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[Musical America Review of Our Town]
Ned Rorem is not the first composer who wanted to make an opera out of "Our Town," but he is the first to bring desire to fruition. Copland and Bernstein also had designs on Thornton Wilder's 1938 stage classic but were stymied because Wilder refused to grant permission. Artistic creations have lives of their own, however, and Wilder?s literary executor (his nephew Tappan Wilder) became persuaded with the help of librettist J. D. McClatchy that the time for the opera had come.
— Read more at indiana.edu

A boy threw up on the stairs of the school bus on my fourth-grade field trip to see "Our Town" at Indianapolis Civic Theatre. I remember the teachers didn't want the rest of us walking over his pile of vomit, so they opened up the emergency exits on the bus and made us all crawl out into the streets. To this day, that is all I remember about the play.
But after watching the world premiere of Ned Rorem's opera, "Our Town," Friday night at the Musical Arts Center, I realized it's perfectly OK if that's all I remember. Because those little moments in our lives, "ticking clocks and shoes and socks," according to J.D. McClatchy's libretto, are the most important parts of life.
— Read more at IDSnews.com

The men and women who stage opera today are under fire, often with good reason. Any opera lover can cite an atrocity or two -- a Mozart opera crudely updated to the 21st century, or Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung" set in some inexplicable universe irrelevant to the composer's endlessly rich libretto and score.
But when opera directors get things right, the results are magical. Lyric Opera of Chicago's final production of the 2005-06 season, a new look at Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice," which opened Saturday starring countertenor David Daniels and soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian, is a revelation on various levels.
— Read more at suntimes.com

The debate can be made over whether or not a particular composition is a masterpiece (or perhaps a specific performance of a particular work makes it a masterpiece?). This is a subjective matter that cannot be proven (much like science/faith cannot prove faith/science, music theory/composition cannot prove composition/music theory). I will not waste time arguing that a musical composition is or is not a repertoire must-have, but I will say that Ned Rorem's latest opera Our Town, with libretto by J.D. McClatchy, will rise to the top of every opera company's list.
— Read more at Sequenza21 [Related news items]

[Composers employ the nuances of their native languages to create dynamic pieces]
Learning how to sing and act in different languages is a challenge for classical singers, as the languages that singers find themselves singing in are often very different from their native tongues. Languages share many of the properties of music, like rhythm and accents, and with time composers have become very skilled at conveying the meaning of words through music.
— Read more at The Tartan Online

Bangor New Music Festival brings opera to all, quite literally. The Festival begins on Saturday 4 March with performances of the world's shortest opera in Bangor's Deiniol Shopping Centre. Lasting 3 minutes and 34 seconds, The Sands of Time has all the musical elements of a traditional Opera, but in a more compact format! Shoppers will be able to enjoy the performance by a cast of professional musicians and Bangor University Music students, on the hour and half-hour between 2 and 4pm.
— Read more at newswales.co.uk

For those who think opera is too highbrow and inaccessible, Thursday's production of "Die Fledermaus (The Bat)" by the Helikon Opera of Moscow may be a welcome introduction to the art form. "It's more like a Gilbert and Sullivan type of show than a serious opera," said Mary Wagner, assistant professor of music at the University of Michigan-Flint. She will present a pre-show talk at 6:30 p.m. The opera begins at 7:30 p.m. Audiences will be able to read supertitles (translating songs from German to English). The dialogue will be spoken in English.
— Read more at mlive.com

t may seem an unlikely premise for an opera, but the significance of tea and its various ceremonies provided just that for Tan Dun's Tea: A Mirror of Soul. Staged in a Michael Fowler Centre than could well have had more filled seats, Tea blended Oriental mysticism and soundscapes with moments of Puccinian ecstasy.
— Read more at nzherald.co.nz

PROFESSIONAL sourpuss Simon Cowell, from whom nary is heard an encouraging word when he's gunning down "American Idol" contestants, seemed Saturday to have left his sangfroid at home as he gushed over the four singers warbling before him. "Oh, yeah!" he cheered after one number. "I love it!" What did it take to unlock Cowell's inner cheerleader? Only Il Divo, the pop-classical quartet that recently debuted at No. 1 on the national sales chart with its third album, "Ancora," and consequently sold out the 6,200-seat Gibson Amphitheatre, where Cowell was among the ecstatic onlookers.
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

Santa Fe Opera will celebrate its 50th anniversary on August 12 with a gala concert featuring former members of the company's Apprentice Singer Program, including Joyce DiDonato, Beth Clayton, and William Burden.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

No opera company can get by for very long without acknowledging Rossini. Kentucky Opera recognizes this full well, reflected by last season's production of "La Cenerentola" and the staging of "Il barbiere di Siviglia," which is closing its current subscription season at the Kentucky Center's Whitney Hall.
— Read more at courier-journal.com

Benjamin F. Matthews, an accomplished bass-baritone who directed New York's Ebony Opera, died on February 14, the Mobile Register reports. He was 72. Born in Prichard, Alabama, Matthews moved to Chicago as a teenager. After serving in the military, he studied voice at the Chicago Conservatory and made his debut at Chicago Civic Opera.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Puccini's "Tosca" and Mozart's "Don Giovanni" are on the schedule for Festival Opera's 2006 season, which will run July 8-Aug. 20 at the Dean Lesher Regional Center for the Arts.
— Read more at ContraCostaTimes.com

Aaron Copland wanted to make it an opera. So did Leonard Bernstein. But Thornton Wilder, the author of "Our Town," turned both composers down. Now, 68 years after it was written and 30 years after Wilder's death, the play has made it to the opera stage. "Our Town," with music by Ned Rorem and a libretto by J. D. McClatchy, received its premiere here on Friday evening by the Indiana University Opera Theater, one of six commissioners of this opera.
— Read more at New York Times - Anne Midgette [Related news items]

Universal relief will greet the news that the Three Tenors have sung their last football chant. This June, at the World Cup in Germany, Placido Domingo will be going it alone - or, rather, hogging the stage with a very different line-up from the one that has graced every quadrennial football final since the virtually scoreless summer of 1990.
— Read more at scena.org

[Bryn Terfel excels as Wagner's Dutchman, but the backdrop is a distraction, says Hugh Canning]
Bryn Terfel has just returned to Cardiff, to appear there in opera on stage for the first time in more than a decade - fulfilling a promise he made that he would sing the title role of Wagner's The Flying Dutchman in the Welsh capital when Welsh National Opera had a theatre in its home city worthy of its international reputation.
— Read more at Sunday Times

"Through Wagner modernity speaks most intimately, concealing neither its good nor its evil - having forgotten all sense of shame." So wrote the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche of Richard Wagner, his former friend and idol with whom he broke, in part, because of the composer's anti-Jewish and anti-French views, dishonesty and demands for obeisance. Yet even as Nietzsche railed against Wagner's baneful influence, he never stopped loving music's "hypnotizer" and "old magician."
— Read more at Newsday.com [thanks viliane-fille]

When the Richard Tucker Music Foundation, which supports young American opera singers, held its annual "Rising Stars" gala last month, the top honoree was seen but not heard. The singer, Eric Cutler, was under contract to the Metropolitan Opera, which has in recent years been enforcing an exclusivity clause. Mr. Cutler could not sing at the gala, even though it was a fund-raiser and even though his next Met performance was 10 days away, as Tamino in "The Magic Flute."
— Read more at New York Times See also: PlaybillArts

The Metropolitan Opera announced its 2006-'07 season earlier this month and also provided a few glimpses into the future beyond that, and the sky has not fallen. Wags have had great fun predicting what the regime of general-manager-elect Peter Gelb might bring ever since the controversial impresario was named in 2004 to take over from Joseph Volpe at the end of the current season.
— Read more at The Boston Globe

Few visiting opera productions have arrived with so much advance imprimatur as the Aix-en-Provence Festival's U.S. debut last week at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with Handel's Hercules. The many drawing points (besides excellent reviews and a just-released DVD of the production) include a firsthand encounter with the blazingly resourceful director Luc Bondy, whose work is rarely seen in the United States. The cast includes one of the best new Handel voices in years (Ingela Bohlin as Iole) and stardom-bound American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato in the career-making role of Dejanira.
— Read more at Philadelphia Inquirer

Placido Domingo is extending his contract as general director of the Washington National Opera through the 2010-11 season, matching his deal with the Los Angeles Opera that was announced earlier this week. Domingo joined the WNO in 1996 as artistic director and became general director in 2003.
— Read more at Yahoo! News See also: PlaybillArts [Related news items]

[A great story, comedic hijinks and a tight ensemble like the one in the Florida Grand Opera production, account for the appeal of The Barber of Seville.]
On the whole, Phyllis Pancella would rather listen to bluegrass. "Or something closer to the normal human voice," said Pancella, rehearsing her role as Rosina in Gioacchino Rossini's The Barber of Seville, which opens Saturday at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium. "It turned me off in my youth," Pancella admitted about operatic singing. But eventually she discovered that opera was "what my voice is built for."
— Read more at MiamiHerald.com

It's a great weekend for singing. On the one hand, we have Seattle Opera's new "Così fan tutte," a Mozart comedy brought forward to 2006 through the directorial hand of Sir Jonathan Miller, opening at 7:30 Saturday night (any remaining tickets will be at 206-389-7676). Andreas Mitisek conducts the show, full of delectable arias, and the misadventures of two young couples who test each other's fidelity with surprising results.
— Read more at The Seattle Times

Mezzo-soprano Maria Markina, 25, a Moscow native, won the $10,000 first prize at Houston Grand Opera's 17th Annual Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers, Concert of Arias, held on February 9. Held in the company's Wortham Center Cullen Theater, the event featured eight finalists competing for contracts with HGO, fellowships in the company's Studio as well as cash prizes. Garrison Keillor, host of NPR's A Prairie Home Companion served as master of ceremonies.
— Read more at Opera News

Our Town, a new opera by Ned Rorem based on the classic play by Thornton Wilder, will get its world premiere at Indiana University tonight. Rorem, best known for his songs, is also the composer of three symphonies, four piano concertos, and nine operas, including the 1965 Miss Julie. He is also the author of many books, including famed New York Diary and Paris Diary.
— Read more at PlaybillArts See also: Reporter-Times.Com nuvo.net "Singing praises" Boosey and Hawkes

Igor Stravinsky's opera Le Rossignol has been hopelessly lodged in esoteric realms, a 45-minute footnote to the composer's Firebird and Petrushka, and known mostly for its later reconstitution into the tone poem Song of the Nightingale. Seemingly out of nowhere a few months ago, PBS beamed out a sensational Christian Chaudet film of the opera with soprano Natalie Dessay surrounded by a flood of the most imaginative and dramatically apt computer graphics yet seen by the classical music community. Birds hatch out of cell phones, and shadows of musical instruments soar like missiles through the heavens - all with such charm that the video could easily become a holiday perennial that dazzles kids but is even better appreciated by adults.
— Read more at Philadelphia Inquirer

She's everywhere - at the Metropolitan Opera, singing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, in PBS specials and Rolex ads. Tuesday, opera star Renee Fleming brought her glamorous image and spectacular artistry to the Dayton Philharmonic. The 47-year-old diva looked and sounded ravishing. To say she conquered the crowd would be an understatement, as the audience of about 2,000 - with Cincinnati heavily represented - rose in one standing ovation after another.
— Read more at The Enquirer [Related news items]

[ Terrible sounds of killing spree]
The opera of the Scottish play still bears his name, of course, but as Verdi is at pains to make even plainer than Shakespeare, it's her indoors that wears the trousers. For any soprano with the technique and, more importantly, the will to seize her many moments, this is Lady Macbeth's show.
— Read more at Independent Online Edition

Canadian-born opera star Ben Heppner will sing the national anthem to kick off the start of an eight-minute Canadian segment where the world will be invited to "Come Play with Us in 2010" during Sunday's closing ceremonies at the Turin Winter Olympics.
— Read more at TheSpec.com

To celebrate and honor the 250th anniversary of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, students from the BYU Opera Scenes program will perform a night of scenes from several of Mozart's most famous works. While Mozart's operas are usually cast with professional singers, not all of the students chosen have advanced training to bring down the house. Many who audition and are selected join the program to gain singing and acting experience to develop their skills for future main-stage productions.
— Read more at BYU NewsNet

Syracuse Opera has planned a pretty tough year for the sopranos. (No, not the HBO kind.) The leading female singers in two of the three productions scheduled for 2006-2007 ("Carmen" and "Lucia di Lammermoor") are dead by the time the curtain falls.
— Read more at syracuse.com

The boards of Cleveland Opera and Lyric Opera Cleveland have agreed in principle to approve a merger of their companies. Trustees of Cleveland Opera voted Feb. 15. The Lyric Opera board met Tuesday, when the merger was endorsed unanimously, pending revisions in legal documents being resubmitted to Cleveland Opera.
— Read more at cleveland.com

Three singers in the Minnesota Opera's Resident Artists program - soprano Alison Bates, bass-baritone Seth Keeton and baritone John Michael Moore - have reached the semifinals of the Metropolitan Opera's National Council Auditions, and will compete in late March to become among 10 finalists. Winning the National Council Auditions customarily puts a young opera singer on the fast track to success through roles in Metropolitan Opera productions and other professional development opportunities. This isn't Keeton's first time at this level: He was also a semifinalist last year.
— Read more at St. Paul Pioneer Press

Cincinnati Opera and Cincinnati Opera Guild are pleased to present Elegance and Élan, an Opera Rap by Lyric Opera of Chicago's Roger Pines. This Opera Rap is the first in a series of 2006 community programs that runs from March 13 through June 6 and features guest speakers leading conversations on topics related to Cincinnati Opera's 2006 Summer Festival (June 15-July 22).
Cincinnati Opera's 2006 season includes two French operas - the charming comic opera L'Étoile and the audience favorite The Tales of Hoffmann. Join Roger Pines, dramaturg for Lyric Opera of Chicago, for élan and bonbons as he discusses the elegance and panache of French opera at its most irresistible.
When: Monday, March 13, 7:00 p.m.
Where: University Club - 401 East 4th Street, downtown
Admission: $5 (includes dessert and coffee)
Reservations: Call (513) 241-2742
— Learn more at cincinnatiopera.org

On Christmas day 2005 the great Swedish soprano Birgit Nilsson died in her homeland. News of her death was kept private, apparently at her own request, until the requisite obsequies were observed, so obituaries did not appear in the press until mid-January 2006.
— Read more at 3quarksdaily.blogs.com

Opera inspires a rare kind of fanatical love. There are many small theater companies in New York, but I know of none solely devoted to producing, say, the works of Shakespeare in lovingly homemade productions. Yet there is a long tradition in this city of a genre a friend of mine has dubbed "garage opera," meaning opera produced in very small spaces by people who love it so much they have determined to find a way to make it themselves.
— Read more at New York Times - Anne Midgette

The economics of opera being what they are, there are reasons to worry about a production that the Metropolitan Opera files away immediately after its premiere and leaves in storage for a decade. When it finally returns, it looks as if the company is holding its finger to the wind, trying to sneak it past an audience that either missed or has forgotten the original run, and hoping it's safe to slip it into the repertory. That seems to be the story of Giancarlo del Monaco's production of Verdi's "Forza del Destino," which had its premiere in 1996 and was banished from the Met stage until Monday evening. A decade wasn't long enough to make the heart grow fonder. This unimaginative, drab production does little for "Forza," which, with its four soul-numbing hours of ludicrous plot twists and stultifying interludes, brings ample baggage of its own.
— Read more at New York Times See also: vilainefille.com - La forza del destino

It looked so promising on paper. La forza del destino, virtually uncut, was returning to the mighty Met on Monday after a decade's absence, with a cast that seemed elite by current standards. Reality, alas, did not reinforce expectations. For at least one observer this was a sad night at the opera.
— Read more at FT.com - Martin Bernheimer See also: Yahoo! News

[IU Opera Theater presents the world premiere of the first opera ever made of Our Town]
No curtain. No scenery. That is how Thornton Wilder opens his monumentally famous 1938 play Our Town. And in doing so, he leaves his audience to fill in the details of the play?s invisible world: milk bottles and schoolbooks, morning newspapers and baseballs, doctors? bags and soda fountains, Main Street, and a cemetery.
— Read more at IU Music Magazine See also: Rorem's Our Town in world premiere at Indiana University

The San Francisco Opera's rising stars will come to Napa Valley next week to perform in a first-time ever collaboration with the Napa Valley Symphony and the Napa Valley Chorale to present Mozart's "Don Giovanni," at the Lincoln Theater in Yountville.
— Read more at Napa Valley Register Online

She's danced naked onstage in the Metropolitan Opera's "Salome," but if you think soprano Karita Mattila's ideal of a female icon is Pamela Anderson, think again. It's none other than the notorious doyenne of domesticity, Martha Stewart. "I love her for her magazine," the Finnish singer said by phone from her Florida home. "Cooking is my new hobby - it's like therapy for me. But I'm still insecure; I need my recipes."
— Read more at BostonHerald.com [Related news items]

Marked with beautiful music and costumes, "The Secret Marriage" delights the senses. But some may be incensed by the fact it's an opera.
Get over it. It's in English and what you can't understand that is sung, you can read as subtitles above the stage. But I'm guessing just by the acting, most patrons will be able to read the body language and know what is happening. Proof of that comes with the overture that depicts the secret marriage between a man and a woman without a single word being sung.
— Read more at The Herald Bulletin

Audrey Luna, a soprano from Salem, won first prize and $10,000 Sunday in the Eleanor Lieber Awards. Ten up-and-coming opera singers, selected from a field of 30, competed for $18,500 in prize money.
— Read more at oregonlive.com

Plácido Domingo's contract as general director of the Los Angeles Opera has been extended for five years through 2011, the company announced.
— Read more at PlaybillArts See also: BBC NEWS

[Why is one of the world's top opera directors going into musicals? Francesca Zambello reveals all to Emma John]

Francesca Zambello is worked up about the state of theatre. Or rather, the state of theatres. "So many look terrible inside, they look depressing," she says, sitting in a West End flat minutes from the threadbare venues she's berating. "If people don't go to the theatre a lot, it has to be an experience that means something, and that means also the building. It's boring, but it's important: making people realise what special places they are."
— Read more at Guardian Unlimited [Related news items]

The director of Oscar-nominated films Hero and The House of Flying Daggers is to stage a new production at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Zhang Yimou will direct the historical epic The First Emperor, scored by Chinese-American composer Tan Dun and starring Placido Domingo in the title role. Zhang becomes the first Chinese director to helm an opera at the Met.
The First Emperor is a fictionalised history of the founding of China, based on the film The Emperor's Shadow by Zhou Xiaowen. It tells of an emperor who commissions a childhood friend to write an anthem for the newly unified China. The libretto for Zhang's opera is by the novelist Ha Jin. Costumes are by Emi Wada, who has designed outfits for Zhang's films and for Peter Greenaway and Akira Kurosawa.
— Read more at Guardian Unlimited

The Lord High Executioner took his place here recently, on opening night of a revival of Jonathan Miller's production of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Mikado" at the English National Opera. He had a little list, you see: those "society offenders" who never would be missed.
Executioners traditionally update the list song with topical targets, and in this high-camp production, Richard Suart added not only boozing, rent-boy-using politicians and annoying reality-show transmissions but also a target closer to home: the English National Opera itself.
— Read more at International Herald Tribune

Dark and sprawling - some would call it downright messy - Verdi's "La Forza del Destino" is a difficult opera to stage without performers able to sing at full throttle throughout a long evening.
— Read more at miami.com

IF OPERA is a kind of sweet sorrow, Raquel Holt is a glutton for punishment. The founder of Livermore Valley Opera is on the company's board, she is in charge of the current production of Franz Lehar's "Merry Widow"... and she sings in the chorus. That's dedication - no, passion - and that's the quality that suffuses the presentation of this funny and melodic 1905 work that straddles the worlds of opera and operetta.
— Read more at Inside Bay Area

"The Marriage of Figaro" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte may or may not be the greatest opera ever written there's a topic for an argument without end. But "Figaro" unquestionably is the opera that changed opera. Coming to Richmond next weekend in a Virginia Opera production, "Figaro" was the first great work of musical theater in which the singing characters behaved more or less like the people watching and hearing the show.
— Read more at TimesDispatch.com

ONE of Scotland's richest men, the businessman Lord Laidlaw of Rothiemay, is to come to the rescue of the troubled English National Opera with a donation of £2m.
— Read more at Times Online

The Princeton Festival is holding chorus auditions for Madama Butterfly (this is a paid chorus). Audition Dates: February 28, March 2, 4, 8 and 11. Location will be given when you schedule your audition.
Audition Requirement: One selection in Italian. An accompanist will be provided/Comprimario roles will be cast from the chorus.
To schedule an audition - Email: rtangyuk@princetonfestival.org - Phone: 609-537-0071
— Learn more at princetonfestival.org

Christoph Eschenbach's preoccupation with the human voice has been so consistent throughout his career that you're surprised he doesn't conduct opera and accompany singers more often.

As it is, the Philadelphia Orchestra music director averages a vocal recital and an opera once a year. The pianist-turned-conductor is even seen on a newly released EMI video with the great baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in Schubert's Die Schoene Mullerin. More significant, Eschenbach is now on his first conducting outing with Wagner's four-part, 16-hour Ring cycle at the Chatelet Theatre in Paris.
— Read more at Philadelphia Inquirer

The flute is not the only thing that is magic in the Dallas Opera's current presentation. Every aspect of this production of Mozart's The Magic Flute, which opened at Fair Park Music Hall on Friday night, feels charmed. And that is about the only way to explain how its voices, costumes and sets could be so supernaturally good.
— Read more at Star-Telegram

Mom and Dad were opera singers, with platinum credentials and careers that took them to stages across Europe.
When it came to musical dreams for their children, Julia Kemp and Guy Rothfuss of Abington managed to be low-key. It was enough that Kristin, Katja and Bryan sang the blessing before meals, harmonized to pass the time on car rides, were at ease on stage in children's roles, and even sang their way down the Kennebec River on a raft trip in Maine.
— Read more at philly.com

Unusual operas and celebrations of milestone anniversaries of the births of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Dmitri Shostakovich highlight the Aspen Music Festival's 2006 season - one of the most promising in recent memory.
More than 350 concerts, master classes and discussions will take place during the 57th edition of the internationally renowned summer event, which runs daily from June 21 through Aug. 20.
Heading the festival's three-opera lineup is the exciting Western premiere of Ned Rorem's operatic adaptation of Thornton Wilder's 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, "Our Town," with a libretto by poet and writer J.D. McClatchy.
— Read more at DenverPost.com

The Metropolitan Opera Guild will honor outgoing Met general manager Joseph Volpe at its Annual Membership Luncheon on April 20, the Guild announced.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

For more than a decade, opera has been dominated by men - three, to be precise. The Three Tenors captured public attention and held onto it for a long time. Through carefully staged mega-concerts in venues such as Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, they were transformed into global icons earning huge paychecks for themselves and their producers.
— Read more at The Columbus Dispatch

'Til the Fat Lady Sings, an opera with book and lyrics by Carolyn Gage, music by Andrea Jill Higgins, Wagner, Giacomo Puccini, and Christoph Willibald von Gluck and directed by Jen Widor will receive performances at the MAINE SHORT PLAY FESTIVAL on Thursday, March 23 at 7:30 PM, Friday, March 24 at 7:30 PM and Sunday April 2 at 7 PM.
St. Lawrence Arts and Community Center, 76 Congress Street , Portland, Maine 04101
— Learn more at acorn-productions.org

In the annals of hyperbole, little can equal the San Diego Opera hype being foisted upon our innocent little metropolis by The San Diego Union-Tribune. A front-and-back Currents cover-wrap-around photo splash for The Barber of Seville (01/30/06) was accompanied by copy touting the charming and unassuming utilitarian sets as if they had been designed by Franco Zeffirelli for one of the Met's many stage spectacles. "A lavish delight for the eyes, ears." "To get a sense of one of the most spectacular scenes in The Barber of Seville, one page wasn't enough."
— Read more at sandiego.com

Virginia Woolf described Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro" as "the perfection of music, and the vindication of opera." And Johannes Brahms said, "Every number in 'Figaro' is for me a marvel." Virginia Opera's glittering production is a marvel, too, letting the plot's schemes and counter-schemes illuminate the endearingly flawed characters. At George Mason University's Center for the Arts on Friday night, everything ran like clockwork, powered by Artistic Director Peter Mark's assemblage of unusually good-looking, highly talented singers -- there was not a single weak voice.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

Woody Allen's latest film, Match Point, represents a stylistic departure from his usual satirical romance. Allen's wicked wit remains in the screenplay, but he has replaced the usual dose of humor with melodrama. The romantic angle of the story, which usually devolves into a sex comedy, develops here into a taut thriller. And Allen dispenses with two of his signature stylistic traits -- stories set geographically in New York and set musically to jazz. Instead, Match Point takes place in London, and the music is all opera.
— Read more at Lexington Herald-Leader

Giuseppe Verdi wrote 33 operas in his lifetime, and the Sarasota Opera is in the process of staging all of them, one each year. By the time the current season ends, the company will have presented 22 operas as part of its long-term Verdi Series, with the addition of the rarely seen "I Masnadieri," also known as "The Robbers."
— Read more at heraldtribune.com

In the wrong hands and voices, baroque opera may emerge as a string of repetitious arias. Pittsburgh Opera Center's "Xerxes," which opened Saturday at the High School for the Creative and Performing Arts Theater, Downtown, should dispel any fears in that direction. As staged by Eric Einhorn in the lively English translation of Stephen Wadsworth (with projected supertitles as well) it is a funny, delightful show that need make no apologies for being 268 years old.
— Read more at post-gazette.com

The Lord High Executioner took his place here recently, on opening night of a revival of Jonathan Miller's production of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Mikado" at the English National Opera. He had a little list, you see: those "society offenders" who never would be missed.

Executioners traditionally update the list song with topical targets, and in this high-camp production, Richard Suart added not only boozing, rent-boy-using politicians and annoying reality-show transmissions but also a target closer to home: the English National Opera itself.
— Read more at New York Times

When "Our Town" opened on Broadway in 1938, playwright Thornton Wilder surprised American theatergoers with innovations including the absence of a set, and a stage manager who spoke to the audience. This week, Hoosiers have a chance to witness the latest twist in the landmark play -- an opera version.
— Read more at IndyStar.com See Also: Rorem's Our Town in world premiere at Indiana University

Boston Lyric Opera will celebrate its 30th anniversary next season with Puccini's Madama Butterfly, Verdi's Un ballo in maschera, and Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

LONG before Wallace Shawn wrote the plays "The Fever" and "The Designated Mourner" or began work on "My Dinner With Andre," or immortalized himself as the comically arrogant kidnapper Vizzini in the movie "The Princess Bride," his chief dramatic experience was staging musical puppet shows in his parents' Upper East Side apartment with his little brother, Allen. The plays had to do with political conventions, princesses, ancient China and, once, a music teacher [The Music Teacher]; and although they usually clocked in at under 60 minutes, a production of "Paradise Lost" lasted four hours. "People ate dinner in the middle of it," Wallace recalled as the brothers sat together recently in a lounge on Theater Row.
— Read more at New York Times

It is all too easy to make fun of opera plots. Even the great Verdi maestro Riccardo Muti joked recently that he would be hard pressed to lay out the plot of "Il Trovatore."
— Read more at New York Times

Concert life in New York has never been more vigorous than it is right now. Or so it seemed during a sustained delirium of musical events in late January and early February. The Berlin Philharmonic, under Simon Rattle, brought its dark-gold sound to Carnegie Hall, in four programs touching on four centuries; Mozart was celebrated on the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of his birth. Lincoln Center brought in John Eliot Gardiner to conduct Mozart Masses and symphonies, but it gave more attention to a not-at-all-dead composer, the impossibly vibrant Osvaldo Golijov, whose flamenco opera "Ainadamar" and pan-Iberian song cycle "Ayre" played to sold-out halls. The Juilliard School, in its annual Focus! Festival, presented six evenings of works written in 2005, including Donald Martino?s Fifth String Quartet, a valedictory tour de force in high-modern style (the composer died in December), and Mason Bates?s "Digital Loom," for organ and electronics, which transformed the hall into something between a decaying cathedral and an East Berlin club. At one point, determined not to be defeated by the surfeit, I made an early exit from a fabulously murderous twentieth-century program by James Levine and the Met Orchestra-Bartók's "Miraculous Mandarin," Schoenberg's "Erwartung," Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring'-to catch a program of Renaissance polyphony by the Hilliard Ensemble, in the Music Before 1800 series, at Corpus Christi Church. I don't recommend going from blood-spattered Austrian atonality to unyielding Franco-Flemish counterpoint by way of a hellbent cab ride.
— Read more at The New Yorker - Alex Ross

Composer Adolphus Hailstork calls himself "musically ambidextrous." By his own measure, he has one musical foot planted in the European classical tradition, the other in African-American tradition. So it was no problem when, in 1995, the Dayton Opera commissioned him to compose the score for "Paul Laurence Dunbar: Common Ground." Dunbar, a Dayton-born poet who lived in the late 19th century, had the same cultural ambidexterity.
— Read more at The Enquirer

BRYN TERFEL made his much-anticipated debut in The Flying Dutchman at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff last night. The world-famous bass baritone returned to his home soil for the Welsh National Opera production, which marks the company's 60th anniversary.
— Read more at icWales .co.uk

American Opera Projects (AOP) explores the outer edges of the operatic form with the world premiere of DARKLING, an experimental opera-theatre work with original music composed by Stefan Weisman and Lee Hoiby, conceived and directed by Michael Comlish, and music direction by J. David Jackson. Instrumental accompaniment is by members of the FLUX Quartet.

Performances of DARKLING will begin Sunday, February 26th at the East 13th Street Theatre, 136 East 13th Street (at 3rd Avenue) and run through Saturday, March 18th. Opening Night is Tuesday, February 28, 2006. Tickets can be purchased through Ticket Central, www.TicketCentral.com and by phone 212-279- 4200,12-8 PM, daily. Tickets are priced at $45-$30, and discounted for students and seniors with valid ID.
— Read more at www.operaprojects.org

Opera director Francesca Zambello talks to Sian Stott about juggling productions in three countries
— Read more at Telegraph.co.uk [Related news items]

Richard Strauss's opera "Salome" is not easy to produce. Its vocal, orchestral and staging demands, not to mention its still-shocking subject matter, make it just an occasional visitor even in the world's top houses. The Opera Company of North Carolina's exceedingly successful production in UNC's Memorial Hall confirms its credentials as a viable regional company, an achievement belying its mere decade of existence.
— Read more at newsobserver.com

News, views and reviews about the multi-talented women of the musical theatre and the concert/cabaret stage.
— Read more at Playbill Celebrity Buzz

Something funny is happening in the state of Sondheim. Ever since the century turned, the work of the last grand master of Broadway has shrunk in size and grown in popular appeal - a paradox which so defies the ground rules of musical theatre that what we are witnessing is practically the birth of a sub-genre, the start of a different art.
— Read more at scena.org

Cincinnati native James Levine got an offer earlier this week that anyone would find hard to turn down. The conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York was given a rare lifetime invitation to remain on one of the world's great podiums.
— Read more at The Cincinnati Post [Related news items]

When Peter Gelb ascends as the Metropolitan Opera's general manager this August, the imprints of the former president of Sony Classical will already be immediately visible on the season beginning a few short weeks later.
— Read more at Gramophone [Related news items]

[Conservatism is once more on the rise in the orchestral world but the starchy old Met, under new boss Peter Gelb, is trying to buck the trend.]
New evidence that the opera world is fickle is about as shocking as a revelation that politicians lie or that divas hate (or at least used to hate) to diet. Still, topsy-turvy is news, and topsy-turvy opera is.
— Read more at calendarlive.com

Audiences were baffled when Handel's "Hercules" was first presented in 1745 at the King's Theater in London. The work wasn't an opera, yet it didn't seem to be an oratorio either, though it was performed in concert. It failed to catch on even after Handel's death, despite being one of Handel's most complex and penetrating scores.
— Read more at New York Times

Those who attend the Houston Grand Opera's Concert of Arias, the final event of the Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers, absolutely love opera. And that's a good thing. Guests at last week's black-tie evening were treated to 16 arias by the competitors and two additional pieces spotlighting Houston Opera Studio stars. By the time celebrity host Garrison Keillor had briefly and quite entertainingly interviewed the eight contestants and the awards presented and speeches made, three hours had passed in the Cullen Theater of Wortham Theater Center.
— Read more at Chron.com

Quenching a long dry spell of professional opera in Duluth, two opera groups will debut full-length productions this summer. The Duluth Festival Opera will stage Puccini's "Madame Butterfly" on July 20 and 22. The story of a Japanese woman impregnated and then abandoned by an American soldier is the most-performed opera in North America.
— Read more at Duluth News Tribune

Florida Grand Opera has announced the details of its 2006-07 season - its first in the new Sanford and Dolores Ziff Ballet Opera House, and as a resident of the new Miami Performing Arts Center. Per the new season, Florida Grand Opera will present productions of six operas spanning fifty-three performances; up one from the company's usual five productions. The Opera's new Aida, which opens on October 28, 2006, and stars Angela Brown and Andrew Richards, will be the first production to take the stage.
— Read more at Opera News

Singles night at the opera attracts a lot of lawyers but "Meet Me at the Met" isn't just the domain of New York's rich and powerful elite. One of the most elegantly attired men at the Metropolitan Opera event on Wednesday was Vinny Lawler, a 38-year-old Irish doorman who by day doffs his hat to the well-heeled residents of an Upper West side apartment building.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

Lillian Groag is back at Chicago Opera Theater, once more proving that old opera can, in the right hands, deliver a bracing shock of the new. COT opened its season Wednesday night at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance with the director's inventive staging of two early English operas - Henry Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas" and Charles Dibdin's "The Padlock."
— Read more at chicagotribune.com

"I consider myself to be an entrepreneurial producer, and expect to continue to be the same at the Met," says Peter Gelb, 52, the Metropolitan Opera's general manager-elect.
Gelb, slated to replace longtime manager Joseph Volpe when he retires in August, won't have a season entirely his own until 2009-10 because opera companies plan years in advance. The former Sony record label classical crossover king stands in nobody's shadow. He is ambitious, imaginative and well connected to many of opera's top talents.
— Read more at nj.com [Related news items]

The Woman Without a Shadow can stir an audience like no other Strauss opera, even Der Rosenkavalier. A mix of the grand and the grandiose, it attracts those who want to chew on something of Wagnerian proportions, and Hofmannstal's mysterious, symbol-laden libretto adds richness. In the end, Frau is surprisingly optimistic in celebrating humanity, which may be one reason Strauss lavished on it some of his most opulent and heartfelt music in late- romantic vein.
— Read more at FT.com

Mark Adamo and Tobias Picker in conversation with Frank J. Oteri (with Video Presentations by Randy Nordschow).
— Read more at NewMusicBox

Chicago Opera Theater opens its 2006 season tonight with a rare performance of Charles Dibdin's The Padlock. 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

Donald Pippin's much loved Pocket Operas have gotten such a warm welcome on ventures into Napa, the group has decided to make the Napa Valley Opera House a regular stop on the 2006 season. This year's season opened with a Jacques Offenbach's "A New Woman (Genvieve de Brabant)" which they'll perform Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Opera House. "A New Woman" opened last week in San Francisco, where it was hailed as "triumphant, thrilling and funny."
— Read more at Napa Valley Register Online

The Cleveland Opera and Lyric Opera Cleveland are close to an agreement to merge, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Richard Wagner and Benjamin Britten each created his own brand of utopia. Britten and his partner, the tenor Peter Pears, established in 1948 a festival at Aldeburgh, a rude fishing village on the Suffolk coast, which served as Britten's self-enclosed workshop and his platform to the world. Wagner, of course, had his royally financed temple to himself at Bayreuth. In one corner, the noisy German revolutionary determined to bend the future of opera to his grandiose vision; in the other, the quiet English pacifist who declared, "What we should aim at [is] pleasing people today as seriously as we can, and letting the future look after itself."
— Read more at observer.com

House of Flying Daggers director Zhang Yimou is to stage a production at New York's Metropolitan Opera. Tenor Placido Domingo will star in The First Emperor - based on the story of the China's legendary first ruler - when it opens on 21 December.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

[Line-up changes and brickbats from traditionalists don't faze this classical crossover group, writes Michael Dwyer.]
Including the word Forever in the name of a pop band is the height of optimism. But Amici Forever aren't quite a pop band. Nor are they quite an opera company. Then again, they aren't exactly the amici they were six months ago.
— Read more at theage.com.au

The Opera Company of Philadelphia capped its first season with the world premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti's The Hero. Thirty years later, the company is finally introducing another new American opera. Margaret Garner boasts a handsome score by Richard Danielpour and a libretto fashioned by Toni Morrison based on a novel that won the Pulitzer Prize. The opera, premiered in Detroit last year, re-creates a sensational chapter in American history.
— Read more at CourierPostOnline

There's a new production of Puccini's "La Bohème" in town and if you've considered not going, because you think this opera is a little bit too familiar, think again. Opera San José's production, which opened Saturday at the California Theatre, is intimate and exhilarating. The well-worn story about a group of poor, striving, love-starved artists in Paris' Latin Quarter suddenly seems fresh. Puccini's long-lined melodies sound great -- goose-bump great. Maybe you remember the first time you experienced music that warmed up your insides? This is kind of like that.
— Read more at MercuryNews.com

Cleveland Opera appears to be in artistic limbo. The company's first two productions of the season showed it to be moving to a new, vibrant level of operatic achievement. With its staging of Charles Gounod's "Roméo et Juliette" at the State Theatre through Saturday, Cleveland Opera clearly awaits that consistent lightning rod of inspiration to illuminate the theatrical product.
— Read more at cleveland.com

The Dayton Opera's 2006-07 season will include Saint-Saëns' Samson et Delilah, Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore, and a new production of Puccini's Madama Butterfly. Japanese-American Jun Kaneko, also known for his ceramic sculptures, is the set and costume designer for Madama Butterfly, which opens on October 21. The production premieres at Opera Omaha in March 2006.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

New York's Metropolitan Opera is cutting the price of its cheapest seats to $15 and planning a 90-minute family version of Mozart's classic "The Magic Flute" as part of a wide-ranging plan to attract new fans.
— Read more at Yahoo! News

Music director James Levine plans to remain at the Met at least through the 2012-13 season, the Associated Press reports. At the Met's press conference yesterday, Levine told the AP that he has committed to conducting the Met's new Ring cycle, directed by Robert Lepage, which debuts in full in 2011-12 and repeats in 2012-13. The year 2013 is also Wagner's bicentennial year.
— Read more at PlaybillArts [Related news items]

Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera's incoming general manager, hopes to convince Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth to make her New York opera debut, the AP reported. Gelb said at a Feb. 13 press conference that he'd like the Wicked star to sing the role of Samira in John Corigliano's opera The Ghost of Versailles.
— Read more at Playbill News

Peter Gelb, who assumes the title of general manager of the Metropolitan Opera this August, gave his first press conference yesterday on the company's stage.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com [Related news items]

The Tony Award-winning musical The Light in the Piazza will embark on a 50-week North American tour in the 2006-07 season, NETworks announced. Starting in August, more than 25 cities will see the Equity touring version of Lincoln Center Theater's production of the romantic musical about an American mother and daughter on vacation in 1953 Italy.
— Read more at Playbill News

When Peter Gelb finally grabs the Metropolitan Opera's wheel this summer, after a yearlong apprenticeship, he will have to steer in two directions at once. The faithful will want to be plied with old-fangled grandeur, but to win over the casually curious he needs to bring the Met up to date in technology and taste.
— Read more at Newsday.com [Related news items]

Hans Werner Henze is at work on an opera based on the Phaedra myth for the Berlin State Opera, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reports. The opera is scheduled to premiere in the fall of 2007; Peter Mussbach, the company's general manager and artistic director, will direct. The libretto is by Christian Lehnert, a German poet.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The Fort Worth Opera will condense its fall and winter season to an annual festival, presenting all its operas and concerts over a four-week period beginning May 2007, the company announced.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Marcia Thom says most people grow up intimidated by opera.
"I didn't know what opera was until I was in one in school," says Thom, an adjunct music professor at Randolph-Macon Woman's College and an opera singer who has performed and lived in New York.
— Read more at NewsAdvance.com

The Metropolitan Opera in New York is drawing on some top theatre talents for its upcoming attractions. Director Mary Zimmerman, playwright Tony Kushner and composers Michael John LaChiusa, Jeanine Tesori and Adam Geuttel will take part in upcoming productions, the New York Times reported.
— Read more at Playbill News

This past weekend, Butler Lyric Theatre [Indianapolis, IN] performed the operas "Dido & Aeneas" and "Trouble in Tahiti." Lyric Theatre gives students the opportunity to perform in productions that combine theatre and music. This past weekend, Butler Lyric Theatre performed the operas "Dido & Aeneas" and "Trouble in Tahiti." Lyric Theatre gives students the opportunity to perform in productions that combine theatre and music.
— Read more at dawgnetnews.com

['LA BOHÈME' FEELS FRESH WITH GREAT CAST CHEMISTRY]
There's a new production of Puccini's 'La Bohème' in town and if you've considered not going, because you think this opera is a little bit too familiar, think again. Opera San Jose's production, which opened Saturday at the California Theatre, is intimate and exhilarating. The well-worn story about a group of poor, striving, love-starved artists in Paris' Latin Quarter suddenly seems fresh. Puccini's long-lined melodies sound great -- goose-bump-great. Maybe you remember the first time you experienced music that warmed up your insides? This is kind of like that.
— Read more at MercuryNews.com

The Aspen Music Festival and School's 2006 season will include a celebration of music director David Zinman's 70th birthday and performances of Ned Rorem's Our Town.
The festival's 57th season will run June 21-August 20.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The newly formed Green Mountain Opera Festival introduced two of its stars and announced its debut season at a fund-raising concert Saturday evening at a packed-to-the gills Bundy Center for the Arts. And if the remainder of the festival is at the same level as mezzo-soprano Mariateresa Magisano and soprano Aline Kutan, this will be a fine summer for opera in the Mad River Valley.
— Read more at Times Argus

Remember the days when opera was one of the biggest events of the year at the Maine Center for the Arts? Passionate followers of the art form would cram into the hall, cheering the singers of touring companies such as the New York City Opera. Remember not so long ago when there was a statewide furor over the cancellation of weekly broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera on Maine Public Radio?
— Read more at bangornews.com

Revolution is afoot at the Metropolitan Opera, the world's largest opera house, which has been plagued in recent years by declining attendance and budget woes.

Peter Gelb, who takes over in August as the Met's first new general manager in 16 years, has laid out broad-ranging plans to remake the venerable house, sharply increasing the number of new productions, commissioning more and different kinds of new works, bringing in a wave of high-profile theater and film directors and striding into the world of digital transmission.
— Read more at New York Times
See also: The Rest is Noise - Alex Ross
Metropolitan Opera's future plans
At the Met: Big Plans for Living Composers [Related news items]

"Madame Butterfly" will be the first full-length opera staged by the newly formed Duluth Festival Opera. After a long hiatus of professional opera in Duluth, the most popular opera in North America seemed a logical choice to re-introduce the art form, said Artistic Director Craig Fields.
— Read more at Duluth News Tribune

Mozart's opera "The Magic Flute" is a delicious mix of genres, a fairy story that is part farce, part morality tale. Its music mixes tuneful folk songs and reverent hymns; its plot bounces from hill to dale, palace to temple, and back again.
— Read more at Wichita Eagle

There is an element of cruelty in much - some would say all - humor, and Benjamin Britten's 1947 comic opera "Albert Herring" presents a particularly fascinating case. Much is made of the contrast between this work, based on a short story by de Maupassant, and the weightier, more portentous operas for which Britten is better known, but there are also similarities.
— Read more at New York Times

Although "Cinderella" is among the most familiar of all folk or fairy tales, it apparently exists in over 300 versions, some of them quite gruesome in that they involve incest and bodily mutilation. In the Brothers Grimm account, for instance, the evil mother of the dreadful step-sisters cuts off her daughters? heels and toes, the better that their mangled, bloody feet will slide into the lost slipper. Later the whole malevolent crew gets their just deserts when vengeful birds (the spirit of Cinderella's real mother) pluck out their eyes. Still other accounts show Cinderella as the innocent victim of her father's lust.
— Read more at sandiego.com

[Toni Morrison basked in the diverse crowd. "Black people never had a reason to go the opera before. Now they do."]
Sure, the critical triumph of Margaret Garner, the highly anticipated, star-studded opera that enjoyed its Opera Company of Philadelphia premiere Friday night at the Academy of Music, soared in Toni Morrison's beautifully spare libretto, composer Richard Danielpour's lingering melodies, and all along the dark, desperate journey that mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves, singing the title role, endured.
— Read more at Philadelphia Inquirer [Related news items]

It's not a done deal, but all signs indicate that Cleveland Opera and Lyric Opera Cleveland are on the verge of a merge.
— Read more at cleveland.com

[A flurry of new works featuring Canada's biggest names gives credence to the theory that opera is a living, breathing art form]
While the Canadian Opera Company celebrates Wagner's Twilight of the Gods, an explosion of new creation points to a dawn for new opera in this city. Thursday, viewers of CBC TV's Opening Night saw Burnt Toast, a comedy about the various stages of love. Tomorrow sees the live Glenn Gould Studio premiere of The Weaving Maiden, inspired by Chinese folk tales.
— Read more at TheStar.com

Pittsburgh Opera will present its first production of 20th-century English composer Benjamin Britten's "Billy Budd" as the highlight of its 2006-07 season at the Benedum Center.
— Read more at PittsburghLIVE.com See also: Pittsburgh Opera's new season heavy on tragedy

To be honest, the operas of Gaetano Donizetti can be pretty thin stuff most of the time. The story lines are simple, the characters one-dimensional, and even the music -- especially the accompaniments --can descend to the generic. Despite these very real limitations of the material, many of his operas retain interest today, and Orlando Opera showed why in its new production of The Elixir of Love on Friday evening at the Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre.
— Read more at OrlandoSentinel.com

[Opera Adapted By Sendak, Kushner Inextricably Linked With Holocaust]
Like many fables, the story of "Brundibar" features innocent children, a wicked adversary, helpful animals, a moral to be learned and a happy ending.
— Read more at

The Music Teacher, a "play-opera' by playwright Wallace Shawn and composer Allen Shawn, will get its world premiere at the Minetta Lane Theatre in Manhattan on February 21.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Indiana University's upcoming Arts Week will feature the premiere of an opera [Our Town] written by Richmond native and 2005 Grammy nominee Ned Rorem. Rorem was nominated in the Best Classical Contemporary Composition category for his "Nine Episodes for Four Players," a recording by the Contrasts Quartet on the Phoenix USA label.
— Read more at Palladium-Item

[ROSALYN M. STORY discovers how often African-American baritone Gregg Baker has had to beat the odds to develop his career.]
With Richard Danielpour's new opera, Margaret Garner, based on the true antebellum story of a black woman who murders her children rather than see them enslaved, baritone Gregg Baker shines as a rarely seen character in grand opera. As Margaret's husband, Robert, he is a black male romantic hero, full of principle, pride, vulnerability and a fierce capacity for love.
— Read more at Opera News [Related news items]

[A new opera gets its libretto from Toni Morrison, but much of its vocal talent from Philly.]
The plot of Margaret Garner is highly dramatic, but also quite bleak, a seemingly daring choice for a popular culture inured to happy endings. The libretto is based on a true story from the last years of the age of slavery in America. Garner, a slave on a Kentucky plantation, escapes with her family across the frozen Ohio River in 1856, only to be recaptured by professional slave catchers. Devastated by her fate, she opts to kill her own children, rather than condemn them to a life of slavery. She manages to stab her daughter to death before she is apprehended. The dark irony then lies in the options for her punishment: Will she be charged for murder in the free state of Ohio, or charged for the destruction of property, that is, her own child, in the slave state of Kentucky?
— Read more at citypaper.net [Related news items]

[S.J. TROUPE TO STAGE SIX FAVORITES IN 14 MONTHS]
A beginner would be well-served by Opera San Jose's virtual "Greatest Hits" schedule over the next 14 months.
An expert would cry SOS: Same Old Songs.
Either way, listeners will hear familiar refrains -- for some time -- from the California Theatre stage, starting with Saturday's opening of "La Boheme" and continuing through the 2006-07 season, which the company has announced.
— Read more at MercuryNews.com

Conventional reason tells us that opera singers would not mesh well in dance clubs and that techno would be poorly received in opera houses. Critically acclaimed conductor/composer Eric Whitacre, currently in residence at Northwestern, disagrees. His newest creation, Paradise Lost, transcends the bounds of conventional opera by contrasting electronic music with a live orchestra and challenging his vocalists to keep pace.
— Read more at The Daily Northwestern

Operagoers comfortable with the status quo are likely to luxuriate in the safety of the Opera Company of Philadelphia's 2006-07 season.
Four productions receiving six performances each will be Puccini's La Boheme, Rossini's La Cenerentola (Cinderella), Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, and Verdi's Falstaff. These operas have all been produced by OCP in the last nine years: Falstaff in 1997, Boheme in 1998, Cenerentola in 2000, and Porgy and Bess in 2001.
— Read more at Philadelphia Inquirer

"Macbeth" proved a full-blown, expertly rendered example of the Portland Opera season's themes of power and corruption when it opened Saturday at Portland's Keller Auditorium. If you like a thriller, you'll leave exhausted and exhilarated three hours and two intermissions later. It will continue to play tonight and Saturday.
If there was a glitch opening night, it was soprano Pamela South's viral infection, announced during an intermission by the opera's general director Christopher Mattaliano, who asked "for our patience." South sang the role of Lady Macbeth.
— Read more at Columbian.com

General directors of Seattle Opera and Pittsburgh Opera, Speight Jenkins and Mark Weinstein, made a wager on the outcome of the Super Bowl game between their cities' respective teams: the Seattle Seahawks and the Pittsburgh Steelers. The two general directors agreed that whoever lost the wager would wear the winning team's jersey to his company's next board meeting and have his picture taken with his board of trustees standing behind him.
— Read more at KIROTV.com

Florida Grand Opera will open its 2006-2007 season Oct. 28 at the gleaming new Miami Performing Arts Center with what promises to be a spectacular new production of Verdi's Aida.
Broward County residents who want to see it will have to venture to Miami, since it will not be performed at the Broward Center.
Aida, along with the world premiere of David Carlson's Anna Karenina, will be presented only in Miami because of the difficulty in getting dates at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts.
— Read more at South Florida Sun-Sentinel

It's 1 p.m. at Unity Temple on the Plaza, and baritone David Lara takes his place onstage.
He's been backstage warming up - and calming down - since this morning.
The Kansas University graduate student from Buhler has auditioned before, of course, but this time is different. Judges representing the Holy Grail of opera houses - the Met in New York - are perched in the balcony, waiting for Lara to make even the tiniest of vocal missteps.
But mistakes aren't in Lara's cards today.
— Read more at lawrence.com

Soprano Stephanie Gregory grew up in Magee and remembers opera's status in her childhood home.
"My father, if opera came on TV, he would turn it rather rapidly," Gregory said, laughing.
Now, a veteran of several performances and dad to a singer who just performed her Italian debut in Rome, he's a willing listener.
— Read more at The Clarion-Ledger

Want to spend New Year's Eve with four-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald?
Fans of the celebrated singing actress can do so when McDonald offers a concert Dec. 31, 2006, with the New York Philharmonic. Ted Sperling, who won a Tony Award for his orchestrations for Adam Guettel's Light in the Piazza score, will conduct the acclaimed orchestra. Show time is 8 PM.
— Read more at Playbill News

In March 2001, toward the end of the dot-com boom, Alain Coblence, a wealthy French businessman, decided to finance Andante.com, a multifaceted classical music magazine on the Internet. In addition to offering a steady diet of reviews, commentary and news, Andante was going to offer a "virtual music library," with streaming of concerts, both live and taped. It was also a record label, dedicated to classy reissues of rare historic recordings.
— Read more at Anne Midgette - New York Times

The world premiere of an opera composed by British musician Roger Waters, formerly of the Pink Floyd rock group, will be staged in July in the western Polish town of Poznan, officials said. The opera, entitled "There is Hope" in its English version and "Ca Ira" in French, will coincide with ceremonies marking a 1956 workers' revolt against Poland's communist authorities in which over 70 people died.
— Read more at Yahoo! News [Related news items]

Time is a strange thing. Pascal Dusapin's new opera for Berlin's Staatsoper tackles the problem bravely but ultimately there are no revelations. The 90-minute apocalypse of Faustus, The Last Night concludes with the observation that "There is . . . nothing!".
— Read more at FT.com

[Martina Chylikova explores the sounds of her homeland to assist Balkan refugees]
When college student and budding opera singer Martina Chylikova moved to Tucson in 1995, she left behind not only her native Czech Republic, but also the distinctive Slavic vocal style that had spread from Russia through Eastern Europe.
— Read more at Tucson Weekly

Conventional wisdom to the contrary, it is sometimes possible to look like a duck and quack like a duck, yet still not be a duck. Take Il Divo, for example. Even though the hunky, international quartet boasts that three of its four members are classically trained and likes to show off big vibratos and quasi-operatic harmonies, the truth is they're pop singers, not opera guys.
— Read more at globeandmail.com

"MARGARET GARNER" has become much more than an opera. It's a powerful slice of tragic American history. An intense, organic collaboration between two creative artists. A model of cooperation among three opera companies. Ultimately, it's a striking piece of theater that combines all those facets into a gripping experience.
— Read more at Philadelphia Daily News [Related news items]

"This isn't a slave story, it's a love story," insists "Margaret Garner" director Kenny Leon. Leon's background is in theater, not opera, running the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta (he left in 2001 after a decade at the helm) and many other projects, including the recent "A Raisin in the Sun" on Broadway with Sean "Diddy" Combs and Phylicia Rashad.
— Read more at Philadelphia Daily News [Related news items]

[As Richard Danielpour and Toni Morrison's Margaret Garner comes to the Opera Company of Philadelphia, Delores M. Walters examines the real-life events behind the opera.]
On January 28, 1856, Margaret Garner was facing recapture and return to slavery when she killed her two-year-old daughter, Mary, and attempted to kill her other three children to prevent them from being re-enslaved.
— Read more at PlaybillArts [Related news items]

Albert Herring is not the 40-year-old virgin. Benjamin Britten's 1947 opera about a young man crowned "King of the May" in an English village because a virtuous girl cannot be found might invite such treatment in light of the recent movie. After all, it is a comedy, but guest director Nicholas Muni and scenic designer Paul Shortt are giving it an edge for the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music's "Albert Herring," opening at 8 p.m. Thursday in Patricia Corbett Theater.
— Read more at The Cincinnati Post

The Lee University Opera Theatre will present Mozart's The Magic Flute under the direction of Lee vocal instructor Brett Hyberger, beginning Feb. 9. Shows will be given at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 9, 10, and 11, with a 2 p.m. matinee on Feb. 12.
— Read more at Chattanoogan.com

New Jersey Opera Theater will launch its third season with a semi-staged professional performance of Giuseppe Verdi's comedic masterpiece and final opera Falstaff at Princeton University's Richardson Auditorium on Sunday, February 26 at 2pm. Widely regarded as one of the greatest comic operas ever written, Falstaff represents Verdi's final word on the human condition. Based on the Shakespeare character in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff is a sparkling work of humor from a master usually associated with darkly tragic and political themes.
— Read more at njot.org

After five years, the classical music website draws the curtain.
Andante.com - a website devoted to classical music that combined a news service with a record label with streaming music from symphony orchestras - shut down this week after its French owner decided it was unable to sustain the site's costs.
— Read more at Los Angeles Times See also: mercurynews.com - Andante Slips Away