening, she sang her first performance on Saturday night as Micaela, taking over in the middle of the run of Bizet's "Carmen." With a strong voice and sweet disposition, the soprano earned a big ovation for Micaela's third-act aria and another during the final curtain call. She appears to have a promising future.
— Read more at Yahoo! News

The international reputations of the Bolshoi and Mariinsky (known in the Soviet period, and outside Russia today, as the Kirov) opera houses survived the Soviet period relatively unscathed. Even foreigners who identify little more than borshch, vodka and balalaikas with the theme of Russia know of the Bolshoi Theater.
— Read more at russiaprofile.org

Life has been good in recent months for Joyce DiDonato. The Prairie Village native and Kansas City North resident made her Metropolitan Opera debut in New York on Nov. 2 and was rewarded with a positive mention in the New York Times review. DiDonato, our local diva, has been turning heads for years now with her spectacular singing talent. But as is typical for an American singer, she had to prove her worth abroad before meriting an invitation to America's premier opera house.
— Read more at zwire.com

As mentioned here last week, baritone Thomas Hampson is traveling the United States this fall with a performance project called Song of America. On November 12, he gave the first recital of this tour, in Overland Park, Kansas. Paul Horsley reviewed the concert (Taxpayers to Library of Congress: We are the world, November 14) for the Kansas City Star, with an opening line that reads like a paid product placement: "Tall, charismatic and as square-jawed as the Marlboro man, Thomas Hampson is in many ways an ideal representative of American song."
— Read more at ionarts.com

Of course, adults know the protocols for clapping and laughing during an opera - right? But for the benefit of the young people in the audience Wednesday morning for a performance of "The Mikado," orchestra director Ken Hakoda explained the rules. "It's a fun show," he said to the mostly sixth-grade students at the Stiefel Theatre for the Performing Arts, 151 S. Santa Fe.
— Read more at saljournal.com

In stark contrast to "The Mines of Sulphur," City Opera is presenting this fall a new opera to which you can bring the kids. So it was that, surrounded by squirmy kiddie-poos, I checked out last night's performance of Rachel Portman's "The Little Prince."
— Read more at sequenza21.com [Related news items]

The new general director of Madison Opera wants to make at least two things clear: First, it is OK to wear jeans to an opera. Second, if the lead soprano is undeniably sexy, so much the better. Allan Naplan - who at 33 is thought to be the nation's youngest general director of an opera company - is realistic about the stigma that opera carries for his generation and people a decade younger. Among the stereotypes: unfamiliar music, hoity-toity patrons, high-ticket prices.
— Read more at Wisconsin State Journal

Fast on the heels of Opera Colorado's season-opening engagement at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House comes the first performance at the Ellie by a second Denver-based opera company. Yes, there is another local opera troupe. "I wanted to make a statement," Nicholas Laurienti said. "I'm back. And Denver Opera Company is back."
— Read more at Rocky Mountain News

Roger Waters delighted rock fans when Pink Floyd played their first gig together for 24 years at July's Live8. On Thursday he was hoping to win over classical fans with his first opera, 16 years in the making. The singer, bass player and songwriter on classic albums like "Dark Side of the Moon" and "The Wall", said he wanted his French Revolution opera "Ca Ira" to have the same impact at its world premiere in Rome as his stadium-filling rock anthems.
— Read more at Reuters.co.uk [Related news items]

The Columbus High School Concert Choir had an opportunity to plan, participate and perform in a professional musical concert with professional musicians. The choir was featured in 'A Choral Collaborative Concert' presented by the Omaha Symphony and Opera Omaha Sunday. The event gave seven area high school choirs the opportunity to receive mentoring opportunities with professional musicians. Senior choir members Sara Lee and Nathan Zwick said it was an experience they would not forget.
— Read more at Columbus Telegram

Some people think opera is boring, or silly, or inscrutable. They haven't seen Giuseppe Verdi's "Un Ballo in Maschera" ("A Masked Ball"), the composer's juicy, midperiod masterpiece about political assassination and lust. "Ballo," which opens Saturday in a new Opera San Jos' production at the California Theatre, contains a plot that never lets up and some of the composer's most shiver-inducing arias and assorted musical climaxes. "True Verdi moments," Irene Dalis, the company's general director, calls them. And she should know; in her years as a mezzo-soprano at the Metropolitan Opera, she performed in "Ballo" alongside tenor Placido Domingo.
— Read more at mercurynews.com

Enrollment has been ballooning in the Opera Workshop program at UWO's Don Wright faculty of music over the last few years and so the number of productions open to the public. In addition to the fully staged production in the spring (this year it will be Franz Lehar's The Merry Widow), students will sing in Orchestra London's presentation of Amahl and the Night Visitors at St. Paul's Cathedral on Dec [?].
— Read more at London Free Press

"The Threepenny Opera" is an excellent stage work that's not right for Arizona Opera - too little music, too large a hall. That won't stop the company from mounting it this weekend at Phoenix Symphony Hall.
— Read more at East Valley Tribune

What the stars are up to onstage and off. Tenor Roberto Alagna killed his wife in Los Angeles this fall - but she didn't seem to mind. Alagna sang the role of the clown Canio in I Pagliacci while his real-life wife, soprano Angela Gheorghiu, played Canio's wife, Nedda. As called for in the libretto to Leoncavallo's verismo favorite, Canio killed Nedda on stage in a murderous rage. At the curtain call, however, Alagna got a big kiss from Gheorghiu - all was forgiven.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Former Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters wants to get the world interested in his new opera. Waters is staging concert-style performances of "Ca Ira," an opera set during the French Revolution, Thursday and Friday in Rome. He hopes the shows will attract interest to present "Ca Ira" elsewhere.
— Read more at United Press International [Related news items]

Imagine Mozart in a leather outfit and black, steel-toed boots, pounding out 1970s rock anthems through an electric keyboard and laptop computer. To his right is Giacomo Puccini, wearing jeans, a T-shirt and runners, playing an electric guitar. A strange vision for some, but for the Ottawa-born founders of the 11-piece East Village Opera Company, it's an inspiration.
— Read more at National Post

Last week Radford University was proud to present "Opera Verdi Europa's Macbeth." Established in 1996 by Ivan Kyurkchiev, Opera Verdi combined both European and Bulgarian opera into unique and highly stylized productions which are renowned worldwide. Kyurkchiev studied at the Teatro alla Scala under legendary Giulieta Simeonato and Giusppe di Stefano. Kyurkchiev has performed at world-renowned theaters in Venice, Naples, Moscow and New York.
— Read more at The Tartan Online

[Deal marks the largest corporate arts sponsorship in the UK]
English National Opera has successfully renewed its Season sponsorship with Sky & Artsworld for a further three years. The deal is valued at £1.95 million over three years. Overall, the six year sponsorship of ENO - which was first signed in October 2003 - is worth almost £5 million making it the UK's largest corporate arts sponsorship and one of the longest running.
— Read more at eno.org

On the surface, Holly Morgan is just like any teenager. She goes to school, listens to alternative rock and heavy metal, and aspires to be a professional singer. The difference is that Morgan, who just turned 19, is well on her way to realizing her ambition. But when she took the stage earlier this month at the Toronto Centre for the Arts to promote her debut CD, it wasn?t rock 'n' roll she was singing - it was opera.
— Read more at Canadian Jewish News

Soprano Renée Fleming was made a chevalier, or knight, in France's Légion d'Honneur on November 11. The ceremony took place at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées after Fleming gave a recital there. French minister of culture Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres presented the honor; composers Pierre Boulez and Henri Dutilleux were in attendance, as was former minister of foreign affairs Roland Dumas.
— Read more at PlaybillArts [Related news items]

According to a recent article published in the American Journal of Physiology, opera singers may have an engendered predisposition to being overweight, the Times Online has reported. A substance called leptin - considered by doctors to be one of the triggers of human obesity - is purportedly released, along with other hormone-like substances, by the lung cells in response to mechanical stress. Per the hypothesis of Dr. Peter Osin, a consultant at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London and a long-time opera fan, such mechanical stress is exemplified through the process of singing, in which proper technique is based on breath control, the Times Online has reported.
— Read more at Opera News

Classical performing organizations are feeling a little antsy nowadays, all except for the ones that are flat-out running scared. One of the things they're worried about is where the next generation of audiences is going to come from, and how they're going to be enticed into the concert hall and opera house.
— Read more at sfgate.com

A kids' opera hits the mark There are times when the conscientious opera critic should go to work accompanied by an 8-year-old. Youth's unsparing judgment would cut through the niggling about tempo and portamento and pronounce it either good or not. When it comes to an opera such as Rachel Portman's "The Little Prince," aimed directly at the Gameboy crowd, an underage companion is essential. Had I been alone at its New York City Opera premiere on Saturday, I might have smirked at the honeyed harmonies and "Greensleeves" turns of phrase, or sulked snobbishly that the adorably costumed creatures onstage had nothing on the magical menagerie in Ravel's "L'enfant et les sortileges." Instead, I was aided by the ears of my demographically correct son, who followed the adventures of his golden-curled alter ego and barely blinked in two hours.
— Read more at nynewsday.com [Related news items]

The Metropolitan Opera has permitted a crew to film scenes from an upcoming movie, Margaret, within the walls of the house for the first time in nearly two decades, the New York Times has reported. The producers of Margaret, slated to be released in he fall of 2006, have reportedly paid the company sums of $100,000 and $250,000 to film scenes in the house, Joseph Volpe the company's general manager told the Times.
— Read more at Opera News

The Governor fancies his best friend's wife. An honourable man, he dies saying "I did not have sexual relations with that woman", or the 19th-century equivalent. Usually the attraction between Riccardo and Ameila is the main point of Verdi's Un ballo in maschera. But in Leipzig on Saturday it was not. This time, the attraction between Riccardo Chailly and the Gewandhaus Orchestra was the main point. It was Chailly's first outing as general music director of the Leipzig Opera, six weeks after his debut as 19th Gewandhauskapellmeister in the concert hall across the square.
— Read more at FT.com

Graduate student Ani Maldjian won first place in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Western Regional Audition on Oct. 22 at the University of Southern California, and will compete in the national semifinals in March 2006 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. "I am so excited," Maldjian said. "It has been such a dream of mine to sing on the stage of the Met, and to be doing this in my youth is amazing. I just know I'm going to have a blast."
— Read more at The Daily Sundial

For the first time since it began in 2003, Australian Idol will have an all-girl Grand Finale. Last night's eviction show bid farewell to punk Lee Harding, leaving song birds Kate DeAraugo, 20, and Emily Williams, 21, to fight it out at the Opera House next Monday night.
— Read more at ebroadcast.com.au

ALMOST 2000 would-be opera singers -- including a Greek Elvis impersonator -- have engulfed a television station hoping to win a recording deal and, possibly, stardom. ABC TV is stunned by the response to Operatunity Oz, a classical Australian Idol-style contest in which the winner will cut a CD and be groomed for a role with Opera Australia
— Read more at Herald Sun

"Picture up!" went the shout, and the plaintive sounds of the Barcarolle from Offenbach's "Tales of Hoffman" floated into the Metropolitan Opera House. In the pit, bows moved and a flutist bobbed her instrument. Hands wagged in vibrato motion on cello fingerboards, and fingers gave big pizzicato plucks on double basses. But the music was a recording; the musicians were extras mimicking the playing of instruments; and the conductor, the Canadian maestro Yves Abel, was waving his hands for a camera, not an orchestra.
— Read more at New York Times

As in a grand theatrical maneuver, the lights suddenly went on in the middle of the poker game. Florida Grand Opera was rehearsing Act 2 of their opening production, Puccini's La Fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West), last Tuesday, with a generator providing the fans to mitigate the sweltering heat and the lights to keep the players from stumbling on the set. Just as the soprano was successfully cheating the baritone at cards -- presto! -- power returned to FGO's rehearsal hall on Coral Way.
— Read more at Herald.com

Opera as a whole tends to thrive on topics like lust, betrayal, murder and revenge. Virtue, when presented, is almost always seduced and polluted, and while true love typically triumphs, it quite often does so through death. In that context, then, film composer Rachel Portman's first opera, a family story based on the charming children's tale "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint Exupéry, reads as positively naive. And that, of course, is the point well taken in New York City Opera's new production of the work, which opened Saturday afternoon at Lincoln Center to a hall stuffed full of the under-15 crowd.
— Read more at nj.com [Related news items]

A spirited tutorial in opera drew a capacity crowd of 160 community members to an Oregon State University music department classroom on Sunday afternoon for a public performance of a program that will play throughout the coming week in Corvallis schools. "Oh, THAT'S Opera!," a presentation of Opera Theater Corvallis and the OSU Opera Workshop, is a colorful 50-minute romp through snippets of Strauss' "Die Fledermaus," Gilbert and Sullivan's "Ruddigore," and Mozart's "The Magic Flute," among other well-known works, performed by a baker's dozen of OSU music majors who were cast, some in multiple roles, before the start of the school year.
— Read more at gazettetimes.com

Patric Schmid, who probed the forgotten byways of operatic history as a founder of Opera Rara, has died at age 61, the company said. Schmid died of a heart attack on Nov. 6, shortly after becoming ill while delivering a pre-concert talk on Gaetano Donizetti's Il Diluvio Universale, said Kim Panter, production co-ordinator for Opera Rara.
— Read more at jam.canoe.ca

CLEAN-CUT opera star Katherine Jenkins could be paired with foul-mouthed wildman Ozzy Osbourne at next week's Royal Variety Performance. The 25-year-old blonde beauty will perform a spectacular duet at this year's event - and the producer hinted last night that we'll see the Neath girl as we've never seen her before!
— Read more at icnetwork.co.uk

IN March, Jennifer Wilson, an unknown 39-year-old soprano, suddenly burst onto the international opera scene by jumping in for Jane Eaglen as Brünnhilde in Wagner's "Götterdämmerung" at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, just a day after singing the same character in a rehearsal of "Die Walküre." Artistry aside, this is a stunning athletic feat. Few people today have the vocal heft and stamina to get through even one of these roles, let alone take on both back to back.
? Read more at New York Times

Opera lovers in Italy this season may notice something different about the performers. Many of them are looking distinctly svelte after going on hunger strike to protest about proposed cuts to the country's arts budget. Living on only water, fruit juice and coffee, singers' weights have shrunk. Barbara Vignudelli, a soprano at the famed La Scala opera house in Milan, has had no solid food for two weeks. 'I feel OK, but I'm dreaming of a mortadella sandwich,' she said. 'I'm doing this to try to shame our politicians. We have one of the most important cultural heritages in the world - it will be a disaster for Italy if these cuts are implemented.'
— Read more at The Observer

It's interesting that Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's classic novella "The Little Prince" is widely viewed as a children's book. It's also, evidently, viewed as the perfect subject for a work of musical theater. "The Little Prince" is one of those children's stories that adults continue to cling to long after childhood. Its very premise is that it's a child's tale told through a grown-up narrator, and its (rather adult) themes are alienation and mourning for lost innocence.
— Read more at New York Times [Related news items]

[Anthony Minghella lavishes love on his first opera, while Renee Fleming enraptures her audience ]
How to portray a two-year-old on the stage? In the case of Puccini's Madam Butterfly, it is usually done with a wide-eyed, if slightly older, boy - the product of our heroine's wedding night with the treacherous American sailor Pinkerton, and the figure at the emotional heart of the opera. Anthony Minghella's solution is to use a marionette.
— Read more at The Observer

The Johann Strauss operetta "Die Fledermaus" opened Wichita Grand Opera's season with a single show Friday night in Century II Concert Hall. The piece is a matrimonial farce, a lighthearted romp full of wit and waltzes and an all's-well-that-ends-well moral at its end. The plot, though frivolous, is convoluted, and a performance of "Die Fledermaus" must captivate its listeners with lilting melodies or risk confounding them.
— Read more at Wichita Eagle

Susan B. Anthony has performed in the opera capitals of the world. Soon she'll be singing in a place that has her nervous, her hometown of Kalamazoo. Anthony will perform with the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra during its "Uncommon Women" concert Friday at Miller Auditorium.
— Read more at mlive.com

"Verismo" in opera terms means "realistic." However, back in 1996 the New Jersey Association of Verismo Opera's production of Pietro Mascagni's "Isabeau" may have been a little too realistic. "We had a naked Lady Godiva," says President Giovanni Simone. "She was wearing a body suit, but everything showed. There were quite a few upset customers."
— Read more at bergen.com

[Opera review: 'The Italian Girl in Algiers,' presented by Anchorage Opera at Discovery Theatre, Nov. 12]
As comedy, Rossini's farce, "The Italian Girl in Algiers," rates as a one-note opera. Like the thumping of a bass drum, the moral -- "A beautiful woman can make any man a fool" -- gets repeated ever louder and faster from the first scene until the end.
— Read more at adn.com

On its face, "Brundibar," the children's opera adapted by Maurice Sendak and Tony Kushner, is a simple, charming tale about standing up to bullies and overcoming adversity, with a little help from your friends. In reality, the opera has its roots in the Holocaust.
— Read more at sfgate.com

On Wednesday, November 16th at the THALIA THEATER at SYMPHONY SPACE, Broadway at 95th Street, New Yori City, the Center for Contemporary opera will present musical readings of Michael Sahl and Nancy Manocherian's DINNER AND DELUSION. Performances will be at 6 and 8:30 pm. Tickets at $12 may be ordered by calling the Symphony Space box office: 212-864-5400.
— Read more at www.conopera.org

Name notwithstanding, the East Village Opera Company is not an opera company -- not by any traditional definition, anyway. But for a group that performs famous arias by such venerated composers as Puccini, Verdi, Purcell and Bizet, filtered through a musical consciousness nurtured on Led Zeppelin and Metallica, bucking expectations comes pretty naturally.
— Read more at reuters.com

Can you make an opera out of a painting? Kenneth LaFave is trying. The Arizona composer has created American Gothic out of Grant Wood's iconic image, pitchfork and all. LaFave, former music writer for The Arizona Republic, left the paper to devote his full attention to composing music, and he has had several recent commissions. The opera opens this week at Arizona State University's Lyric Opera Theatre, and his Concerto for Electric Guitar, Wind Band and Chorus was premi?red last week, also at ASU.
— Read more at azcentral.com

Don't get me wrong - I'm grateful for the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. It's just that, well, I have a few misgivings about the place. By now, I've had the chance to visit the Ellie for a variety (relatively speaking) of events. Though the Ellie's predecessor, the Auditorium Theatre, hosted everything from high school graduations to symphonic concerts, the only cultural events in the newly opened hall (apart from some Denver Film Festival events) have been ballet or opera.
— Read more at rockymountainnews.com

"A singer ought to be able to get inside the skin of a character who is a singer." The singer's role is Puccini's "Tosca." The remark, made by a music critic, probably is a truism that is, however, not always achieved on stage. It was achieved with a vengeance Friday night. Zvetelina Vassilieva, the Tosca in the Madison Opera production staged in Overture Hall, thoroughly explored the interpretive opportunities in a complex heroine - emotionally volatile, immediately jealous and suspicious, quickly impassioned, eventually despairing, and ultimately bold in action.
— Read more at Wisconsin State Journal

In staging a popular opera, a director faces the obstacle of being overshadowed by past productions. In preparing Puccini's classic tale for the Connecticut Grand Opera & Orchestra, German director Joachim Schamberger was ready for the challenge. " 'Boheme' is tremendously popular because it is a masterpiece. But familiarity with an opera often prevents us from hearing or seeing it anew. I prepared for 'Boheme' by trying my best to clear my head of the past productions I've known. I want to approach it fresh."
— Read more at stamfordadvocate.com

[Encounters - Nicholas Wapshott meets Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, an overnight sensation at 69]
Sir Richard Rodney Bennett sits at his kitchen table in New York under the dozing gaze of his piebald cat Alice, who is 15 and, oddly for a composer's companion, stone deaf. He's just back from a month in London, singing and accompanying on piano the singer Claire Martin in a set of American songbook standards at Pizza on the Park. Although he is among the handful of Britain's most eminent living composers, Sir Richard is now as interested in jazz as the music for which he is famous. He is also happier painting than composing. Which is why he finds it slightly strange that an opera he wrote 40 years ago has come back to haunt him.
— Read more at newstatesman.com [Related news items]

A remastered version of Luciano Pavarotti's 1976 album O Holy Night was the sole new entry on the Billboard classical chart this week. The Christmas album, which includes seasonal and sacred music by Verdi, Schubert, Franck, and others, debuted at number 19. The new version has three previously unreleased bonus tracks, including a recording of the tenor's own "Ave Maria, dolce Maria." Cecilia Bartoli's Opera Proibita remained at number one for the third straight week, with Renée Fleming's Sacred Songs at number two.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

On Sunday, November 6th at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, led by Grant Gershon, premiered a suite from what is Matrix composer Don Davis's most ambitious work to date: Río de Sangre. This opera-in-progress, with a libretto by Kate Gale, takes place in an unnamed Latin American republic during the aftermath of a coup d'etat, where its new leader carries his misguided attempts to break the cycle of oppression. The suite consists not of a summary of the plot (though one is able to piece together a semblance of the story), but rather a collection of showpieces for the 5 main characters, spread out over two movements. Davis follows the recent mold of John Adams operas more than of the leitmotif heavy Wagnerian school, though Wagner is certainly an influence (how can one write an opera and not be after all?). The Wagnerian grand romanticism comes in full force with the 120 person choir, which represents the minds and thoughts of principal characters (with the occasional spout of wisdom).
— Read more at SoundtrackNet

Gilbert and Sullivan with sex and sophisticated music? In fact, Emmanuel Chabrier's comic operetta "L'Étoile" received one of its early runs at the famous G and S haunt, London's Savoy Theatre. L'Opéra de Montréal opened a charming and hilarious production of this sophisticated comedy Saturday at the Place des Arts' Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier. Employing excellent young Canadian singers - largely from Montreal - it benefited from stylish sets and costumes created jointly by Glimmerglass Opera and New York City Opera for their 2001 production.
— Read more at Times Argus

GILBERT and Sullivan's best-loved comic opera, The Mikado, is heading to the Lowry in Manchester The Carl Rosa Company celebrate the operetta's 120th anniversary with its internationally acclaimed production, featuring the Oscar-winning costumes from Mike Leigh's multi award-winning film Topsy-Turvy , from Tuesday to Saturday, November 19.
— Read more at icCheshireOnline

[Students to present Greek tragedy and comic chamber opera]
The music department of Indiana Wesleyan University is doing something it hasn't done in at least a decade - a full-length opera. "We've been trying for years to do a full-length opera," Suzanne Galer, associate professor of music, said.
— Read more at chronicle-tribune.com

J. Scott Brumit is the founder and director of the Longwood Opera Company, a Needham-based organization that stages travelling opera productions throughout the area. Brumit is also the director of the company's current production, Verdi's "La Traviata," which was performed Nov. 4 at St. Matthew's United Methodist Church in Acton. The Beacon spoke with Brumit recently about the current production and the challenges of making opera accessible to modern audiences.
— Read more at TownOnline.com

Who would go to Chicago for the sun? That was not our intention last Thursday, but it's what we found. My wife and I flew to Chicago expecting the briskness of fall. It was balmy at 9 p.m. as we walked from our hotel to Andy's jazz club. As we walked about the city on Friday, I squinted and shaded my eyes from the bright sun. It was a Finn who drew us to Chicago. Namely, the celebrated Finnish operatic soprano Karita Mattila. It had been a while since we had heard a really big voice. Mattila is every bit of that. So was Vladimir Galouzine, the Russian tenor who played Mattila's reckless lover. The opera was Manon Lescaut, Puccini's first hit. For the finale, Mattila sang while recumbent and dying.
— Read more at dailyastorian.info

Had Venetian composer Francesco Cavalli been told that his 1640 opera Gli Amori d'Apollo e di Dafne (The Many Loves of Apollo and Dafne) would someday be performed in the New World, he would have been impressed. After all, the Pilgrims had arrived at Plymouth only two decades earlier. It has taken some time, but Cavalli finally gets his North American premiere this weekend at Bowling Green State University.
— Read more at toledoblade.com

The Eastman Opera Theatre started off its 2005-06 season with a bang - literally. EOT hosted a production of "Claudia Legare" in Kilbourn Hall, from Nov. 3 to 6. Eastman alumnus Robert Ward '39, who joined the cast for a bow after the performance, composed the opera. The opera premiered in 1978 and has only been produced three times since. Ward has taken it upon himself to be personally involved with the EOT's production.
— Read more at campustimes.org

From the time she sang her first solo in the sixth grade -- "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" -- opera singer Marianne Cornetti has been sharing her voice with the world. Cornetti, 43, a mezzo-soprano and native of Butler, will share what some consider one of opera's most exciting Verdi voices at a concert Nov. 20 benefiting the Andrew Carnegie Free Library and Music Hall. Proceeds from the concert will go toward the $8.6 million campaign to restore, renovate and revitalize the historic Carnegie landmark. "The (Carnegie) theater itself is such a gem; it's a great undertaking that they're doing to renovate it, and it's a pleasure to be part of something like this," Cornetti said.
— Read more at PittsburghLIVE.com

Arizona Opera's ventures beyond expected repertoire began two seasons ago with a production of Stephen Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd," a work that is both opera and musical play. The ventures continue this week with a piece that belongs, surprisingly, to neither genre. "In my knowledge, 'Threepenny Opera' is a unique piece," says George Hanson, music director for Arizona Opera's first-ever production of the 1928 classic.
— Read more at azstarnet.com

The Salzburger Marionetten Opera Theater, a 92-year-old company that performs full-length operas and plays in a miniature theater, opens a four-night run at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York tonight [2005-11-10].
— Read more at playbillarts.com

The former high-profile music director of Opera Australia, Simone Young, has broken the traditional male stranglehold on the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Young will take the baton on Saturday to become the first woman to conduct the 156-year-old orchestra.
— Read more at smh.com.au

For the fourth consecutive year, HGO productions will be broadcast on WQXR 96.3 FM in New York City, the most listened-to classical radio station in the country. The broadcasts will be heard on five consecutive Saturdays from November 12 through December 10, 2005 on Saturday Afternoon at the Opera.
Audiences in the New York metropolitan area will enjoy five operas from Celebrate!, HGO's 2004-2005 50th anniversary season, including Mozart's Idomeneo, King of Crete starring Richard Croft and Susan Graham, Verdi's Falstaff starring Bryn Tefel, soprano Patricia Racette's first mainstage Madame Butterfly by Puccini, Marcello Giordani's first Il Trovatore by Verdi, and Ramón Vargas and Ana Maria Martinez in their first Romeo and Juliet by Gounod.
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.

The first mention of problems came on Jan. 19, a month after she sang with the New York Philharmonic. Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, one of the leading mezzo-sopranos of the day, had been hospitalized for a lower back injury, Carnegie Hall announced, and would not be performing with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra on Jan. 23. Thus began nearly a year of cancellations and sporadic performances from a musician who is spoken of in reverent, even mystical terms, an artist of uncanny honesty and intelligence. Most recently, on Oct. 10, Carnegie Hall announced she was withdrawing from concerts on Dec. 7 and Jan. 14. These and other changes have forced concert presenters to scramble for substitutes to fill programming holes.
— Read more at nytimes.com

The curtains went down this Friday upon the Lyric Opera's last performance of Rossini's La Cenerentola this season, to an enthusiastic but slightly uncertain audience. Their hesitancy was well occasioned, for while certain aspects of the production were absolutely brilliant, the crucial character of the eponymous protagonist left much to be desired. Vesselina Kasarova played the title role, and, without exception, her tone erred on the side of the overwrought. She had a full, warm voice that lifted Cinderella's character from the traditional morass of fragility and vulnerability, imbuing her with equal measures of conviction and calculation.
— Read more at maroon.uchicago.edu

AN Australian woman has broken one of the world's last bastions of male dominance by being named to conduct the prestigious Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Sydney-born Simone Young will take the baton on Sunday, becoming the first female to conduct the 156-year-old orchestra.
— Read more at theadvertiser.news.com.au

The good news for Michigan Opera Theatre is that the bad news isn't worse. MOT ran a modest operating deficit of $220,000 on a budget of $12 million for 2005. Officials attribute the shortfall to a drop in Detroit Opera House rental income from outside producers and the related loss in concession revenue.
— Read more at freep.com

Cape Cod Opera presented its annual, free, high school outreach program of "Opera Did It First" last week across Cape Cod, with performances at Cape Cod Regional Technical High School in Harwich, Barnstable High School, Nauset Regional High School in Eastham, and Falmouth High School. The program, sung by professional CCO singers, with indicative costumes and props, narration, translations, piano accompaniment plus question and answer periods will be open to students of History, Humanities, English, Foreign Languages, Chorus, Orchestra, and Band classes, faculties and guests, where schools permit.
— Read more at TownOnline.com

"Bernhardt, knife in hand, over the dying Scarpia, is the nearest thing to great tragedy ever seen in modern times," wrote English critic Clement Scott, about a performance of the play "La Tosca." Opera composer Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) was so moved by legendary actress Sarah Bernhardt's performance that he adapted the story and poured some of his most gorgeous music into what one less-impressed critic called "a shabby little shocker."
— Read more at madison.com

The unique sounds of a 17th Century opera will soon echo through the University. The North American premier of Francesco Cavalli?s Baroque opera ?Gli Amori d?Apollo e di Dafne? (The Many Loves of Apollo and Daphne) will debut Friday in Kobacker Hall in the Moore Musical Arts Center. Professor and chair of the Department of Theater and Film, Ron Shields, said that news of this production has received world-wide attention.
— Read more at The BG News

Jerry Ford decided to take a break from his work as an art appraiser yesterday and stand under a tree on the Mall to watch an unusual broadcast of the opera "Porgy and Bess." "This is a cultural moment," he said, sizing up the crowds who were carrying rickety lawn chairs and brand-new collapsible stadium seats onto the spotty green expanse to see a free opera. "I'm enjoying the weather and the people. This is like going to Wolf Trap without the mosquitoes and without that slippery slope."
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

On Sunday, November 13 and Monday, November 14, at 8:00pm, at the Guggenheim Museum (1071 Fifth Avenue at 89th St.), Works & Process at the Guggenheim and American Opera Projects will present excerpts from the new music-theatre piece Darkling. The program will also feature a panel of creative artists who will discuss their work-in-progress. Following each performance there will be a unique opportunity to meet the artists at a reception hosted in the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed rotunda of the museum. Adapted by director Michael Comlish from award-winning poet Anna Rabinowitz?s book-length poem, Darkling interweaves language, sound, visuals and music to reflect the fragmented nature of the book, which has at its core a love story overtaken by the events of history. Original music by composers Stefan Weisman and Lee Hoiby evokes the constantly shifting ground, the perils and the terrors of an unprecedented time defined by two World Wars and the Holocaust.
— Read more at operaprojects.org

Jonathan Miller, internationally renowned director of opera, will speak in The Great Hall of The Cooper Union in New York on Monday, November 14 at 7 pm. His topic will be, "On Directing Opera." Dr. Miller, physician and neuropsychologist, author and lecturer, television producer and presenter, first came to prominence at a member of the satirical review, Beyond the Fringe. Like his colleagues in that legendary production?Peter Cook, Allan Bennett, and Dudley Moore?his career has continuously expanded. He has written and presented several major BBC series on such topics as The Body in Question and States of Mind, written several books, and curated a major exhibition at London?s National Gallery. Jonathan Miller has been directing opera for thirty years at such leading houses as La Scala, the Deutsche Staatsoper, Covent Garden, and the Met. Admission: $10 at the door ($5 for seniors and students.)

[For "Sweeney Todd," Patti LuPone got her tuba out of mothballs and took up knitting. 'Broadway ain't for sissies,' she declares.]
The incomparable Patti LuPone, who won a Tony for her performance as "Evita," is back on Broadway playing Mrs. Lovett in a stripped-down revival of Stephen Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd." She spoke with NEWSWEEK's Nicki Gostin.
— Read more at msnbc.msn.com

There's something so charmingly old-world about Anthony McGill's tone, so message-from-another-era, that his recital Sunday afternoon could have been accompanied by the atmospheric crackling of 78 r.p.m. black shellac. McGill played at the Curtis Institute of Music on the alumni recital series, and you might say he hasn't done too badly for himself since graduating from the school in 2000. At 26, McGill is one of two principal clarinetists of the Metropolitan Opera orchestra, often referred to as the best opera orchestra in the world.
— Read more at Philadelphia Inquirer

The Barber of Seville is the kind of classic that makes some opera lovers cringe in anticipation. So many times, it goes so wrong with such shticky comedy that you laugh, because not doing so compounds the embarrassment. The Opera Company of Philadelphia's Barber of Seville, which opened Saturday, has theatrical as well as musical integrity (at least in Act I, less so in Act II), with a stageworthy cast and an extraordinary discovery in tenor Antonino Siragusa.
— Read more at Philadelphia Inquirer [Related news items]

Conductor James Conlon, soprano Patricia Racette, baritone Nathan Gunn, and mezzo-soprano Susan Graham will discuss the world-premiere production of Tobias Picker's An American Tragedy at a lecture on December 6.
— Read more at playbillarts.com

THE WASHINGTON National Opera's live simulcast on the Mall of a full-length opera might have seemed an eccentric idea. Opera buffs, a skeptic might have guessed, want to be inside the opera house, not out on a blanket; and those who don't watch opera, well, don't watch opera. But that skeptic would have been wrong. This weekend, the opera's free simulcast of George Gershwin's masterpiece "Porgy and Bess" was a success: About 13,000 people showed up to watch. That's more than six times the number of people who can fit in the Kennedy Center's Opera House. The unseasonably warm weather surely helped. But opera on the Mall seems like an idea with a surprisingly big constituency.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

The War Memorial Auditorium was swamped with women in their finest black dresses and men in tuxedos. Everywhere I turned I was blinded by a sparkling jewel or dress. It was not until after the show that I understood the phenomenon that is the opera. On Friday, November 4, the Greensboro Opera Company presented Mozart's opera, The Marriage of Figaro. Founded in 1980, GOC celebrates quality opera production and education within the community. They produce one opera each fall in addition to organizing workshops for middle school students and seminars and operalogues for adults.
— Read more at carolinianonline.com [Related news items]

Oscar-winning filmmaker Anthony Minghella, best known for sumptuous-looking films like The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley, received mixed reviews Monday for his opera debut. The British director premiered a visually striking production of Puccini's Madam Butterfly for the English National Opera in London on Sunday. It drew raves as well as disapproving reviews from the British press.
— Read more at CBC Arts