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

New York City Opera has announced the program for VOX 2006: Showcasing American Composers, which returns for its seventh season on May 6 and 7.
VOX 2006 will feature readings of twelve new or previously unperformed American operas from both emerging and established composers. Music director George Manahan will lead City Opera artists and the company's orchestra.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

From a new production of Bizet's Carmen to a revival of the classic production of La boheme, the Royal Opera's 2006-7 season looks like one of its strongest since reopening.
Antonio Pappano's influence on the company's direction is increasingly apparent, with seven French operas planned for the coming year (if one includes Donizetti's La fille du regiment).
And the revivals, while large in number at 14, are in all cases bar one from productions that were new in the last decade or so.
— Read more at musicomh.com

A retired opera star who won international fame during his long career returns to his alma mater in central Iowa today (Thursday) with the goal of further motivating the next generation of singers. Seventy-one-year-old Sherrill Milnes grew up on a family dairy farm in Illinois and won global acclaim as a baritone after getting his B.A. and master's degrees from Drake University in the 1950s. Milnes says he's coming back to Des Moines to provide something to budding vocalists: "a route, a glimmer of hope, certainly inspiration to these singers and hopefully, a lot of knowledge."
— Read more at radioiowa.com

A strike forced Opera Bastille to postpone Thursday's world premiere of "Adriana Mater," Kaija Saariaho's tale of motherhood in wartime. The premiere is now set for Monday, the opera house said.
— Read more at Yahoo! News

Opera Carolina said Wednesday an ex-administrator stole about $90,000, nearly double the amount it originally claimed.
The company filed a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police report in January charging that an unnamed former staff member had misappropriated $48,000. Company leaders separately said the ex-staffer was Mary Lopes, who had stepped down as finance director last fall. Efforts to reach Lopes for comment have been unsuccessful.
— Read more at Charlotte Observer

The Vienna State Opera's 2006-7 season will feature new productions of Verdi's "Otello," Strauss' "Arabella," Massenet's "Manon," Donizetti's "La Fille du Regiment" and Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov."
Music director Seiji Ozawa, who has canceled performances since January after being hospitalized with a bronchial infection and shingles that affected his vision, is scheduled to conduct just one production: a revival of Wagner's "Die Fleigende Hollaender" that opens April 29, 2007.
— Read more at mercurynews.com

Children and adults unite in North Cambridge Family Opera Company's (NCFOC) production of "Antiphony" - an uplifting, inspirational, comical show for the whole family that's full of catchy tunes and features some industrious ants, a scheming fly and a fiddling grasshopper who all have a lot to learn about what makes life worth living.
"Don't be put off by the term 'opera,'" said David Bass, musical director, who founded NCFOC in 1999 as a way to involve his young family and their friends in music. "An opera is simply a story told through song. In fact, 'Antiphony' is particularly appropriate for children because it is based on a world of small creatures, it is a short one-hour, two-act performance, and because its theme is the triumph of music over the forces of boredom and ill will. The title 'antiphony' is a play on words, referring both to a conflict between two ant colonies as well as to a musical form with competing choruses."
— Read more at TownOnline.com

International opera star Frederica von Stade will teach a voice masterclass featuring award-winning singers from the Sacramento State music program at 3 p.m., Friday, April 7 in the Music Recital Hall in Capistrano Hall. Admission to the class is free and open to the public.
— Read more at Sacramento State News

[Rupert Christiansen looks at the Royal Shakespeare Company's forthcoming cycle of the Bard's complete works]
The brochure for the Royal Shakespeare Company's forthcoming cycle of the Bard's complete works is so enticing that I'm tempted to decamp to Stratford for the year. Not just Harriet Walter's Cleopatra, Judi Dench and Des Barrit in The Merry Wives of Windsor, William Houston and Janet Suzman in Coriolanus and Ian McKellen's Lear, but a Two Gentlemen of Verona from the favelas of Rio, a puppet Hamlet from New York, an Arabic Richard III, as well as films, exhibitions, lectures and workshops.
— Read more at Telegraph

There are some very enthusiastic - and rich - Wagner fans out there. The Kirov Opera's Ring Cycle, which tours to the Wales Millennium Centre in November, sold out in just three hours on Monday. The cheapest tickets were £80 (standing, mind you) and the most expensive (wait for it) £750.
— Read more at Guardian Unlimited

The Theatre Museum, whose base in Covent Garden, London, is threatened with closure after the failure of two bids for cash to the Heritage Lottery Fund, has been thrown a lifeline by the Royal Opera House.
— Read more at Guardian Unlimited

Kaija Saariaho says her tale of motherhood in wartime, "Adriana Mater," premiering at Paris' Bastille Opera on Thursday, is the most dramatic work of her career ? and one of her most emotional.
While she was composing it and reflecting on what it means to bear children, her own mother died.
— Read more at Yahoo! News

"You want to go see our Fight Club?"
Florida State Opera director Matthew Lata's eyes lit up as he made the offer before a dress rehearsal for G.F. Handel's "Julius Caesar in Egypt" began Wednesday evening. The lavish Baroque opera opens this weekend and runs through April 1 in Opperman Music Hall at FSU.
— Read more at Tallahassee Democrat

The San Francisco Opera's summer season will begin with a free simulcast on Civic Center Plaza, aired in conjunction with the May 27 opening-night performance of Puccini's "Madama Butterfly."
The live broadcast, one of several newly announced additions to the company's monthlong summer season, marks a push by new General Director David Gockley to strike the populist note that distinguished his tenure at the helm of the Houston Grand Opera.
— Read more at sfgate.com

Tickets to see Wagner's epic Ring Cycle lasting 19 hours over four days at the Wales Millennium Centre have sold out in just four hours.
Fans from across the world have bought seats costing as much as £750 for the performance by Russia's Mariinsky Theatre - formerly the Kirov Opera.
The shows in December will be their only planned UK performance.
Tickets have gone to fans as far away as Russia itself, as well as the USA, the Middle East and France.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

Operagoers see just about anything on stage these days: every imaginable (or unimaginable) costume, deftly crafted set designs that may or may not relate to the plot, nifty lighting tricks, video projections, the inevitable wave of dry-ice fog, occasional livestock. But one sight remains exceedingly rare: a black tenor in a leading role from the standard repertoire. That could be changing, though. Black tenors are becoming more and more visible and, in fact, five happen to be performing in the Baltimore-Washington area this week. Several have gained greater mainstream exposure through the popular Three Mo' Tenors group, which performs today at Coppin State University, and that increases the prospects of encountering them on opera-house stages.
— Read more at baltimoresun.com

If you put on a production of Wagner's monumental "Ring" cycle, you'd better have a novel concept. That's accepted wisdom in the opera world. We have had industrial age "Rings," an environmentally green "Ring," and several cosmic "Rings" with mystical lighting and abstract scenery.
— Read more at New York Times

Do you like songs heavily steeped in nostalgia? Songs employing the carousel as a metaphor for the crazy whirl of life? Songs of romance tinted darkly with reflections on death? Songs that begin as wistful laments for lost youth ? or lost innocence, or lost love, or lost something else - and gradually, inexorably evolve into stirring anthems to endurance? Songs accompanied by the plaintive whine of the accordion? Songs that sound French even when they are being sung in English?
— Read more at New York Times

Bryn Terfel will sing the title role in Puccini's "Gianni Schicchi" for the first time and Natalie Dessay will make her role debut as Marie in Donizetti's "La Fille du Regiment" next season at the Royal Opera. Covent Garden will present new productions of Bizet's "Carmen," Mozart's "La Finita Giardiniera," "La Fille du Regiment" and a double bill of "Gianni Schicchi" and Ravel's "L'Heure Espagnole," the company announced Tuesday.
— Read more at Forbes.com

Five young singers have been selected as winners of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, following the grand finals concert on January 26 at the Met.
Bass Paul Corona and bass-baritone Donovan Singletary, both 22; 28-year-old sopranos Holli Harrison and Katherine Jolly; and 25-year-old soprano Marjorie Owens were selected as winners from nine finalists who sang two arias each. Each was awarded a $15,000 prize. The remaining four finalists each won $5,000.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

An entire library of children's literature could be built around the secret life of classroom pets, those ubiquitous frogs, turtles, gerbils and other creatures that must wonder at the cyclical comings and goings of the giant beings who linger outside their glassed-in worlds. So it was perhaps only a matter of time before someone wrote an opera about them. Or rather a series of operettas, for that is probably the best description of "The Wonder Pets," a new animated television series for preschoolers that began this month as part of Nickelodeon's daily Nick Jr. telecast.
— Read more at New York Times

The Royal Opera's 2006-07 season will feature new productions of Bizet's Carmen, Mozart's La finta giardiniera, and Donizetti's La Fille du régiment, role debuts by Natalie Dessay and Bryn Terfel; and a world premiere.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

A concert by soprano Deborah Voigt will be a highlight of Opera Tampa's 2006-07 season, the company announced. Voigt will give a solo recital on January 5 at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center; repertoire will include American songs.
Anton Coppola, the company's 89-year-old principal conductor, will conduct two productions next season; Gounod's Romeo et Juliette and Verdi's Il Trovatore.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Join Martina Arroyo, acclaimed soprano and recording artist, as she shares reflections about her extraordinary career in an up-close-and-personal interview hosted by Artistic Director Evans Mirageas.
When: Tuesday, April 18, 7:00 p.m.
Where: AllenTemple A.M.E. Church (7030 Reading Road, Bond Hill)
Admission: FREE
Reservations: (513) 241-2742
Parking: FREE adjacent to church
— Learn more at cincinnatiopera.org

[Digitised back catalogues offer new opportunities for labels and collectors]
There are stirrings of a gold rush in the world of classical music, and it comes from an unexpected quarter: the web. In a market whose consumers have been written off as so doddering they have barely got over the loss of 78s, the statistics are striking. Proportionately, classical sells better digitally than on CD. Whereas classical accounts for about 3%-4% of total sales of music in shops, on iTunes it accounts for 12% of sales.
— Read more at Guardian Unlimited

Those giants, gods, dwarves, and Rhinemaidens who populate Wagner's Das Rheingold have taken up residence in the nation's capital - an appropriate venue for an opera whose subject is the lust for power.
— Read more at Yahoo! Canada News

Washington National Opera debuted Francesca Zambello's production of Wagner's Das Rheingold, the first installment of the company's "American Ring," on March 25.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

On Friday, May 19 and Saturday, May 20, 2006 at 8pm AMERICAN OPERA PROJECTS (AOP) will present FIRST GLIMPSE 2006, the first public presentation of compositions developed during this season's Composers & the Voice program. Audiences will get to hear selections written by James Borchers, David Claman, Conrad Cummings, Jeff Grace, Hannah Lash, and Gilda Lyons - six emerging composers who were chosen by AOP to spend a year creating new works focusing on the operatic voice. The performances will be held in the Great Room at South Oxford Space in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, the home of American Opera Projects.
— Learn more at operaprojects.org

MAKE love, not war may well have been her slogan - but Lysistrata pre dated the hippies by about 2,000 years.
The Greek heroine of Aristophanes' play, first produced in 411 B.C., is also the star (albeit renamed Lisia) of Mark Adamo's new opera, "Lysistrata," which New York City Opera premiered in New York last week.
— Read more at New York Post

Officials at the Utah Symphony & Opera said rising ticket sales and donations make them "cautiously optimistic" that the organization is recovering from near financial disaster. Utah Symphony CEO Anne Ewers and music director Keith Lockhart said weathering the struggles has made the group stronger.
— Read more at Daily Herald

We love Dick Nixon. And Pat? What a sweetheart. We even love Mao Zedong. And Madame Mao puts us over the moon.
What's going on? We used to hate them.
"Nixon in China" changes all that. John Adams' three-act opera about Nixon's historic visit to Peking in 1972 yanks these old ghosts out of their graves -- and our frozen, televised images of them. No longer are they aloof pawns of history, monstrous in their ambitions, vicious as vipers. Adams and the incomparable poet Alice Goodman give these historical giants hearts and souls as they spin once more around the world stage.
— Read more at oregonlive.com

The gripping true story of a homesick Russian and her epic journey across Canada by foot will be told in a new full-length opera commissioned by Vancouver Opera. Lillian Alling will receive its world premiere in the spring of 2010 for the company's 50th anniversary season.
— Read more at globeandmail.com

Bernard Foccroulle, the 52-year-old Belgian recently named to head France's Aix-en-Provence opera festival, said he wants Aix to have international appeal and focus on Mozart as well as on baroque and contemporary music.
"I would like the Aix festival to be a global opera hub," Foccroulle, who for 14 years ran Brussels's La Monnaie/De Munt opera house, said in a telephone interview. "Festivals have helped the world of opera evolve, and they must reach beyond the place where they are held."
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

New Jersey State Opera conductor Alfredo Silipigni died on March 25 at the age of 72, reports the Newark Star Ledger.
He was principal conductor and artistic director of the NJSOpera since its founding 39 years ago, guiding the company from an amateur venture to a respected professional company. Silipigni was known for his talent conducting verismo opera.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

What began as a labor of love will help to keep opera history alive. In 1956, Morton "Kim" Kimball decided to tape-record the Saturday broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera. The Brighton native, who was living in New York City at the time, set up his reel-to-reel machine on Feb. 25 and preserved that day's broadcast of Rigoletto.
— Read more at Democrat & Chronicle

Making an opera out of a Tennessee Williams play is like orchestrating Debussy piano pieces, which sound orchestral but only when played on the piano. Certainly nothing could be more Baroquely operatic than "Orpheus Descending," the subject of Bruce Saylor's 1994 setting, now in a revival at Queens College.
— Read more at New York Times

[Mezzo-soprano star brings her phenomenal vocal range to Kilbourn Hall]
Over the years, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore has performed regularly at the Metropolitan Opera, has sung alongside Renée Fleming at the Chicago Lyric Opera and has played Carmen at the Los Angeles Opera opposite no less a luminary than Plácido Domingo. Amazingly, though, the highlight of her singing career has had nothing to do with classical music.
— Read more at Democrat & Chronicle

The Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions at New York University will present the world premiere performance of the concert version of Odin, the opera, words and music by Vermont composer, sculptor, percussionist Donald Knaack, known as "The Junkman," at the Frederick Loewe Theatre at NYU on Friday, April 14, 2006 (8pm), Saturday, April 15, 2006 (3pm and 8pm) and Sunday, April 16, 2006 (3pm). Tickets are $20 and can be purchased by calling 212-998-5281.
— Read more at prweb.com

Baroque-era opera has its pleasures and its difficulties. They are full of spectacle but not much action. The action is generally told about in recitative - sparsely accompanied numbers where the singing is based on speech rhythms and is generally not melodic in the sense we normally think of - and reactions of the characters revealed in arias (songs). These arias are almost always solo, and ensemble numbers, the highlight of so many more modern operas, are very rare.
— Read more at Tallahassee Democrat

Having let two fine potential conductors slip through its fingers, Scottish Opera must make sure it does not lose a third. Either Richard Farnes or Edward Gardner, on current evidence, would have made an outstanding successor to Sir Richard Armstrong, bringing a positive new profile to the activities of this unhappy company.
— Read more at The Herald

The New York City Opera has a spotty past when it comes to presenting revivals of Broadway musicals, but Frank Loesser's 1956 classic [The Most Happy Fella] provides a better fit for the company than most.
— Read more at Yahoo! News

Thank Michael Bolton for inspiring one of the greatest contributions to classical-music comedy since What's Opera, Doc? Actually, there were a few other people involved, says Julia Migenes, the opera and Broadway star who created her one-woman show Diva on the Verge in 1998. She begins the tale like this: "Remember Liza Minnelli was married to a guy named David Gest and she beat him up?"
— Read more at azcentral.com

House of the Gods, A new chamber opera by Lynne Plowman (composer) and Martin Riley (librettist), wiil receive it's world premiere on May 12th at: Theatr Brycheiniog (01874 611622),Canal Wharf, Brecon, LD3 7EW.
Additional performances will be held on May 15th (Brighton - Brighton Festival - Theatre Royal: 01273 709709) and May31st (Mold - Clwyd Theatr Cymru): 0845 330 3565).
— Learn more at lynneplowman.co.uk

The Canadian Opera Company is to receive nearly $10 million CaD ($8.57 million USD) in additional funding over three years as a result of a boost in dispensation from the Ontario government, CBC Arts has reported.
— Read more at Opera News

New operas scare people. A lot of it is bad, but some is very good. For better or worse, "Nixon in China" launched a new era in American opera based on figures in the news: Malcolm X, Harvey Milk, Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Onassis. Up next, perhaps: "Carla Martin" -- she who coached witnesses in the Zacarias Moussaoui terrorist trial. Working title: "Coach Carla."
— Read more at oregonlive.com

Sarah Caldwell, the American conductor and opera director, the founding director of the Opera Company of Boston, and the first woman to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera, died Thursday in Portland, Maine. She was 82.
— Read more at New York Times

[Geoffrey Norris salutes the remarkable career of composer Richard Rodney Bennett]
Anybody who has seen the star-studded '70s film of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express will have heard the music of Richard Rodney Bennett.
— Read more at telegraph.co.uk

[Peter Sellars' famous stagings of three operas now out on DVD]
Even by the last Mozart Year, the 1991 "celebration" of the 200th death anniversary, updated productions of Mozart operas were still a relative rarity in the US. In Europe, they already were in the late stages of potty-training and submitted to all manner of S&M ritual with the requisite shame and relish. This side of the Atlantic, however, the well-oiled machines of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's polemical, clergy-bashing, one-set-fits-all productions were about as radical as things got.
Then along came Peter Sellars. The first DVD releases of his mind-altering productions of the three operas Mozart composed to Lorenzo da Ponte librettos - Cosi fan tutte, Don Giovanni, and Le Nozze di Figaro - make a welcome return to the catalog (Decca), where their only previous appearance, on VHS, was short. Before being exported to Vienna for taping, these hugely daring, infinitely caring, true-to-life, humanly-scaled productions changed my understanding of Mozart, Mozart opera, opera, and, in important ways, life.
— Read more at The Bay Area Reporter

The comic opera is a forgotten form - or was, until Mark Adamo knocked a new one together on the scaffolding of Aristophanes' "Lysistrata." In his version, the classical pacifist tract has become a messy American sex romp. The joints show, the edges are chipped, slapstick and poignancy get rudely bolted together, but somehow, thanks to the composer's deftness, the whole contraption rumbles along.
"Lysistrata, or the Nude Goddess," which had its local premiere at New York City Opera on Tuesday, takes pages by the fistful from sitcom, operetta, vintage Broadway and high-minded modernism. Adamo seems to have achieved his synthesis by tossing all these sources in the air and using them as they landed, relishing each grotesque disjunction.
— Read more at Newsday.com

The Wolf Trap Opera Company, one of the country's most highly regarded residency programs for young professional singers, proudly presents three new productions in 2006, including the American premiere of Telemann's Orpheus at The Barns at Wolf Trap in June. Rossini's Le Comte Ory makes its Wolf Trap debut in a new production at The Barns in July, and the Company presents a new production of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro in August at the Filene Center, the most family-friendly opera house in town.
— Read more at wolftrap.org

[Out mezzo Jennifer Roderer takes on a lesbian icon in City Opera's "Lysistrata"]
Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Roderer, mainstay of the New York City Opera, is readying the part of Sappho in the first New York production of Mark Adamo's "Lysistrata"-premiered in Houston last year?and enjoying the process.
"It's a fun show, very funny in places. It's not overtly anti-war but it certainly gives you something to think about," said Roderer.
— Read more at gaycitynews.com

Composer Mark Adamo's new opera, "Lysistrata," which had its local premiere at New York City Opera on Tuesday, is a likable work, though it sometimes tries too hard to please.
— Read more at nj.com

Judith Weir's opera was first staged in 1988, was hailed as a minor modern masterpiece, then promptly disappeared. The Royal Academy of Music deserves a special mention for presenting the opera as its students' spring production. We get the chance to catch up with an operatic rarity. They can cut their teeth on a modern work, albeit one written in a friendly style.
— Read more at FT.com

Emily Castner, 9, of Lancaster thinks it's funny when a contented Caterpillar pats his full belly and sings about not wanting to become a moth. "I'm a fat caterpillar, I don't care what you say," he sings. "I'm a fat caterpillar and there's no need to change." The singing caterpillar that delights Castner isn't an animated character in a television cartoon or a new Disney film. It's baritone Nikolas Nackley on stage in "The Bug Opera" at Indian Hill Music, a nonprofit music education and performance center in Littleton.
— Read more at The Boston Globe

For the seventh time since its formation in 1999, the North Cambridge Family Opera Company is staging an original opera written for family audiences and performed by a multi-generational cast.
Children and adults will unite in NCFOC's production of "Antiphony" - an inspirational, comical show for the whole family, featuring some industrious ants, a scheming fly, and a fiddling grasshopper who all have a lot to learn about what makes life worth living.
— Read more at TownOnline.com

In choosing classic works of literature as subjects for operas, many composers have been too deferential to their sources. Mark Adamo does not make that mistake in "Lysistrata, or the Nude Goddess," which received its premiere at the Houston Grand Opera last year and opened at the New York City Opera on Tuesday night.
— Read more at New York Times - Anthony Tommasini

Lysistrata, a.k.a. The Nude Goddess, was first performed, to acclaim, in Houston last March. On Tuesday, this sentimental variation on Aristophanes arrived at Lincoln Center, evoking - in one observer, at least - considerable disappointment.
— Read more at FT.com - Martin Bernheimer

New York City Opera presented the New York premiere of Mark Adamo's Lysistrata, or the Nude Goddess last night [03/21/2006].
The opera has a libretto by the composer, based on the Aristophanes play in which the women of ancient Sparta and Athens stop having sex with their husbands in order to stop a war. It debuted at Houston Grand Opera last year.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Bass Eric Owens will star in the title role of Grendel, the Elliott Goldenthal opera that will premiere during Lincoln Center Festival's 10th anniversary season.
Described as a "darkly comic retelling of the Beowulf epic," Grendel will play four performances at the New York State Theater in 2006: July 11, 13, 15 and 16. The opera, featuring a score by Goldenthal and a libretto by Tony Award winner Julie Taymor and J. D. McClatchy, will also star mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves as the Dragon, soprano Laura Claycomb as Queen Wealtheow, tenor Jay Hunter Morris as the warrior Unferth and tenor Richard Croft as the blind harpist Shaper. The company will also include David Gagnon, Jonathan Hays, Charles Temkey, Hanan Alattar, Maureen Francis and Sarah Coburn.
— Read more at Playbill News

[Displaced by Katrina, 'The Barber of Seville' settles into McAlister Auditorium]
There are no wings, no dressing rooms, almost no backstage space. The pit hasn't been used for decades and is too small for even a modest-sized orchestra.
But this week, Tulane University's McAlister Auditorium will become the latest home of the New Orleans Opera Association, which like so many Orleanians lost its regular home in Hurricane Katrina.
— Read more at nola.com

Chicago Opera Theater's 2007 season will feature Berlioz's Béatrice et Bénédict, a double bill of Bartok's Duke Bluebeard's Castle and Schoenberg's Erwartung, and Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria.
The season opens on March 28 with Il ritorno, featuring Australian mezzo Catherine Carby as Penelope and British tenor Mark LeBrocq as Ulysses. Sets are by architect Rafael Viñoly. Baroque specialist Jane Glover conducts; Diane Paulus directs.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Minnesota Opera's 2006-07 season will include the world premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon's Grapes of Wrath, a new opera based on John Steinbeck's novel, the company announced.
The season will also include a new production of Rossini's La donna del lago, the company premiere of Delibes' Lakmé, and revivals of Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann and Mozart's Marriage of Figaro.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Earlier this month, when James Levine announced that he had to withdraw from the rest of this season at the Metropolitan Opera because of a serious shoulder injury, Joseph Volpe, the company's intrepid general manager, hit the phones to line up replacements. Somehow he did it. He found suitable conductors to take over all 25 performances that Mr. Levine was scheduled to conduct at the house through May.
— Read more at New York Times

Lorenzo da Ponte's libretto and Mozart's music for "Le Nozze di Figaro" (1786) transformed stock characters of the opera buffa tradition into human beings, making it one of the most sophisticated operas.
You wouldn't suspect that, though, from Christoph Marthaler's clownish production, which originally was done for the Salzburg Festival in 2001 and now has been revived for Mozart's bicentennial by the Paris Opera.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

Are there? There are three alleged tenors in the album top 10: Russell Watson ("the Voice"); blind, bearded Tuscan Andrea Bocelli ("the man with the most beautiful voice in the world"); and new kid on the block Vittorio Grigolo ("il Pavarottino"). Opera aficionados are unmoved. "It's got bugger all to do with opera," says John Allison, editor of Opera magazine. "Just because somebody sings something in Italian doesn't mean it's opera. I suppose you could call them tenors, but don't call them operatic tenors. Their voices are not good enough and most of the repertoire is desperate."
— Read more at Guardian Unlimited Arts

The Minnesota Opera is expanding its horizons and expanding its season. The company will return to presenting five productions during its 2006-07 season, which was announced Thursday. And it might be the most adventurous collection of operas the company has presented since it established a reputation for premiering new works in the 1970s.
The season gets off to an earlier start than usual with a September production of Rossini's "La donna del lago." Since 2000, the Minnesota Opera has been presenting at least one opera each season from the "Bel Canto" tradition of the early 19th century, a style long on lovely melodies. And melodists don't get much more masterful than Rossini. An adaptation of Sir Walter Scott's poem, "The Lady of the Lake," "La donna del lago" will feature Maureen O'Flynn and Ewa Podles in the leads. It runs from Sept. 23 to Oct. 1.
— Read more at St. Paul Pioneer Press

Roundabout Theatre Company's The Threepenny Opera will begin preview performances on Friday, March 24th, 2006 as a part of their 40th Anniversary Season. Featuring a translation and adaptation by Wallace Shawn (Aunt Dan and Lemon), the Kurt Weill-Bertolt Brecht musical will open at Studio 54 on April 20th and run through June 18th.
— Read more at BroadwayWorld.com

Protests, headlines, and yet more protests. There is no such thing as bad publicity but is Jerry Springer, The Opera deserved of such attention and more importantly, is it any good? I first saw the show 2 years ago in the West End and it blew me away. The risqué lyrics, cleverness of the script, operatic style theatrics and the excellent tap dancing guest stars all added up to one of the most original shows that I have ever seen. With songs containing lines like "Dip Me in Chocolate and Throw Me to the Lesbians" it certainly continues to raise laughs and eyebrows.
— Read more at BroadwayWorld.com

Actor-director Klaus Maria Brandauer said he never had any doubts about casting German punk rocker Campino in the lead role of his upcoming stage production of "The Threepenny Opera."
"He is a real Mack the Knife," Brandauer said Tuesday at a news conference, sitting next to the front man for the rock band Die Toten Hosen as he introduced Campino and the other actors. "What is important for me is not only the artistic qualities, but also the biography."
— Read more at chicagotribune.com

Steven Pimlott's interesting but wilful staging of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin is torn from the pages of those hopelessly romantic stories through which its heroine Tatiana dreams her way through life. Books are her refuge, her salvation. And, once it's clear that fantasy can never be her reality, her final exit is made literally through them - a concealed door in her library.
— Read more at Independent Online Edition

Pittsburgh Opera's free Brown Bag Opera - Only two left!
WHAT: Free lunchtime concerts performed by the Pittsburgh Opera Center artists
WHEN: Wednesdays, March 22nd and 29th, from 12:15 - 12:45 p.m.
March 22nd Tosca and Puccini Highlights
March 29th - Cosi fan tutte (Mozart) Highlights
WHERE: Pittsburgh Opera - 801 Penn Avenue, 1st floor rehearsal room
WHO: Singers from the Pittsburgh Opera Center
COST: FREE! No reservations necessary. For information, call (412) 281-0912.

Lowell Liebermann's Miss Lonelyhearts, a new opera based on the novella by Nathaniel West, will debut at the Juilliard School on April 26, the conservatory announced. The opera has a libretto by poet J. D. McClatchy, the librettist for Ned Rorem's recent Our Town, Tobias Picker's Emmeline, and other operas. It is one of several major works commissioned by Juilliard to celebrate its centennial; the others include a musical by Michael Torke and Craig Lucas and a new dance work by Eliot Feld set to Steve Reich's Drumming.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

It is almost half a century since the troupe now known as the Washington National Opera presented its first performance, and almost 10 since Placido Domingo, tenor extraordinaire and lately WNO's general director, came to the company. A celebration was clearly in order and -- last night at the Kennedy Center Opera House -- a cast of great singers, a bespangled audience and no fewer than three Supreme Court justices were on hand to make it happen.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

At this point, the Metropolitan Opera's production of Verdi's "Forza del Destino," now in the final week of its run, is like a piñata: everyone has taken a swing at it. And while the conventional wisdom about each individual performer has covered the entire spectrum of opinion, the aggregate has shaded toward "disastrous." So it seemed reasonable, on Saturday night, to brace for a train wreck.
— Read more at New York Times

The Metropolitan Opera has announced details of its May 20th Gala honoring outgoing general manager Joseph Volpe, who retires in July following a forty-two year tenure with the company. The gala concert, which will mark the official end to the 2005-06 Met season, will include performances by a spate of world-renowned singers, including sopranos Natalie Dessay, Renée Fleming, Mirella Freni, Karita Mattila, Ruth Ann Swenson, Kiri Te Kanawa, and Deborah Voigt; mezzos Stephanie Blythe, Olga Borodina, Susan Graham, Denyce Graves, Waltraud Meier, and Dolora Zajick; tenors Plácido Domingo, Juan Diego Flórez, Ben Heppner, Salvatore Licitra, and Ramón Vargas; baritones Dwayne Croft, Thomas Hampson, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky; bass-baritone Ildar Abdrazakov; and basses James Morris, René Pape, and Samuel Ramey.
— Read more at Opera News

Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, Rossini's The Barber of Seville, Puccini's Turandot, Mozart's The Abduction From the Seraglio, and Gounod's Romeo and Juliet will be part of Michigan Opera Theatre's 2006-07 season. The company's 36th season opens at the Detroit Opera House on October 21 with Porgy and Bess, featuring Gordon Hawkins, who made his company debut as Porgy in 1998, in the title role. Lisa Daltirus will sing Bess; Steven Mercurio conducts.
— Read more at PlaybillArts See also: The Detroit News

Plácido Domingo will star in the Los Angeles Opera's 20th anniversary gala performance on April 19. L.A. Opera's benefit will feature Domingo singing the title role in Act IV of Verdi's Otello and conducting the Act II party scene from Strauss' Die Fledermaus. Domingo sang Otello in the company's inaugural production in 1986.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

A VISIT to the theatre is generally regarded as a fairly sedate, respectable pastime. But yesterday more than 500 Christians descended on St George's Plateau to make their feelings about one touring production coming to the city very clear. Religious groups in the region were protesting in the hope of deterring people from buying tickets to watch the controversial Jerry Springer: The Opera when it opens in June.
— Read more at icnetwork.co.uk

Jane Archibald, an up-and-coming soprano from Truro [Nova Scotia], has landed a major role with the Vienna State Opera. Starting in September, the 29-year-old will begin a two-year term as a soloist. Phillip Boswell, with the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, calls this a major step in Archibald's career.
— Read more at CBC

Move over, Madame Butterfly, and make way for Eliza Doolittle.
Shreveport Opera's "My Fair Lady," opening Saturday at the Shreveport Civic Theater, might seem like an oddity to some local opera fans. Musical theater productions are indeed a rarity for the opera company, which hopes the production will get local Broadway aficionados interested in the art form it promotes.
— Read more at The Shreveport Times

"The Grapes of Wrath." "Our Town." "An American Tragedy." They're American classics.
They're also American operas: new works that have been or will be presented at American opera houses within this decade.
— Read more at New York Times - Anne Midgette

With Lysistrata, his second opera, composer-librettist Mark Adamo has already carved a distinctive niche in American music theater. The 2005 work opens at New York City Opera on March 21.
— Read more at PlaybillArts [Related news items]

"Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed." So said Chairman Mao. But 2,400 years earlier, the Greek playwright Aristophanes was thinking along the same lines, knowing that the only thing stronger than the impulse for war was human repugnance at the results.
On this paradox, the bawdy comedy "Lysistrata" was written in 410 B.C., a cartoonish romp in which the women of Athens stop a decades-long conflict by withholding sexual favors until their men make nice with the enemy.
Mark Adamo's new opera, "Lysistrata," scheduled for its New York premiere Tuesday at New York City Opera, is neither an adaptation nor a tribute to Aristophanes, Adamo says, but more of a critique of the original.
— Read more at nj.com [Related news items]

English National Opera's 2006-07 season will include the world premiere of Asian Dub Foundation's Gaddafi, the U.K. stage premiere of Philip Glass's 1980 Sanskrit-language Satyagraha, and new productions of Verdi's La traviata, Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, and Britten's Death in Venice.
The company will also present a new David Alden staging of Janácek's Jenufa, co-produced with Houston Grand Opera and Washington National Opera; Handel's Agrippina, in a new David McVicar production from Brussels' La Monnaie; a new production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers; and a new production of Robert Wright and George Forrest's Kismet, a 1953 musical based on the music of Borodin.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Thought, dream, reality: where does one end and the other begin? It's a question the Royal Opera's new production of Eugene Onegin constantly poses as it follows Tatyana from the naïve open steppes of the Larina estate to the fur-coated sophistication of St Petersburg. Past, present and future are strung together on the thread of the wish running through them - the wish of romantic fulfilment. Reminiscence and anticipation haunt Pushkin's tale as they do Tchaikovsky's music, both poised between a past they recapitulate and a future they foretell.
— Read more at FT.com

Opera venue Glyndebourne has ventured away from traditional classical works by staging a hip-hop version of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte.
In putting on School 4 Lovers, organisers at the venue in Sussex, South England hope to attract more young people to Mozart's work - and opera in general - in the 250th anniversary year of his birth.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

The Metropolitan Opera has named the last of the conductors who will substitute for the injured James Levine this spring. Philippe Auguin will replace Levine on the podium for Wagner's Lohengrin, which runs April 17-May 6.
Levine canceled all of his remaining performances at the Met this season after falling and injuring his shoulder on March 1. He will undergo surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff on March 20.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Imagine a world where Expressionism had never existed. Imagine a world where Chéreau, Sellars, Brook and Stein had never directed opera. Imagine a world where Vanessa was held to be the greatest American opera of the 20th century, where Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer had never been composed, and where the trappings of period drama were of greater import than the human eternals of lust, boredom, hatred, fantasy and guilt. Formed to showcase repertoire otherwise ignored by British companies, opera-te's production of Tobias Picker's Thérèse Raquin takes its audience into that world.
— Read more at Independent Online Edition

MONTREAL - Imagine the royalty's consternation when, having ordered a light entertainment from Mozart for a coronation celebration, they first saw Act II of "La Clemenza di Tito" - one of the most introspective and heart-wrenching scenes in all of opera.
Opéra de Montréal's beautiful production, which opened Saturday at Place des Arts, delivered Mozart's last opera with all its emotional impact - as well as its humor and joy.
— Read more at Times Argus

Tony-winner Audra McDonald, a classically trained singer, is taking on two solo operas. She sings Francis Poulenc's La Voix Humaine in Houston, along with a debut work. Both have a common theme.
— Hear more at NPR

Tomorrow, spring begins. A time of renewel; rebirth; new life. To celebrate the vernal equinox we found current and former Northern Colorado residents who have experienced great change and will enter spring with a new chapter in their lives. Here is one of their stories.
In 1998 Charles Edwin Taylor was just a long haired guy driving a tractor in Kersey. Today he's a performer with New York City's Metropolitan Opera.
— Read more at coloradoan.com

The great melodramatic opera "I Pagliacci" is a short, brutal piece of theater. Full of soaring melodies and base desires, it burns hot across the stage -- or it should -- before fantasy and reality collide as the curtain falls.
Wichita Grand Opera ended its 2005-06 season with "I Pagliacci" on Saturday night in Century II Concert Hall. Leoncavallo's one-act opera was given a traditional treatment by the company, which meant "commedia dell'arte" characters acted out the tragedy in an old-time Italian village square.
— Read more at Wichita Eagle

[Il Divo, a handsome singing quartet, has throngs of women buying their brand of 'classical crossover.']
Ten minutes to showtime, the lobby of the concert hall near Universal Studios is a sea of red feather boas, sequined jackets, high-heeled sandals, and backless black dresses. Some women clutch plastic-covered bouquets of red roses, while others carry bags stuffed with $35 T-shirts or $15 mouse pads emblazoned with the logo of the male vocal group they are about to see. The excitement level is similar to the rare reunion of a legendary rock band or that for a Ricky Martin concert circa 1999.
— Read more at csmonitor.com

One of the most distinctive motifs in Emile Zola's novel is the bite that Thérèse Raquin's husband Camille plants on her lover Laurent while Laurent is drowning him. It is symptomatic of the protagonists' animalistic behaviour, and an essential part of the gory melodrama. But there is no bite, literal or metaphorical, in Tobias Picker's operatic adaptation, judging by the European premiere of Thérèse Raquin at the Royal Opera House's studio theatre.
— Read more at FT.com

The Tobias Picker phenomenon is puzzling. Born in New York in 1954, the composer is popular in the US, where companies such as the Los Angeles Opera and the Met have regularly commissioned and premiered his work. In the UK, however, he remains something of an unknown quantity, a fact that the newly formed Opera-te (Opera Theatre Europe) is aiming to correct with the British premiere of Picker's third opera [Thérèse Raquin].
— Read more at Guardian Unlimited

The Houston Grand Opera will present free performances of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro at the Miller Outdoor Theatre on May 19 and 20, the company announced.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The English National Opera is to stage an opera based on the life of Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi.
Satyagraha: MK Gandhi in South Africa by composer Philip Glass will be performed in the language of Sanskrit as part of the company's 2006-7 season.
The opera depicts events in Gandhi's early life when he defined his belief in passive resistance.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

English National Opera yesterday unveiled one of the the most hastily assembled seasons in its history with the troubled company hoping it will help to rebuild its core repertory.
Opera companies usually plan and book years in advance but so deep has the crisis been at ENO that in December there was not one confirmed production for the 2006-07 season.
— Read more at Guardian Unlimited

Once it was a genre restricted to the likes of Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras belting out "Nessun Dorma" for football fans. But the rise of "crossover opera", where Puccini meets the pop charts, is set to achieve new heights with three more tenors.
— Read more at Independent Online Edition

When Opera Columbus adopted the theme "Triumph & Trouble" for its 2005-06 season, the organization's powers-that-be couldn't have known how much of each would be encountered.
The company finds itself in significant financial distress as the close of the season nears, highlighted by the resignation of general director Philip Dobard and the cancellation of the May 7 concert, "A Date with the Devil," featuring bass Samuel Ramey.
— Read more at thisweeknews.com

The Sarasota Opera is putting off its plans to launch a new fall season until after renovations to the historic opera house are completed in 2008. The company, which has announced a shortened 2007 winter season, had scheduled a production of Rossini's "The Barber of Seville" for seven performances in November. No tickets had been sold for the show.
— Read more at heraldtribune.com

If there's any doubt that an Italian maestro is back on the podium at Palm Beach Opera, the lineup for the company's 2006-2007 season should make that abundantly clear.
Bruno Aprea's second season as artistic director will present largely populist Italian repertoire, with Aprea leading two of the four productions.
The conductor will open Palm Beach Opera's 44th season Dec. 8 with opera's most celebrated verismo double bill, Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci. Aprea will also helm the season's closing work, Puccini's not unfamiliar Madama Butterfly, which opens March 23.
— Read more at South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Endlessly revisited over the last five centuries, the legend of Faust and his pact with the Devil may not seem like a highly original subject for Pascal Dusapin's new opera, "Faustus, the Last Night." Indeed, in the 19th century alone, Faust inspired operas by Louis Spohr, Hector Berlioz, Charles-François Gounod and Arrigo Boito.
— Read more at New York Times

'Tis the season to be indisposed. James Levine, vaunted music director of the Met, languishes on the injured list, having torn a rotator cuff in a fall at his other post, the Boston Symphony. As he awaits surgery, his opera company scrambles to find replacement conductors for Fidelio, Don Pasquale, Lohengrin and Parsifal, not to mention a post-season tour of Japan. And on Monday night the Met opened an ambitious revival of Luisa Miller with substitutes filling both central roles. Sometimes it must be an achievement just to get the curtain up.
— Read more at FT.com [Editor's note: When we posted this item we found the byline a bit unusual. So did Alex Ross]

New productions of Verdi's "La Traviata" and "Un Ballo in Maschera," Halevy's "La Juive" and Charpentier's "Louise" highlight the 2007-8 season of the Paris Opera.
There also will be new productions of Berlioz's "Les Troyens," Mozart's "Idomeneo" a double bill of Bartok's "Bluebeard's Castle" and Janacek's "The Diary of One Who Disappeared," plus Salvatore Sciarrino's "Da Gelo a Gelo," the company announced Wednesday.
— Read more at Forbes.com

"Oh, for a Mary Curtis-Verna," a friend of mine is fond of saying. His meaning: not every singer is a star, but some of the journeyman singers of yesteryear - like Ms. Curtis-Verna, a capable soprano - might stack up beautifully in comparison to some of the stars of today.
So honor the journeymen. In this spirit, one could enjoy the opening of "Luisa Miller" at the Metropolitan Opera on Monday night, which didn't offer that much interest in and of itself. Barbara Frittoli, scheduled for the title role, pulled out a couple of weeks ago, and Neil Shicoff canceled the first performance with a cold. So it was left to Veronica Villarroel and Eduardo Villa to take the leads. Rather than bemoan the resulting lack of excitement or flair, one could involve oneself by examining these journeymen's ability to get through the evening reasonably respectably.
— Read more at New York Times

New York City Opera has scheduled five new productions for its 2006-2007 season, a mixture of Baroque and bel canto, operetta and Mozart, and seven revivals. Split, as usual, into a fall and spring season, the company's schedule lists a total of 108 performances of 12 productions at the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center.
— Read more at nj.com

The Washington University Opera will present Carlisle Floyd's Susannah, which updates the biblical story of Susannah and the Elders to 1940s Appalachia, at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, March 24 and 25.
— Read more at wustl.edu

Cash-strapped Eugene [Oregon] Opera has laid off its artistic director and staff and will mount only a single production next season while it tries to get control of its finances. Artistic Director Robert Ashens' recent productions, such as February's "Hansel and Gretel," have been artistic and critical successes but have simply not sold enough seats to keep the nonprofit opera company afloat, board president Sharon Heitman said Monday.
— Read more at The Register-Guard

He plays both jazz and classical piano, has written music for stage, screen and concert hall. In the sixth decade of a distinguished musical career, and just weeks from his 77th birthday, André Previn may be slowing down physically, but his creative juices still flow strongly.
— Read more at TheStar.com

HGO announces adult chorus auditions for its 2006-2007 season. The HGO Chorus is a fully-professional group of men and women from diverse professions and backgrounds. Choristers rehearse during weekday evenings and on weekend in preparation of each repertory period. In the 2006-2007 season, a new chorister can expect to earn approximately $1,800.00 per production.
The 2006-2007 season productions in which the chorus will participate are: Simon Boccanegra (Verdi), Don Giovanni (Mozart), Faust (Gounod), La Cenerentola (Rossini), The Cunning Little Vixen (Janácek) and Aida (Verdi).
For this audition, each person should be prepared to sing two arias of contrasting style and tempo, in the original language by memory. Judges prefer to hear selections from the operatic repertoire, but will accept selections from oratorio works. Singers should also be prepared to sight read. HGO will provide an accompanist, but singers should bring their sheet music to the audition.
Individuals who wish to arrange an audition time or who want further information should contact the Opera's Rehearsal Department at (713) 980-8679 after April 10, 2006. Auditions to be held May 4-7, 2006.
— Learn more at houstongrandopera.org

Puccini's beloved bohemians returned to New York City Opera on Sunday afternoon, but this time with more on their minds than romance, poetry and the question of how to split a herring four ways on a cold Parisian night. For his production, introduced in 2001, James Robinson has punted "La Bohème" forward some 80 years, placing the action in the opening months of World War I. Soldiers parade past Café Momus, armed guards check papers in Act III, and the garret denizens drape their uniforms over Mimi to keep her warm on her deathbed.
— Read more at New York Times

Paul Nadler, a frequent guest conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, will replace music director James Levine in the company's production of Beethoven's Fidelio, a spokesperson said yesterday.
— Read more at PlaybillArts See also: Guardian Unlimited - Is there a doctor in the orchestra?

Scott Joplin (1868-1917) is the closest thing that America has to a musical saint. Not only did he bring ragtime - a vibrant genre that merged European and African-American influences - to its creative zenith, but he managed to fulfill the myths that both cultures expected of him. To blacks, he is a symbol of innate musical genius, racial pride and professional accomplishment. But to the whites who "discovered" ragtime in the 1970s, his early death from syphilis and his lack of lifetime recognition - just like Schubert - fit perfectly within the trope of the misunderstood, Romantic artist.
And no Joplin piece fits all of these categories like "Treemonisha," his sole surviving opera, which the excellent Collegiate Chorale offered at Alice Tully Hall on Thursday night.
— Read more at Newsday.com

That's not the case with Syracuse Opera's staging of Gilbert and Sullivan's "H.M.S. Pinafore."
Gary Eckhart's set, on loan from Binghamton's Tri-Cities Opera Company, was a glorious pop-up picture book-like double page depicting the quarterdeck of the H.M.S. Pinafore amid a stylized seascape.
— Read more at The Oneida Daily Dispatch

In 1791, the final year of his life, Mozart wrote two operas that are worlds apart in content and style - "La Clemenza di Tito" ("The Mercy of Titus") and "Die Zauberflote" ("The Magic Flute"). "Tito," written for the Viennese court, is a stylized Italian "opera seria," one of the final gasps in a dying art form.
— Read more at deseretnews.com

"The most intimidating thing I've ever done," is how director Scott Elliott describes his upcoming revival of the Kurt Weill-Bertolt Brecht musical The Threepenny Opera. The new Roundabout Theatre Company staging features a commissioned translation and adaptation by the director's frequent collaborator, playwright-actor Wallace Shawn.
— Read more at Playbill News

Newcomer Vittorio Grigolo and BBC One's Just the Two of Us winner Russell Watson are set for new entries in the top 10, according to mid-week figures. Andrea Bocelli's album Amore, out last week, could stay in the chart.
The Three Tenors - Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras - have only appeared in the top 10 at the same time when they recorded together.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

The Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA), in conjunction with The Mesopotamian Opera Company, Inc., are pleased to present the world premiere of THE TREE, a new opera, a vibrant and witty combination of Eastern and Western narrative structures that form a contemporary performing arts experience. THE TREE is an exciting re-telling of an ancient Shinto myth combined with the reality of today's struggle to save our old-growth forests and to stop the sprawl. The production, which runs March 30 through April 16 at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in downtown Los Angeles, is written and directed by Peter Wing Healey, with music by Linda Dowdell, costume design by Karolyn Kiisel, lighting design by David Toledo, conducted by David O, decor by Jim Boutin with L.A. artists Claire Keith, Max Hendler and sculptor Tanya Kovaleski.
— Read more at Yahoo!

With a range of new initiatives, incoming Metropolitan Opera chief Peter Gelb, the former Sony Classical president, wants to make the Met's offerings more accessible and "reconnect the Met to the world."

A Reuters report said his ideas included offering live, high-definition broadcasts of Met productions via satellite to major movie theater chains, as well as making digital streams and downloads of Met performances available to fans.
— Read more at Americas Network

The Wales Millennium Centre is claiming a coup in staging the UK's only performance of the 19-hour Ring Cycle.
Cardiff will host the former Kirov Opera Company's production of Wagner's epic over four nights in December.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

[Denyce Graves won raves in the operatic version of Toni Morrison's Beloved. Her candour also shines.]
You can make yourself crazy trying to figure out what makes an artist great. Until you have a chat with Denyce Graves.
The American mezzo-soprano, now in her early 40s, has gone from a childhood in one of Washington, D.C.'s black neighbourhoods (the ones without the gleaming, wide boulevards) to the toast of the world's stages.
— Read more at TheStar.com [Related news items]

No one would argue that Scott Joplin's opera "Treemonisha" packs the dramatic punch of an opera byVerdi, who truly understood theater. The plot about former slaves who run a plantation abandoned by its white owners is slight, and the opera's message, that education is the key to black advancement, seems disconcertingly naive for an opera dating from 1911.
— Read more at The New York Sun

Tony Award winner Kristin Chenoweth, most recently on Broadway as the "Popular" Glinda in Stephen Schwartz's Wicked, may be seen in the New York City Opera's 2007 staging of The Pirates of Penzance.
— Read more at Playbill News

It's a case of arts imitating sports: Conductor James Levine will undergo surgery for a torn rotator cuff, an injury that will sideline him for the remainder of the Metropolitan Opera season. And just as when a star ball player lands on the injured list, the pressing question is: Who can step in?
— Read more at The New York Sun

Symphony Space, whose landmark marathons have made it a pioneer in in-depth artistic exploration, will present Wall to Wall Stravinsky, a twelve-hour celebration of Igor Stravinsky, perhaps the greatest composer of the 20th Century. Hosted by Symphony Space Artistic Director Isaiah Sheffer, the free event, in the Peter Jay Sharp theatre (the entrance line will begin at 10 AM on the day of the performance) will feature a vast array of the composers works, some not heard in public for decades, for orchestra, chamber music, opera, theatre and dance performed by hundreds of artists. It will be the largest variety of Stravinsky works ever performed in New York in one day.
— Read more at symphonyspace.org

The Boston Conservatory Opera Division, under the direction of Sanford Sylvan, presents Johann Strauss Jr.'s comic operetta Die Fledermaus, March 30 - April 1, 2006, at 8:00 p.m. and April 2 at 2:00 p.m. at The Boston Conservatory Theater, 31 Hemenway St., Boston. Beatrice Jona Affron conducts. Kirsten Z. Cairns directs. Tickets are $16 general admission and $5 for students and senior citizens. Box Office: 617-912-9222.
Composed in 1874, this hilarious, lighthearted revenge story is about the consequences of a practical joke played years beforehand, complicated by mistaken identities, elaborate royal balls, secret lovers, and bad timing, and set against a backdrop of lively Viennese waltzes. Die Fledermaus is among the most popular operettas ever written, and is Strauss's most performed work.
— Learn more at www.bostonconservatory.edu

Anna Moffo, an American soprano who was beloved for her rosy voice, dramatic vulnerability and exceptional beauty, died on Thursday night at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York. She was 73 and lived in Manhattan.
— Read more at New York Times See also: latimes.com and BBC News

The Katy library and the Houston Grand Opera are teaming up to bring opera to children Monday, March 13. The library, will be hosting The Emperor's New Clothes, a 45-minute production about a young emperor and his foolish desires for fashion that's set in ancient China.
— Read more at Katy Times Online

In the world of Wagnerian opera, Wotan is the king of Germanic gods. In an upcoming American production he'll appear on stage in a natty 1920s suit, a fedora and a black eye patch. Erda, the earth goddess and mother of Wotan's eight children, the Valkyrie, will look very much like an American Indian. The fanciful costumes will give a distinctly American twist to the Washington National Opera's production of Richard Wagner's four epic German operas, "The Ring of the Nibelungs," which the company will present over the next four years.
— Read more at SouthCoastToday.com

The relationship between man and dolphin is the surprising subject of Welsh National Opera's latest venture, the chamber opera Dolffin. Premiering at Aberystwyth Arts Centre on Thursday, the opera has a very special twist - it unites WNO Max, the educational arm of Welsh National Opera, with Wales' National Poet Gwyneth Lewis, who penned Dolffin.
— Read more at icnetwork.co.uk

Composer Mark Adamo led a master class focusing on his operas Lysistrata and Little Women at New York University on March 6.
The event was the first in The Composer's Voice, a series of master classes presented by the American Lyric Theatre. It came two weeks before the New York premiere of Lysistrata at New York City Opera on March 21.
— Read more at PlaybillArts [Related news items]

James Levine, the music director of the Metropolitan Opera, needs shoulder surgery and has been forced to pull out of the rest of the season, the Met said yesterday, a sharp blow that sent it scrambling for replacements.
— Read more at New York Times See also: BBC News [Related news items]

In 1948, only one in 10 Americans had ever seen a television. There were no more than 350,000 sets in the entire country, and more than half of those were in the New York area. Still, a good deal of television history was made in 1948, even if there weren't yet many people watching. A venerable stand-up comic named Milton Berle, whose career dated back to the silent-film era, appeared on "Texaco Star Theater" and soon became a phenomenon. "The Toast of the Town," a new program hosted by a newspaper columnist named Ed Sullivan, brought the vaudeville experience to television, with brilliant success. And the National Broadcasting Co. began a series of live telecasts featuring Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) and his own NBC Symphony.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

With the Nashville Symphony stealing all the limelight these days, what's an opera company to do?
That's easy: Unveil a major four-part season bulging with two all-time crowd-pleasing favorites.
Nashville Opera's 2006-'07 season - to be announced officially tomorrow - promises the Italian twin peaks of Giuseppe Verdi's Aida and Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly. Also in the mix are lesser-known French offerings.
— Read more at rctimes.com

At 15, Patricia Johnson decided to try opera, thinking singing arias would prepare her for other music genres. "I thought if I did the most refined style of singing, that I could decide later on what I wanted to do," she said. Fans of opera in El Paso should already know that once discovering opera, Johnson was never able to leave it.
— Read more at El Paso Times

THERE was an unsung question hanging over the Metropolitan Opera House Wednesday night when Placido Domingo returned to give the first of three performances in Franco Alfano's "Cyrano de Bergerac." Earlier, a throat ailment had forced him to cancel performances of both "Cyrano" and "Samson and Delilah." Would he still sound vocally under the weather?
— Read more at New York Post Online

Even though you opera lovers may be focused on Rossini's "Cinderella," which Opera Carolina performs this weekend, let's glance forward to the company's next production: "Margaret Garner," the saga of a slave in 1850s Kentucky.
— Read more at Charlotte Observer

[OPERA SAN JOSÉ FOUNDER PLANS TO GUIDE HER COMPANY 'OVER THE BIG HUMP']
At 80, Irene Dalis is svelte, stylish, opinionated and energized -- and thinking long-term, already plotting out Opera San José's 2009-10 season.
The San Jose native, the company's founder and general director, is an irrepressible go-getter. The daughter of a downtown haberdasher, she became a reigning mezzo-soprano at New York's Metropolitan Opera before retiring at 50 with a plan to go back home to start her own opera company, her "baby."
— Read more at MercuryNews.com

When John Berry was named as the new artistic director of the crisis-ridden English National Opera, he had hate mail from all sides - even his own staff. In his first interview since taking up the post, he tells Charlotte Higgins what he will do to end the chaos.
— Read more at Guardian Unlimited

The hole in the middle of the Metropolitan Opera's recent revival of "Cyrano de Bergerac" has been filled. Franco Alfano's opera in Francesca Zambello's production was created last season as a vehicle meant to carry Plácido Domingo farther along his amazing route of twilight stardom. The title role sits well on his deepening tenor voice, and here was a chance to be a dashing swordsman, wear a long nose and act up a storm. A rarely performed piece with lovely music received exposure it is not used to.
— Read more at New York Times

Frank Loesser was a populist musical-theater composer with great artistic ambition. And nowhere was that ambition more evident than in his score for "The Most Happy Fella," a musical of majestic scope whose melodies range from traditional musical comedy to opera.
— Read more at mercurynews.com

IF the thought of Gilbert and Sullivan conjures up images of pirates, fairies and Japanese noblemen, then head down to the King's next week. There, The Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Edinburgh will continue this year's Local Heroes season with a rare opportunity to see WS Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan's only musical comedy The Grand Duke.
— Read more at Scotsman.com

Three months after he was sidelined by tracheitis, Plácido Domingo returned to the opera stage last night, singing the title role of Alfano's Cyrano de Bergerac at the Metropolitan Opera.
— Read more at PlaybillArts [Related news items]

The 8-year old new music series, Cutting Edge Concerts, kicks off its 2006 season with three concerts, including an homage to the music of one of the most original composers and music instrument inventors of all times, Harry Partch, performed by Dean Drummond's Newband (April 27). The first two concerts of the series feature new works by Katherine Hoover (N.Y. premiere of The Knot), Jeffrey Mumford, Richard Wernick and Victoria Bond (April 6), and Allen Cohen, Matthew Greenbaum, Patricia Morehead, and Allen Shaw (April 20). Modeled after the Copland-Sessions Concerts of Contemporary Music, Cutting Edge Concerts continues the tradition of supporting the music of innovative, living composers. It is conceived and hosted by Victoria Bond, who briefly converses with each composer on stage before the performance.

All concerts are scheduled for 8pm, and will take place at the Renee Weiler Concert Hall of Greenwich House Music School, located at 46 Barrow Street, between Bedford Street and 7th Avenue South. General admission is $15. Students and seniors: $10. For more information, call 212-242-4770
— Learn more at www.gharts.org or www.welltonenewmusic.org

[Russia's Valery Gergiev to lead Kirov Orchestra in Troy]
The 52-year-old conductor Valery Gergiev may be today's most important and prominent Russian musician. The music director of the Kirov Orchestra and Ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Gergiev is known for powerful performances of the music of his countryman. Local audiences will have a rare opportunity to hear it for themselves Saturday evening at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, when Gergiev leads the Kirov Orchestra in the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, with soloist Mikhail Simonyan, and in Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10.
— Read more at TimesUnion.com

The Berlin government will help fund the renovation of the city's Staatsoper Unter den Linden, the home of the Berlin State Opera, Bloomberg News reports. The renovation will mostly involve updating outdated stage and theater technology, at an estimated cost of about $134 million; work will start in 2008 or 2009.
— Read more at PlaybillArts