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

If James Levine could zap himself back in time and conduct the premiere of any opera in history, what among his favorites might he choose? Perhaps the Vienna premiere of Mozart's "Nozze di Figaro." Or the Milan premiere of Verdi's "Otello." How about the Munich premiere of Wagner's "Meistersinger," a work he conducts magnificently? I love the idea of Mr. Levine's giving a sublime account of this humane comedy and forcing the anti-Semitic composer to confront his twisted prejudices.
— Read more at New York Times

'Tis the season to be jolly. But no one seems to have told that to the masterminds at the murky and quirky Metropolitan Opera. Apart from a few flighty Fledermice and loony Lucias, the final weeks of 2005 are dominated by bleakness and gore. Nearing the end of its premiere run, Tobias Picker's sordid An American Tragedy served as a matinee-broadcast vehicle on Christmas Eve. Tuesday night Alban Berg's eternally grim Wozzeck returned in preparation for transmission on the afternoon of New Year's Eve. Luckily it is a very good Wozzeck.
— Read more at Martin Bernheimer - FT.com

The English National Opera has withdrawn the appointment of Oleg Caetani, who was to become the company's music director next month, the London Times reports. A statement from newly appointed chief executive Loretta Tomasi and music director John Berry said that Caetani "will not be taking up the position of music director but will maintain an ongoing relationship with ENO as guest conductor."
— Read more at PlaybillArts

[Conductor fuels rumours he will be musical director
[Milan in raptures over his Christmas concert]
Speculation is rife in the Italian music world that Daniel Barenboim intends to crown his career by becoming musical director of the world's most famous opera house, La Scala in Milan. The conductor and pianist fuelled the rumours when he was asked about the possibility after conducting the theatre's Christmas concert. The Milan daily Corriere della Sera quoted him as saying he wanted to fulfil his existing commitments to La Scala before adding: "Then, we shall see."
— Read more at Guardian Unlimited

[ A light touch for a Grimm fable]
"Down with the dumps, out with the grumps," sing the two children in Opera North's semi-staged production of Humperdinck's fairy tale opera, Hansel and Gretel. John Fulljames's witty and contemporary direction of the tale by the Brothers Grimm certainly banishes any grumpiness. His ingenious concept has grown, like the silver birch foliage around the platform of Leeds Town Hall, out of the orchestra itself.
— Read more at independent.co.uk

Staff at the English National Opera (ENO) have overwhelmingly voted to strike over pay rises. Members of the broadcasting union Bectu voted by a majority of 94% in favour of holding strikes. The strike ballot was held after a demand for a 5% pay rise was turned down and 2.77% was offered. The ENO has been hit by a wave of problems, with both the artistic director and chairman resigning in the face of criticism.
— Read more at bbc.co.uk

The instructions boil down to one simple-sounding, endlessly complicated command: Connect. That's what a questing artist exhorts himself to do in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's 1984 musical "Sunday in the Park With George." And though it is one of those tricky words from a Sondheim show that always mean more than one thing, "connect" takes on even greater resonance when spoken in the stirring revival that has theatergoers lining up to jam into a cramped industrial space just south of London Bridge.
— Read more at nytimes.com

As Katie Clarke applied her makeup and warmed up her voice, she sometimes wondered if she were dreaming. The 21-year-old from Friendswood was the occupant of a star dressing room at Broadway's Vivian Beaumont Theater. Little more than a month ago, Clarke had been a senior theater major at Huntsville's Sam Houston State University. Now, she was preparing to step onstage in one of the lead roles in The Light in the Piazza a show that won six 2005 Tony Awards and has been hailed as one of the best musicals in recent memory.
— Read more at Chron.com

The Lyric Opera of Chicago Guild will hold its annual fundraiser on January 27 at the Civic Opera House. The theme of the black-tie event, which begins at 6:30 p.m., is "A Viennese Fantasy," marking the opening of the Lyric's production of Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier on February 4.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

There is a sound coming from the opera stage, and it is not a clarion high C; it is the sound of opera's brains getting sucked out of its collective head.

Record companies are sexing up and dumbing down the packaging and titles of opera CDs: Mozart arias performed by Renée Fleming become Visions of Love; Wagner and Strauss excerpts as interpreted by Deborah Voigt assume the Calvin Klein-worthy moniker Obsessions. Publicists stage photo shoots of opera stars smoldering in dewy soft focus, barefoot and bare-shouldered. And then there is the practice among opera-company marketing departments of branding entire seasons with breathy, Harlequin-meets-Hollywood slogans - A Season of Dark Pasts, Smoldering Desires, and Forbidden Futures (Hawaii Opera Theater); Bound by Passion (Opera Carolina), etc.
— Read more at Opera News

[Their many strides have madet hem the center of attention]
The eyes and ears of the musical world are on the Boston Symphony Orchestra these days. Music director James Levine, like Michael Tilson Thomas in San Francisco and Esa-Pekka Salonen in Los Angeles, is creating a new model for orchestral programming and for developing an orchestra's relationship with its public. Like his colleagues, Levine is doing this in his own way and acting from the convictions of his own taste.
— Read more at The Boston Globe [Related news items]

IT sometimes is amazing to discover the kind of things that become the basis of scientific study these days. For example, a couple of years ago there was study on the link between classical music and eating and drinking. Basically, scientists from the Universities of Surrey and Leicester commandeered the PA system of a local restaurant and alternated the playing of popular music, classical music and no music on alternating nights for 18 nights. By a long way, it was discovered that diners spent more money, especially on wine, on the classical music nights.
— Read more at News Letter

Opera starved Mississauga residents can travel to neighbouring Brampton to hear four local vocalists perform in Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss. The show, which features Mississauga singers Heidi Cyfko, Leander Mendoza, Clarissa Miranda and Lynn Torres, is being put on by the Brampton Lyric Opera. Die Fledermaus, translated into English as The Bat, takes place this Friday and Saturday at the Brampton Heritage Theatre.
— Read more at mississauganews.com

Pop star Cyndi Lauper will make her Broadway debut next year in The Threepenny Opera, playing the prostitute Jenny in the satirical musical about a highwayman and his sweetheart. The role of Jenny was originally slated to be played by Sopranos star Edie Falco, but she dropped out earlier this month and opened the way for Lauper.
— Read more at RTE.ie Entertainment

Conductor Riccardo Muti has demanded that Milan's La Scala, his former employer, stop using his photograph, the Austrian Press Agency reports. Citing an item in Milan's Corriere della Sera, the APA says that Muti's lawyer has threatened legal action if the opera house continues to sell Muti's picture in its gift shop or make use of it on his web site.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Glimmerglass Opera's 2005 production of Mozart's Così fan tutte will be broadcast on NPR's World of Opera as part of the show's celebration of the 250th anniversary of the composer's birth. Also on the schedule are Washington National Opera's Don Giovanni on January 14 and a production of Idomeneo from La Scala on January 28.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Music has always played an integral part in Woody Allen's movies. There's the snappy 1920s jazz score with Allen supplying the clarinet licks in 1973's "Sleeper"; Diane Keaton winsomely singing the standards "It Had to Be You" and "Seems Like Old Times" in his multi-Oscar-winning 1977 romantic comedy "Annie Hall"; and George Gershwin's transcendent, symphonic "Rhapsody in Blue" accompanying the title sequence in "Manhattan."
— Read more at calendarlive.com

During 2005 AllAboutOpera.com gave extensive coverage to the following premieres:

Lysistrata, or The Nude Goddess [Related news items]
Margaret Garner [Related news items]
Doctor Atomic [Related news items]
An American Tragedy [Related news items]

The city of Dubai is to build an opera house and two museums to reflect the 'cultural side' of the rapidly growing Gulf emirate, Dubai's Crown Prince Shaikh Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum said. 'We want to expose the other face of our state and its love for civilisation, peace and culture,' local news agency Wam quoted Al Maktoum as saying as he gave the three projects the go-ahead.
— Read more at tradearabia.com

Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier. Opera Zurich; Franz Welser-Most, cond. (EMI Classics DVD; 2 discs; 205 mins.)
Strauss: Daphne. WDR Sinfonie Koln; Semyon Bychkov, cond. (Decca CD; 2 discs)
Possibly San Francisco Opera music director Donald Runnicles was right when he opined that local critics and opera lovers were simply not familiar with current European production values. This "Rosenkavalier" from the Zurich Opera fits right into Runnicles' idea of what we are missing. Not! A unit set for a three-act, site-specific opera? And one that opens on a clandestine love scene in the Marschallin's bedroom ? a cold, wintry palace complete with leafless trees (indoors?) and no bed? And direction that has the most elegant and serene woman in opera repeatedly falling to the floor?
— Read more at Inside Bay Area

IT'S easy to fault the major institutions in classical music for being stodgy and averse to risk. Yet music lovers count on the leading opera companies and orchestras to be custodians of the repertory. Take the Metropolitan Opera. Recalling the first half of this season, among many rewarding nights, I'll remember James Levine's buoyant and insightful performance of Mozart's "Così Fan Tutte," with a splendid youngish cast that gave you hope for the future of Mozart singing.

Still, if classical music is to build on its storied history and have a future, the major institutions have a special responsibility to champion new and recent works. To keep the focus on opera for a moment, several companies gave significant premieres that told much about how they view their mission in economically challenging times.
— Read more at New York Times

When the curtain rises on Eugene Opera's "Barber of Seville" this week, the role of Figaro will be played by a Greek Cypriot who looks a little - make that a lot - like Dustin Hoffman. Constantinos Yiannoudes, who last sang here as Germont in the opera's production of "La Traviata" in 2001, doesn't mind the comparison one bit.
— Read more at registerguard.com

Time after time, it seems, the premieres of new American operas are announced to great fanfare in an effort to revivify an art form that hews all too closely to a narrow selection of works dating back hundreds of years. And time and time again, these new works are largely greeted with disappointment and a failure to enter the opera repertory. Such is the case, alas, with the Metropolitan Opera's premiere of "An American Tragedy," based on the 1925 Theodore Dreiser novel that inspired two films, including George Stevens' 1951 classic "A Place in the Sun." The production features no shortage of talent, both onstage and behind the scenes. The score is by the well-regarded American composer Tobias Picker ("Emmeline"), and director Francesca Zambello is a three-time Olivier Award winner. The cast includes rising-star baritone Nathan Gunn as the murderous Clyde Griffiths and such renowned singers as Susan Graham and Jennifer Larmore.
— Read more at Reuters.com

A reduction in ticket sales at the National Opera this year appears likely to leave a hole in the budget of as much as EUR 1 million. At the Ministry of Education, which is responsible for the state appropriations to the Opera, the feeling is nevertheless that the establishment will weather its current losses.
— Read more at Helsingin Sanomat

[Successful productions failed to hide organisational crisis, says Rupert Christiansen]
Earlier this week, Martin Smith stepped down from his ill-starred chairmanship of English National Opera - a decision greeted with widespread relief in the arts world. Now that he's gone, I can't help dreaming of a wholly new management and leadership for the company, spearheaded by a team of enlightened young musicians and theatre practitioners, supported by some wise old heads skilled in administration and fund-raising.
— Read more at Telegraph

Stepping from the subway that runs beneath Lincoln Center and into the Metropolitan Opera House is like walking into a new world filled with numerous dimly-lit, low-hanging lights and plush red velvet-like carpet. Opera enthusiasts weren't dressed in formal gowns and tuxedos, but they were still dressed up with men wearing tailored business suits and women wearing simple, but elegant dresses, or two-piece knit sets beneath fur coats.
— Read more at The Evening Telegram

The chairman of the English National Opera (ENO) stepped down on Wednesday after mounting criticism over recent appointments and the threat of strike action by staff unhappy over pay. Martin Smith spoke of a "campaign" to oust him from the helm of one of the country's two premiere opera houses. The other is the nearby Royal Opera House. "I find myself in a bizarre situation," he said in a letter to the board of directors.
— Read more at reuters.co.uk

Soprano Renée Fleming's performance Wednesday night with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra was like a Christmas miracle. What else can one say about a classical concert that actually managed to fill all 3,094 seats in the cavernous Eastman Theatre? Well, in truth, one can say plenty about the terrific holiday concert the famed opera singer (and former Churchville resident) gave with the RPO and its music director, Christopher Seaman. It was a festive event, what with the stage trimmed in seasonal evergreen and the soprano decked out in her purple finest. It was also an uplifting evening, one that at its best featured unforgettable performances of holiday classics.
— Read more at democratandchronicle.com [Related news items]

Anna Netrebko, the glamorous young Russian soprano, has canceled her debut recital at Carnegie Hall, saying she's not ready to perform a solo concert there. "After much thought, I have asked Carnegie Hall for permission to postpone my recital on March 2, 2006, to a future season," an apologetic Netrebko said in a statement issued Wednesday by Carnegie Hall. "I have sung very few recitals in my career, and I do not feel artistically ready yet to present a recital program on the great stage of Carnegie Hall. I know that with more recital experience this will change, and I feel a strong responsibility to present only my very best at this great concert hall and to the New York public."
— Read more at abcnews.go.com

David Gockley, the new general director of the San Francisco Opera, will be welcomed at a gala event held at the Four Seasons Hotel on February 10.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The Aspen Music Festival and School announced today that it has named Alan Fletcher to be its next president and chief executive officer, effective March 1, 2006. As principal executive in charge of all aspects of the institution, Mr. Fletcher will join Music Director David Zinman in leading one of classical music's most distinguished and prolific institutions. He will be the 7th president and CEO of the AMFS in its 57-year history.
— Learn more at aspenmusic.org

Today, the Winter Solstice and shortest day, it's our very own music awards ceremony online. Welcome to the Cyberposhplace, enjoy a glass of Virtualvintagechampers and now let's have a big round of applause for each and every musician who has touched the soul of his or her audience during the past 12 months....Thank you! Quiet, please...and now would the winners please get ready to approach the podium where Solti will allow you to stroke the ginger stripes and will give you a very special purr...
— Read more at Jessica Duchen's classical music blog

It has been a remarkable year for contemporary American opera. I count five major world premieres in 2005, including Richard Danielpour's "Margaret Garner" (after the Toni Morrison libretto based on a fugitive slave tale), which received its first performances in a widely acclaimed production by the Michigan Opera Theatre in May at the Detroit Opera House.
But the past 12 months have also seen the premieres of William Bolcom's "A Wedding" in Chicago, Mark Adamo's "Lysistrata" in Houston and John Adams' "Dr. Atomic" in San Francisco. The latest entry in the new American opera sweepstakes is Tobias Picker's "An American Tragedy," based on Theodore Dreiser's 1925 novel about a poor man whose obsessions with wealth and status lead to a grisly murder. The opera had its premiere Dec. 2 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
— Read more at freep.com

[Mediocre libretto, meandering score undermine Dreiser's potent tale]
It's not like there's anyone who wants new operas to fail. In fact, audiences, critics, and opera companies alike have huge stakes in seeing new works succeed. And goodness knows the Metropolitan Opera, like any reputable opera company, has a responsibility to present recent compositions. However, reviews are not for good intentions; I have to write about results. On that basis I have to say Tobias Picker's "An American Tragedy" (seen December 8) is an expensive fizzle.
— Read more at gaycitynews.com [Related news items]

The long drawn-out saga of English National Opera, Britain's most troubled major arts institution, took another turn yesterday when Martin Smith, the company's chairman since 2001, announced his resignation. Making a strong defence of his record, Smith's letter to the board announced that "a point has been reached where I feel it would no longer serve the best interests of ENO for me to continue in office".
— Read more at Telegraph

Lauren Segal never thought her background in science would lead her to a career as a mezzosoprano. But with an undergraduate degree in physics from York University and a master?s degree in physics from the University of Toronto, Segal has now transitioned onto the stage in the Canadian Opera Company?s production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart?s The Magic Flute.
— Read more at metronews

[Rupert Christiansen reviews Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Royal Opera in Covent Garden]
The Royal Opera's cheerful and colourful new production of Rossini's most popular work is a copper-bottomed hit. Its principal virtue is Mark Elder's superb conducting. For wit and polish, his interpretation is on the level of Beecham's or Abbado's, though in other respects his approach is radically different from theirs.
— Read more at Telegraph

After the on-stage clock at Prince Orlofsky's ball struck 6 a.m. and guests rushed off, a significant chunk of the audience at the Metropolitan Opera's performance of "Die Fledermaus" departed, too. With New York City's mass transit strike set to begin, many ticket holders apparently wanted to get home.
Those who left early Monday night missed Tony Award-winning actor Bill Irwin's debut with the company in the role of Frosch, the drunken jailer who dominates much of the final act of Johann Strauss Jr.'s operetta, a festive comedy often staged during the holiday season.
— Read more at ABC News

[Lyric Opera scraps Common showing]
Three years after Boston Lyric Opera staged a free production of "Carmen" that drew a stunning 140,000 people to the Common, the company has reluctantly shelved plans for a follow-up event, concluding that it couldn't find enough local corporate support to underwrite the show. After wrestling with funding for months, the opera company announced yesterday that it has scrapped a free production of "Aida" set for September 2006. The abrupt cancellation is a sign that local arts groups are starting to feel the impact of recent corporate mergers and acquisitions, which have diminished the number of companies with home bases -- and loyalty -- in the region.
— Read more at boston.com

n his list of works, Stravinsky's short fairy-tale opera, The Nightingale (Le Rossignol), follows almost directly on the heels of his great string of early Russian ballets. With The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring already to his credit, The Nightingale had the potential to be Stravinsky's Nutcracker, one of his most popular works.
— Read more at South Florida Sun-Sentinel

All Is Bright, a CD of carols and other holiday music from Boston's Handel and Haydn Society, debuted on the Billboard classical chart last week at number eight. The album includes music from composers ranging from the 17th-century Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck to the up-and-coming Jennifer Higdon. Grant Llewellyn conducts; soloists include baritone Christopheren Nomura. Renée Fleming's Sacred Songs moved back into the number-one spot for the first time since mid-October. André Rieu's The Flying Dutchman dropped down to number two; Cecilia Bartoli's Opera Proibita remained at number three.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The Vail International Dance Festival announced its 2006 lineup, highlighted by a unique pairing of opera and dance. The festival, scheduled for July 30 through Aug. 13, will open with legendary opera star Jessye Norman joining forces with choreographer Trey McIntyre for "The Diva, The Duke and The Dance."
— Read more at Vail Daily News

A decision by a Portland radio station not to air a live Metropolitan Opera broadcast of a contemporary opera on Christmas Eve has riled a number of local opera fans. But the station, KBPS (89.9 FM), is not backing down.
— Read more at oregonlive.com See Also: Metropolitan Opera Broadcast Schedule

THE Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra cannot budget for productions because the Federal Government is refusing to reveal the results of a review of its funding and management. Last week the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts completed a review of Australia's pit orchestras, including the Opera and Ballet Orchestra, which plays in Sydney for Opera Australia and the Australian Ballet.
— Read more at smh.com.au

Glyndebourne is one of the great brand names in opera and with the establishment of its touring arm it has shaken off the accusations of elitism which used to be made against its base in Sussex. The company?s visit to Oxford?s New Theatre this month embraced not only old favourites Mozart and Rossini but a specially commissioned new work intended to appeal to young people not usually drawn to opera. Described as an operatic thriller, Tangier Tattoo is an action piece set in north Africa and no scene lasts longer than 10 minutes.
— Read more at getReading

The strength of the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble's production of Mozart's The Magic Flute is its solid provenance in Mozart's music which is, after all, rather good. In this benighted era of "concept productions," when every muscular, tone-deaf theatrical genius feels impelled to place his smudgy thumbprints all over an opera, the simple, justified trust the key people in this production have placed in the composer arrives like a breath of fresh air.
— Read more at theglobeandmail.com

I CAN'T be alone in finding the idea of being specifically targeted by any art form with a "yoof" version rather patronising, but when it comes to the rather stuffy image of Grand Opera you can see the point. Appropriate then, that it should be Glyndebourne - still perceived as silver-haired audiences and sopranos the size of King Kong - which attempts to rediscover the "lost generation" of 18- to 30-year-olds, an increased number of whom turned up for the Edinburgh showing of its "opera lite" Tangier Tattoo.
— Read more at Scotsman.com

There is a scene in "Amahl and the Night Visitors" in which the local shepherd community gathers in the middle of the night to offer some food and their talents to the Three Kings, who are pausing on their legendary journey. As the noblemen watch, a few people perform a charming little dance for the crowd. Watching, you get the feeling you have happened upon a little jewel ? a tiny little expression of what it is supposed to be all about: being together and being entertained on a cold winter's evening.
— Read more at DesMoinesRegister.com

[An American Tragedy is yet another contemporary-opera-by-the-numbers rehash.]
The Lit 101 school of American opera continues to proliferate. Little Women, Of Mice and Men, The House of the Seven Gables, Sophie's Choice, The Last of the Mohicans, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Rappaccini's Daughter - the list of ambitious operas based on all those classic novels you read in school (or were supposed to) goes on, even if the success rate has been marginal. Right now, the Metropolitan is presenting the world premiere of Tobias Picker's An American Tragedy, adapted from the 1925 novel by Theodore Dreiser. Not that long ago we were debating the merits of John Harbison's operatic version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Can a Met production about a great white whale be far off?
— Read more at New York Magazine [Related news items]

Joseph Volpe, whose sixteen-year tenure as the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera ends this season, may be remembered as a man who stayed true to his title: he managed. Performances went off with maximum efficiency, seven each week. World-class singers showed up in mostly suitable roles, and if they misbehaved they were shown the door, or at least treated brusquely. James Levine was kept happy. Electronic subtitles appeared on the backs of the seats. Modest efforts were made in the direction of fresh production styles, novel repertory, and premieres - Tobias Picker's "An American Tragedy" bowed this month - but not enough to ruffle anyone's feather boa. Through various crises - a singer dying onstage, a bloated superstar cancelling, attendance figures falling in the wake of September 11th, a Cuban billionaire patron turning out to be neither a billionaire nor a Cuban - Volpe kept the great old house trundling along. Was he a visionary? No. Did rival American companies - particularly the San Francisco Opera, with its history-making productions of Messiaen's "Saint Francis" and John Adams's "Doctor Atomic" - challenge the Met's preeminence? Yes. But the chaos that has surrounded many big houses elsewhere has been absent from the Met, and in this business the absence of chaos is a considerable achievement.
— Read more at Alex Ross - The New Yorker

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is considering an offer to make the first recording of Richard Danielpour's new opera "Margaret Garner," written to a libretto by Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, for Sony Classical. Musicians discussed the proposal at a meeting between Holiday Pops concerts on Saturday.
— Read more at PittsburghLIVE.com [Related news items]

After significant surprises on the local classical music scene in 2004, 2005 has been relatively quiet. There were no bombshells like Daniel Barenboim's decision in February 2004 to not renew his contract as Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director when it expires in June 2006. Or the unexpected announcement in late December 2004 that Matthew A. Epstein would end his almost 25-year association with Lyric Opera of Chicago as an artistic consultant and, since 1999, artistic director.
— Read more at suntimes.com

Because of human anatomy, classically trained opera singers' voices must age like a fine wine until they?re ready for the big time ? unlike their shiny, happy musical theater cousins who often achieve success before they reach legal drinking age. The ultra-competitive waiting game is worse for men. "I like to say to my women colleagues that men have a much more difficult time singing because we actually sing in our speaking voices," baritone Nathan Gunn says. "Men?s voices don?t really mature until your 30s."
— Read more at Journal Gazette

Something was in the air that February day as one of America's top authors skimmed across the lagoon toward Venice. The something was charcoal, and the writer was John Berendt. The acrid smell filling his nostrils came from the embers of one of the world's most famous opera houses, La Fenice, which had been gutted by fire three days earlier. The year was 1996.
— Read more at The Post and Courier

THIS year was not for those with a nervous disposition, particularly if you like opera. Indeed, the tide of names washing in and out of the Scottish classical scene was enough to make even those used to arts-world shenanigans feel a little sea-sick. We principally noticed the tide going out at Scottish Opera, leaving just a few solitary pools containing the touring and education arms and what's left of the administrative and technical staff. This despite many final-season highlights, including a lead role in the Scottish celebrations of the centenary of key 20th-century British composer, Sir Michael Tippett, with their production of The Knot Garden in January.
— Read more at scotsman.com

Amid the seasonal glut of dancing sugarplums and caroling choristers, pack up the family and head on over to Lyric Opera for a holiday entertainment that won't make your sweet tooth ache. There you will find a "Magic Flute" that's got the right balance between a show for hip kids and an opera for adults who haven't lost their sense of childlike wonder. Its storybook fantasy is as amusing as anything in Harry Potter, while its serious elements will have adults marveling all over again at the depth of Mozart's musical genius.
— Read more at metromix.chicagotribune.com

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

From lesbian operas to Bollywood-style Handel, Broadway musicals to two completely different Ring cycles, the opera scene in London covered everything you could want (and some things you probably didn't) in 2005.
Meanwhile, classical music ranged from innovative chamber recitals to the launch of two big symphony cycles at the Barbican, not forgetting a moving opening to the BBC Proms in the wake of the July bombings.
— Read more at musicomh.com

In a Metropolitan Opera House studio jumbled with tapes and 16-inch lacquer discs one day last week, nine of the most famous high C's ever sung shot out from the throat of Luciano Pavarotti. It was the recording of a live, broadcast performance of Donizetti's "Fille du Régiment," at the Met on Jan. 6, 1973. The performance and others in that season's run launched Mr. Pavarotti to stardom, bringing on the epithet "King of the High C's" for his rendition of the bravura aria "Pour mon âme," toward the end of the first act. The recording, played for a reporter, is one of the few - perhaps only - of Mr. Pavarotti singing the role live, and it belongs to a string of historic moments that the Met is slowly capturing for posterity and possible profit.
— Read more at New York Times

The Metropolitan Opera Guild and Opera News magazine will host a salute to mezzo-soprano Rise Stevens on January 9 at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater. The event, which starts at 7:30 p.m., will be hosted by pianist Van Cliburn and mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore. Also scheduled to appear are singers Barbara Cook, Denyce Graves, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Anna Moffo, and Patrice Munsel, as well as Stevens and her son, actor Nicolas Surovy.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The latest tune at the Metropolitan Opera is the box-office blues. Because of a slump in ticket sales, Met general manager Joseph Volpe wants to cut operating expenses for the company's current fiscal year by 5 percent. "We are currently projecting the box office to achieve 76 percent of capacity versus a budget of 80 percent, resulting in a shortfall of $4,303,000," Volpe wrote in Dec. 12-dated memorandum to Met department heads, a copy of which was obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.
— Read more at seattlepi.nwsource.com

Christopher Hahn, Artistic Director of Pittsburgh Opera, announces two new appointments to his staff. First is Kevin Patterson who has been selected as Director of Artistic Administration. Patterson has served as Director of Production since 2002, and will continue in that function, with expanded duties within the Artistic Department. Previously, he has worked with opera companies on the regional and national level including The Lyric Opera of Chicago, The Santa Fe Opera, Palm Beach Opera, New Orleans Opera, Opera Grand Rapids, Nashville Opera, and the Chattanooga Symphony & Opera. He is also an advisor to the Asheville Lyric Opera. He has authored several articles for Opera America's publication NewsLine and currently serves as vice-chairman of Opera America's Production/Technical Committee. A graduate of the Indiana University School of Music with a Bachelor of Arts in Music, he also holds a Masters of Business Administration degree from Indiana Wesleyan University. Patterson fills the role vacated by Allan Naplan who was recently appointed as General Director of Madison Opera.
— Learn more at pittsburghopera.org

The chairman of English National Opera, Martin Smith, has faced a flood of calls for his resignation since he sacked the company's artistic director and chief executive, Seán Doran, two weeks ago. Today comes more baying for blood. While Mr Smith prepares to join the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall in the royal box at the London Coliseum tonight, his board of directors will receive an open letter from 10 eminent figures in the arts, including the writer Jeanette Winterson, broadcaster Libby Purves, tenor Philip Langridge and former ENO boss David Pountney.
— Read more at guardian.co.uk ALSO: The Guardian Profile: Martin Smith

[KILLARNEY getting set to welcome one of the greatest names in opera.]
Continuing with the over-whelming success of their ongoing classical program, the INEC and The Brehon hotel in Killarney have just announced one exclusive evening with the world-renowned Montserrat Caballe. Tickets have gone on sale for the event, which takes place on Saturday, March 4, 2006.
— Read more at the-kingdom.ie

Lincoln Center Theater is extending its production of The Light in the Piazza for a fourth time. The tuner will now run at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre through July 2, 2006.
— Read more at Broadway.com

Opera Columbus will present Hansel and Gretel at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday in Mershon Auditorium, 1871 N. High St. Based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, the original three-act Engelbert Humperdinck opera made its debut on Dec. 23, 1893.
— Read more at The Columbus Dispatch

Katie Clarke followed Kelli O'Hara into the role of Clara - the daughter character in the Lincoln Center Theater production of Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas' The Light in the Piazza - a little earlier than expected.
— Read more at Playbill News

[Girl from small town goes to big city and makes good.]
That was the comment heard from several in the audience at the Dec. 6 Molly Mustonen concert in Princeton. Most of the 110 people who heard Mustonen, of Long Island, N.Y., in her soprano solo performance likely didn?t think of her as Molly Mustonen, however.
— Read more at unioneagle.com

Verdi left behind little commentary on his operas, content to let his work speak for itself. In the case of "Rigoletto," though, he was explicit, saying that he conceived the opera as "an unending string of duets." Alas, it is precisely that feeling of connection that is missing from the Metropolitan Opera's promising revival of "Rigoletto," which opened Saturday. Set in Mantua's back alleys and suffocating court milieu, "Rigoletto" traffics in furtive gestures and an oppressive sense of closeness: the title character's overweening love for his daughter, and the twist of fate that crushes them both in its snare.
— Read more at Newsday.com [thanks viliane-fille]

Opera is not exactly a popular music. Simply say the word, and the first image that flashes into most minds is a fat lady in a Viking helmet bellowing Wagner. This is usually followed by an involuntary cringe. Few enjoy being bellowed at by the oversized, much less in German. Indeed, opera-phobia is a favourite topic for humorists. The hapless husband trying to wriggle out of a night at the opera is a beloved trope of sitcom writers.
— Read more at theglobeandmail.com

In an Edinburgh Festival memorable for its controversial performances (Arab-Israeli youth orchestras, new plays dealing with the subject of paedophilia) Scottish Opera's production of The Death of Klinghoffer led the field. The Festival's decision to give the long-overdue UK stage premiere of the opera by John Adams based on the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise liner by Palestinian terrorists, attracted a good deal of criticism from certain quarters from the moment it was announced. Further interest was generated when details of the production ? the storming of the ship from the body of the theatre ? were revealed, and by talk of a distinct lack of tendresse between director Anthony Neilson and what remained of Scottish Opera Chorus (now, of course, no more).
— Read more at The Herald

Brampton Lyric Opera is ringing in the new year with a production of Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus. The opera company is presenting the operetta on Dec. 30 and 31 at Heritage Theatre. A New Year's Eve Champagne Gala will follow the Dec. 31 performance. Staging Die Fledermaus during this time of year is steeped in tradition. The Waltz King's work has been presented annually in December in cities throughout Europe for decades, with North American opera companies, like the Metropolitan Opera in New York, following suit.
— Read more at The Brampton Guardian

[Party to raise funds for new Naples company]
Southwest Florida has always had its niche of opera lovers. Until now, these devotees had to be content with attending the few live opera performances offered each year by the Naples Philharmonic Center for the Arts or traveling to Miami or Sarasota to see professional opera. No more. A new regional, professional company is here, called Opera Naples.
— Read more at The News-Press

The Lyric Opera of Chicago will open the Civic Opera House for backstage tours on February 5, March 12, and March 19, 2006, the company announced.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

At 21, Nathan Stark couldn't have imagined he would direct his own group of opera recitalists by age 28. Then again, he never thought he'd sing for George W. and Laura Bush and Nancy Reagan at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. But that's what happens when you take control of your career ? even in college. Stark's company of seven singers, the Northwest Young Recitalists Association, will perform in Everett twice next week.
— Read more at The Seattle Times

Opera is not exactly a popular music.
Simply say the word, and the first image that flashes into most minds is a fat lady in a Viking helmet bellowing Wagner. This is usually followed by an involuntary cringe. Few enjoy being bellowed at by the oversized, much less in German.
Indeed, opera-phobia is a favourite topic for humorists. The hapless husband trying to wriggle out of a night at the opera is a beloved trope of sitcom writers.
— Read more at The Globe and Mail

When Mark Adamo composed his 1998 opera based on Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women," he wanted to uncover the novel's basic dramatic conflict, he has written. Adamo, who wrote his own libretto, pared the book down to a poignant tale about the inevitability of change and the impossibility of holding on to the present. Adamo's "Little Women," which had its New England premiere on Friday courtesy of New England Conservatory Opera Theater, focuses solely on Jo March's desire to hold together the perfect world of her childhood against the forces of change. "We're perfect as we are," she sings, but as the opera proceeds, she's told, "Things change, Jo."
— Read more at The Boston Globe

A new production of Verdi's "Nabucco" and a concert version of Bartok's "Bluebeard's Castle" will highlight the 50th anniversary season of the Dallas Opera. The company, which opened its inaugural season with a concert by Maria Callas in November 1957, said Monday it will start its 2006-7 season Nov. 10 with the Dallas Opera premiere of "Nabucco," starring Peter Rose as Zaccaria, Jose Luis Duval as Ismaele, Anna Shafajinskaia as Abigaille, Zeljko Lucic in the title role and Katherine Goeldner as Fenena. Graeme Jenkins conducts in a production directed by James Robinson and designed by Frances Bagley and Tom Orr.
— Read more at statesman.com

Two opera reissue series both offer a creditable version of Puccini's La bohème. Sony/BMG's is one of their Masterworks operas (82876 70784 2, two discs ), featuring two glorious voices in prime condition with the LPO under the dramatic baton of Sir Georg Solti. Montserrat Caballé and Placido Domingo sing their hearts out for an exuberant account, though Solti's handling of tender moments borders on sentimentality.
How utterly different is a Deutsche Grammophon Opera House reissue (left), with the forces of Florence's Maggio Musicale conducted by Antonino Votto with Renata Scotto and Gianni Poggi (DG 477 5618, two discs ), quietly confiding where Solti is healthily extrovert; more intimate, with delicately pointed playing under Votto. I prefer it, though there's little doubt that Solti provides the more overtly theatrical interpretation.
— Read more at Independent Online

The San Francisco Opera went into hibernation, leaving opera addicts searching for their fix in the other companies, or in other cities. A charming option for the no-frill opera lover is the San Francisco Lyric Opera, whose Abduction from the Seraglio opened last Friday at the Florence Gould Theater, in the Legion of Honor. Mozart's opera, about a wife imprisoned in a pasha's harem, and the efforts of her lover to rescue her, is such a masterpiece it would sound good in any setting. Here, the theater is just adorable, a cute bonbonnièe with period furniture in the stairs leading to it and flowery frescos on the ceiling. Just like the theater, everything is scaled down yet very professional in this endeavor: the real orchestra, conducted by Barnaby Palmer, comprised of 13 instrumentists (just for reference, that is about half as many as there are violins in the orchestra of that other opera in civic center). The singers played their roles gamely, keeping the energy level up through-out the three acts and the two set changes.
— Read more at SFist.com

The Metropolitan Opera will borrow the San Francisco Opera's world premiere production of John Adams' "Doctor Atomic" for the 2008-9 season. "Doctor Atomic," which deals about the development of the first atomic bomb, debuted Oct. 1 in San Francisco, with a production by Peter Sellars. The work was a co-production of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, which plans to stage it in 2007, and De Nederlandse Opera.
— Read more at miami.com [Related news items]

Next year's Edinburgh International Festival will see the first performance of King of the Wood, a new opera written by Scottish composer Stuart MacRae. A rapidly rising star on the classical music scene, MacRae has teamed up with the poet Simon Armitage for his first attempt at at opera. Together, they are adapting an ancient Roman myth about the goddess Diana and her priests for the stage.
— Read more at guardian.co.uk

Musical America has named the Finnish conductor, composer, and music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Esa-Pekka Salonen as its "Musician of the Year 2006".
— Read more at Helsingin Sanomat

The Ravinia Festival will get the drop on composer Osvaldo Golijov's 2006-08 residency with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra by presenting the local premiere of his celebrated new opera, "Ainadamar," in a concert version June 14 in Highland Park. The performance will feature frequent Golijov collaborators soprano Dawn Upshaw, conductor Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Golijov's one-act opera was given in concert by these same forces last month in Atlanta and recorded by Deutsche Grammophon as part of a multiyear project. The title "Ainadamar" refers to the "fountain of tears" in Granada where the poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca was killed during the Spanish Civil War.
— Read more at Chicago Tribune

The previously unnamed opera by Michael John LaChiusa scheduled to premiere at Houston Grand Opera in March now has a title: Send (who are you? I love you). The one-woman opera will star soprano Audra McDonald, who will appear in Francis Poulenc's La Voix humaine on the same program. The double bill runs March 4-26, 2006.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The iconoclastic Scottish opera director David McVicar says he has always wanted to do Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte -- "For me," he says, "it is the most challenging of all operas and in many ways the most moving to me personally as a director." After a meteoric decade long-career that has won him acclaim and some notoriety in opera houses from Chicago to Saint Petersburg, McVicar has got his chance to direct the Mozart classic at the Rhine Opera in Salzburg.
— Read more at Yahoo! News

IT'S more than 30 years since Richard Gill worked in a high school full time, but once a teacher always a teacher. To see him give one of his illustrated lectures on a symphony or concerto, complete with orchestra, is to understand how much he wants to share his love of music. He's terrific at it. The Discovery lectures, at the City Recital Hall in Sydney, are part of the Sydney Symphony's education program and have become hugely popular events, with four to be held next year. Recently, too, the conductor has weighed into the debate over school music education, arguing forcefully for a traditional, do-re-mi approach, where other educators want rock'n'roll in the classroom.
— Read more at theaustralian.news.com.au

The Dallas Opera will mark its 50th-anniversary next season with its first-ever stagings of Verdi's Nabucco, Donizetti's Maria Stuarda, Puccini's La Rondine, and Wagner's Lohengrin. The 2006-07 season will also include a non-subscription concert performance of Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle starring mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves on January 17, 2007. The season will open on November 10, 2006, with Nabucco, in a new production directed by James Robinson, the artistic director of Opera Colorado. Music director Graeme Jenkins conducts.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

It's hard to believe that there was a time not too long ago when Aida was performed as often as Faust or La Boheme. The dearth of Verdi singers in recent decades put an end to regular productions, with even major houses finding it hard to field a credible cast of singers with the power to handle the score's daunting demands.
— Read more at SouthFlorida.com

The San Francisco Opera finished the 2004-2005 season with a deficit of $206,819. The shortfall represents less than 0.4% of the company's annual operating budget of $57,800,000, according to a press release.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

A poised and proper Jenny Lind gazes down at Melissa Knierim Lengua each day as she prepares for an upcoming opera performance or instructs students in her studio in her Stroudsburg home. The painting of this soprano and philanthropist, who was known as the "Swedish Nightingale," has been handed down to Lengua, a soprano herself.
— Read more at Pocono Record Online

Like the behemoth it is, the Metropolitan Opera moves slowly. Because seasons are planned years in advance, it finds it hard to accommodate sudden phenomena in the opera world, like the vocal partnership of Anna Netrebko, the gorgeous and immensely gifted Russian coloratura soprano, and Rolando Villazon, the dashing and ardent Mexican tenor.
Last season the Los Angeles Opera mounted a boldly sensual new production of Gounod's "Roméo et Juliette" for these young artists that drew coverage on network television. Last summer a new production of Verdi's "Traviata" starring this alluring duo was the hottest ticket at the Salzburg Festival.
But in meeting public demand to hear the two together, the Met has so far been able to offer only a revival of Otto Schenk's 1989 production of Verdi's "Rigoletto," which opened on Saturday night to a sold-out house. Oh, and by the way, the Italian baritone Carlo Guelfi sang the title role.
— Read more at New York Times

[The changing face of La Scala is too often judged by those with Merchant Ivory disease]
Sadly, not everything in life lives up to expectations. Labour governments, new Tory leaders and England's World Cup performances all come to mind. But a night at the opera at La Scala, such as I had this week, has to be one of the exceptions. If you get one of those currently fashionable umpteen-things-to-do-before-you-die books in your stocking this Christmas, check that it includes a visit to a La Scala premiere. If it doesn't, send it back. For without such an experience, I fear that you could be fated to depart this world unfulfilled.
— Read more at Guardian Unlimited

The biblical story of Christmas involves a small child who leads the way. So does the made-for-TV story, "Amahl and the Night Visitors," which originally aired on NBC in 1951. Only, it's a different child. In three performances of "Amahl" at the Hoyt Sherman Place Theater this weekend, a West Des Moines seventh-grader leads the Des Moines Metro Opera as Amahl.
— Read more at DesMoinesRegister.com

The sign covered by a SOLD OUT notice in front of the Metropolitan Opera House advertised Verdi's "Rigoletto," but a better name for the show onstage would have been "Gilda and the Duke." Opera's newest glamour couple, soprano Anna Netrebko and tenor Rolando Villazon made their first joint appearance with the company Saturday night and transformed a routine revival into one of the season's sensations.
— Read more at mercurynews.com

Walking through the stage door of the Metropolitan Opera into its inner sanctum is a heady experience for most any opera lover. Portraits of opera legends - including a stunning Maria Callas - adorn the backstage hallways that connect a vast labyrinth of offices, rehearsal spaces and workshops. An opera star or maestro James Levine might be around.
— Read more at courant.com

As the holiday season approaches, it seems a propitious moment to re-examine some of the classical recordings that made an impression in 2005, whether as "musts," "must nots" or interesting "maybes."
— Read more at detnews.com

As new operas go these days, the world premiere production of Tobias Picker's "An American Tragedy" at the Metropolitan Opera is a winner. Picker's score is intense, involving and almost always interesting; Gene Scheer's libretto is intelligent, poetically literate and, important here, operatic; the hand-picked cast is without flaw.
— Read more at The Advocate [Related news items]

The search for the next great American opera remains an elusive one. The latest candidate, Tobias Picker's An American Tragedy, couldn't have asked for a better start - a star-packed premiere by the Metropolitan Opera, which commissions so few new works that any fresh venture there is guaranteed considerable attention. Not to mention the pressure of high expectations.
— Read more at baltimoresun.com

The best part about Tobias Picker's new opera, "An American Tragedy," is, happily, the music itself. Commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera, the score blends historical styles, folksy lyrical melodies and sophisticated counterpoint in a skillful, original and easy-to-understand language. The work is not without flaws, but seems likely to become a staple in the opera literature.
— Read more at Asbury Park Press Online

In our town, we like to think we have it all at holiday time - the Pennsylvania Ballet's million-dollar production of The Nutcracker, the Philly Pops' jazz-lush standards, a Philadelphia Orchestra Christmas series of high orchestral-butterfat content, and any number of Messiahs. But there's an important piece missing in action, something you can't see and hear. Something you should. And something that's a lot more than a holiday chestnut - in fact, a piece that could be the answer to what ails a lot of arts groups both short- and long-term. Anyone remember Hansel and Gretel?
— Read more at Philadelphia Inquirer

Commissioning a new opera remains a relatively rare thing nowadays: audiences have acquired familiarity with a given repertoire and they do not necessarily like to be pushed towards modern and unknown musics. Yet companies try to introduce fresh air in their program now and then, as the SF Opera did earlier this year with Dr. Atomic, and as the Metropolitan Opera in NY did last week with An American Tragedy.
— Read more at sfist.com

Dreiser's Chilling Tale of Ambition and Its Price - New York Times
An American Dud - Newsday
How to set America to music - Financial Times
Tragedy Loves Company - Wellsung
Prima: An American Tragedy - Sieglinde's Diaries
Met Premieres Tobias Picker Opera 'An American Tragedy' - Associated Press
Good Singing, and a Few Cliches - NY Sun
'An American Tragedy' Is Musically Solid, But Flawed - Hartford Courant
Premiere A Tragedy - New York Post
Met premiere not nearly as tragic as it might have been - Newark Star-Ledger
An American Tragedy - Financial Times
Met Premieres Tobias Picker Opera - Washington Post
Critics snipe at composer's new opera for N.Y. Met - Houston Chronicle
'American Tragedy' falls short, despite sound cast - Chicago Tribune
Met gives impressive launch to opera 'American Tragedy' - Baltimore Sun
SFist Goes to the Opera: an American Tragedy - SFist
Met's 'American Tragedy' is anything but tragic - The Advocate

Author Hax McCullough will be at Curtain Call [Pittsburgh, PA] on Saturday, December 10 from 2:00 - 4:00p.m to sign his new book, The Illustrated History of Opera in Pittsburgh: The Pittsburgh Opera Story. Copies of this limited edition book are on sale for $25 (paperback) and $50 (hardcover).
Copies are also available by calling the Pittsburgh Opera office at (412) 281-0912 or by mailing or faxing the online order form located at www.pittsburghopera.org

Opera lovers, with their usual sense of drama, were calling it Year Zero. When Daniel Harding lifted his baton last night to open a new season at La Scala opera house, more was riding on the shoulders of the 30-year-old protege of Sir Simon Rattle than the reputation of one conductor and the quality of one performance of Mozart's Idomeneo.
— Read more at Guardian Unlimited

ENGLISH National Opera was plunged deeper into trouble yesterday after it discovered that it was facing a strike by its staff. Technicians, front-of-house and production staff voted unanimously to ballot for action after condemning a 2.77 per cent pay offer as "hopelessly inadequate". Productions in January would be halted by a strike of about 170 workers. The news broke as the company was trying to quell widespread fury over its decision last week to appoint an artistic director and a chief executive internally without advertising the posts outside. Leading figures in the opera world have been outraged that John Berry, the company?s director of opera programming, and Loretta Tomasi, its executive director, were given those jobs.
— Read more at timesonline.co.uk

Madame Butterfly,- the story of a trusting 19th-century Japanese girl who falls in love with a fickle American naval officer, first captivated American audiences in 1900 as a play by impresario David Belasco. The Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini saw the play's London production and commented later that though he didn't speak English, he completely understood the passionate characters and the emotion-laden story, which depicts the couple's love affair and ends in tragedy. Puccini turned the story into "Madama Butterfly," a work that has since become one of the greatest hits of the operatic world, beloved by directors and performers alike.
— Read more at The Jewish Journal Of Greater Los Angeles

Baltimore, at long last, will get to experience in person a singer who has conquered audiences across the globe -- Renee Fleming, the soprano with the unusually creamy tone and starry glamour quotient. Fleming brings a Christmas program to Meyerhoff Symphony Hall on Tuesday, after appearances in Omaha, Neb., and Houston and, backed by the mighty Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Utah. Here, she will be presented -- and accompanied -- by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, led by Houston Grand Opera music director Patrick Summers.
— Read more at baltimoresun.com

Pianist Martha Argerich, the Emerson String Quartet, conductor Mariss Jansons, and composer William Bolcom are among the most-cited classical nominees for the 48th Grammy Awards, announced this morning in New York.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The fashion report from Renée Fleming's Christmas concert is almost as exciting as the musical one. She flowed onstage Tuesday at the Wortham Theater in a magnificent, long-train black-and-plum Gianfranco Ferré gown that had arrived just that day from Italy.
— Read more at Chron.com

Wanted: four-legged performer for opera house with stage experience and a love of music. Payment in the form of or either organic hay or money, with a stall in the city's best neighbourhood.
— Read more at The Brandon Sun

Violinist André Rieu's The Flying Dutchman reached number one on the Billboard classical chart for the first time this week. The album, a companion to the PBS special and DVD of the same name featuring pop songs and waltzes, has spent 10 weeks on the chart. Rieu now has three of the top six spots on the chart, with New Year's in Vienna at number four and Tuscany at number six. Cecilia Bartoli's Opera Proibita, displaced from the top spot after a month, fell to number three; Renée Fleming's Sacred Songs stayed at number two. Little changed on the classical-crossover chart, with Il Divo's Christmas Collection again at number one and the group's self-titled debut at number two.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Worried about offending moral sensibilities, Glimmerglass Opera has asked the creators of a new work coming next summer to take "whore" out of the title. Officials of Glimmerglass, the summer festival in Cooperstown, N.Y., denied they were being prudish but said the word could have kept patrons away. The composer, Stephen Hartke, and the librettist, Philip Littell, acquiesced, and "Boule de Suif, or The Good Whore," is now being called "The Greater Good, or the Passion of Boule de Suif."
— Read more at nytimes.com

For the first time, La Scala will be opened tonight [2005-12-07] by a British conductor. Daniel Harding, 30, is the youngest season inaugurator in 227 years and the first non-Italian in memory. Records are being rewritten in the turmoil that has beset Milan since a misfired boardroom putsch last winter removed the theatre's general manager Carlo Fontana, followed by the two-decade music director, Riccardo Muti.
— Read more at scena.org

Murdered Swedish prime minister Olof Palme will be the main protagonist of a new production of Giuseppe Verdi's opera "A Masked Ball" (Un Ballo in maschera) to be staged next year, Sweden's Malmö Opera said on Wednesday. The production will premiere on February 11, 2006, just weeks before the 20th anniversary of Palme's assassination on February 28, 1986.
— Read more at The Local

Washington National Opera will present the North American premiere of Nicholas Maw's "Sophie's Choice," based on the best-selling novel by William Styron, as part of the company's 2006-07 season, it was announced yesterday. Another highlight will be General Director Placido Domingo's first company appearance in three years in a major role. The tenor will sing Siegmund in seven performances of Wagner's "Die Walkure," the second installment in an ongoing WNO staging of the composer's complete four-opera "Ring" cycle.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

Cursing and name-calling, chair tossing and cross-dressing - it's all set to classical music in one of the most unusual operas ever to hit the stage and the small screen. Created by Stewart Lee and Richard Thomas, and starring David Soul of Starsky & Hutch, Jerry Springer -The Opera opened to international critical acclaim in 2003, has been seen by more than 500,000 theatre-goers, and set a record for having more than 2.4 million viewers when it originally premiered on BBC Two.
— Read more at Digital Home Canada

TO LABEL GAETANO DONIZETTI as prolific is like calling Dubya Bush dense - the puny adjective is hardly up to the task of epitomizing the magnitude of the condition. By 1845, along with Rossini's retirement and Bellini's early death, Donizetti's incredible output of 75 operas had raised him to absolute preeminence in the Italian branch of the art. Less salubriously, it also left him with a bursting headful of hundreds of cacophonating tunes, which, together with the ravaging effects of syphilis, ultimately put him in a madhouse, there to suffer complete mental derangement and an 1848 death at 51.
— Read more at The Cleveland Free Times

Theodore Dreiser's 1925 novel "An American Tragedy" is such an iconic slice of American culture, its meanings endlessly discussed in American-lit courses, its ill-fated love triangle brought to the silver screen in two film adaptations, that any composer wishing to turn it into an opera is faced with a quandary: How do you bring a musically and dramatically viable new dimension to so familiar a work? Within limits, Tobias Picker has done a respectable job of it with his long-awaited new opera, "An American Tragedy," which had its world premiere Friday by the Metropolitan Opera.
— Read more at chicagotribune.com

Teddy Tahu Rhodes is distracted in the lounge of his Christchurch hotel. He is between Messiahs - the one the night before with the Christchurch City Choir had gone well, he says, and there are two more coming up for Auckland Choral next Monday and Tuesday. The baritone is about to catch up with his first singing teacher, Mary Adams Taylor, an inspirational force. "She didn't mess with things and just guided, making sure that I avoided getting into trouble more than anything else. I was just 20 and singing music because I enjoyed it," he explains. "She tried to build on what I had naturally."
— Read more at nzherald.co.nz

Late last month, with her five-year tenure as general director of the San Francisco Opera winding down to its final weeks, Pamela Rosenberg spent a night in the orchestra pit during a performance of "Fidelio" at the War Memorial Opera House. The experience, as she described it, was at once thrilling and disorienting, heady and viscerally real.
— Read more at sfgate.com

[The opera house's woes, sound to signage, can be fixed or tolerated]
Human beings can be a fickle lot. Take the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. The $92 million theater, built inside the shell of the former Auditorium Theatre in the Denver Performing Arts Complex, opened Sept. 10 to enormous praise.
— Read more at DenverPost.com

Opera in Britain has no date in its calendar with the resonance that December 7 possesses in the opera calendar of Italy. But then Britain has nowhere like La Scala, the world's most fabled opera house, whose new season opens tonight, this year as ever, on the feast of St Ambrose, Milan's patron saint. No first night at La Scala is ever without its dramas, demonstrations and exaggerations, even now, when Italian opera is in historic decline. This year is likely to be no exception, since the first night of the 2005-6 season, a performance of Mozart's Idomeneo, is thought to be the first time an Englishman has had the honour of conducting on this grandest night of the Milanese year.
— Read more at Guardian Unlimited

Washington National Opera's 2006-07 season will include the North American premiere of Nicholas Maw's Sophie's Choice and new productions of Wagner's Die Walküre, Janácek's Jenufa, and Verdi's Macbeth, general director Plácido Domingo announced today. Sophie's Choice, which is based on the William Styron novel, comes to Washington in September 2006 in a revised version, four years after its premiere to mixed reviews at the Royal Opera. Markus Bothe directs the new staging, a co-production with the Vienna Volksopera and Deutsche Oper Berlin. The cast will include Angelika Kirschlager in the title role and Rod Gilfrey as Nathan; Marin Alsop will conduct.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Puccini's well-loved opera promises passion, seduction, murder and betrayal, not necessarily in that order. Director Ian Judge supplies all of that in the Los Angeles Opera's current production, with the sterling work of soprano Violeta Urmana, making her L.A. debut, teamed with Salvatoroe Licitra as the artist Cavaradossi, the object of her desire, and Samuel Ramey as the repellent Baron Scarpia, the chief of police. While the plot takes a familiar triangular shape, passion inevitably leads to devastation and a supremely theatrical conclusion.
— Read more at Reuters.com

Three top figures in English opera published a letter in the London Guardian today criticizing the speed with which the English National Opera replaced former CEO and artistic director Seán Doran. The letter was signed by Peter Jonas, the revered former general director of the ENO who currently heads the Bavarian State Opera; film, theater, and opera director Deborah Warner; and tenor Philip Langridge.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

[Apprentices perform 'The Rape of Lucretia' ]
The opening of "The Rape of Lucretia" this week marks the next big step in the progress of the Portland Opera company under Christopher Mattaliano. The opera?s general director not only directs the eight performers as they take on Benjamin Britten?s notoriously difficult music ? telling them how to sing, how to act ? but he started the very program that brought them here. "I'm out of my mind with excitement," he says, without apparent irony. The Portland Opera Studio Artists program provides a nine-month contract for five emerging singers from all over the United States, paying them $20,000 plus health benefits. Singers are given small roles in the season's four main operas, but their moment in the spotlight comes in (traditionally dark) December, when they will perform Britten's exquisite chamber opera.
— Read more at PortlandTribune.com

Los Angeles Opera has named artist manager Karen Ashley director of the newly created Domingo/Thornton Young Artist Program, which will commence at the start of the company?s 2006-07 season. The program, announced in September by Los Angeles Opera general director Plácido Domingo, will train talented artists at the beginning of their careers. Singers, coaches, conductors, and stage directors will be mentored by established artists and will receive musical coaching, voice lessons, language and acting instruction, and performance opportunities.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

In contrast to the Houston Grand Opera, which has built its reputation on commissioning and premiering new works, New York's Metropolitan Opera has been miserly in adding to the repertoire. So Tobias Picker's An American Tragedy, which premiered Friday, garnered great attention as only the fifth work the New York company has commissioned since it opened its opera house in 1966. (HGO has staged 33 world premieres and six American premieres, large and small, since 1974.)
— Read more at chron.com

After a year of operatic tantrums and tumult, the curtain goes up at La Scala on Wednesday in a first test for its new director Stephane Lissner, who claimed in an interview he had managed to restore sanity to opera's premier venue. Frenchman Lissner told AFP that seven months after his arrival in the wake of Riccardo Muti's stormy departure, everything is set for the opening of the 2005-06 season with Mozart's "Idomeneo, King of Crete".
— Read more at Yahoo! News

The Metropolitan Opera is celebrated for many things. Producing new works is not one of them. This company, after all, coddles a notoriously conservative public, subsists essentially on private funding, and wants to sell 4,000 tickets a performance. Still, adventure does rear its head occasionally. In 1999, the Met mustered the premiere of John Harbison's The Great Gatsby. On Friday Tobias Picker's An American Tragedy joined the lonely ranks.
— Read more at Martin Bernheimer - Financial Times

The University of Iowa Martha-Ellen Tye Opera Theater is getting an early start on celebrating the 250th birthday of Mozart. "Mostly Mozart," a program of scenes from four of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's best known operas, will be performed by members of the Opera Theater at 8 p.m. Thursday at the Englert Theatre.
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Placido Domingo will sing the role of Siegmund in a new production of Richard Wagner's "Die Walkuere" in the 2006-2007 season of the Washington National Opera. The company's general director also will conduct an old production of Giacomo Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" The season will include the first American performance of "Sophie's Choice," adapted from the novel by William Styron. It centers on a terrible choice that a Nazi concentration camp forces on a young Polish woman, and her tragic life afterward in the United States. Both libretto and music were the work of Nicholas Maw, a British-born composer now a Washingtonian.
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[Leading figures in opera deplore 'coronations'
Former boss among critics of chairman and board]
Leading figures in the opera world have condemned the chairman and board of the crisis-ridden English National Opera. In a letter to the Guardian, Sir Peter Jonas, a former general director of ENO, tenor Philip Langridge and director Deborah Warner have criticised the coronation of new ENO bosses without the posts being advertised and interviews being held.
— Read more at Guardian Unlimited

There's a moment early in Act II of Tobias Picker's new opera, "An American Tragedy," when the elements of music, drama and stagecraft unite to create a scene of rare emotional power. Roberta Alden, the pregnant factory girl, sings an aria whose soaring melodic line evokes her longing and loneliness as she waits on the porch of her parents' home for her lover, Clyde Griffiths, to keep his promise and marry her. Meanwhile, the scene above shows him dallying with his socialite girlfriend, Sondra Finchley, on the dock of her summer house. As the two women's voices blend in a duet, they repeat the same words ("I feel like I've been waiting. A whole life waiting to be desired by someone like you ...") with such starkly different meaning that the effect is wrenching.
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Before the first note of the overture sounds, an astonishing array of tasks and jobs must be done with precision, on time and in just the right order. Major opera companies manage budgets, staff, resources - and logistics headaches - on a scale with those of a large corporation. The planning starts years in advance. What does it take to make everything go smoothly night after night, production after production and season after season?
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For a company of such international standing, the Metropolitan Opera has had an inexcusably timid record of commissioning operas in recent decades. Consequently, when the Met presents a new work, the stakes are almost impossibly high On Friday night "An American Tragedy," Tobias Picker's long-awaited operatic adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's landmark 1925 novel, with a libretto by Gene Scheer, opened at the Met. What composer would not covet Mr. Picker's success at winning this commission? But this was only the company's fourth premiere since the James Levine era began in 1971. Talk about pressure
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