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

The hall is alive with the sound of music. Literally.
Former U.S. president Bill Clinton's winning campaign motto was "It's the economy, stupid." For the designers of the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, a.k.a. Toronto's new opera house, the words were more like "It's the music, stupid."
Yesterday morning, an audience heard the result of years of planning and building for the very first time. As Canadian Opera Company general director Richard Bradshaw conducted the dramatic opening chords to Mozart's opera The Magic Flute, it was immediately clear that music is truly front and centre in this space.
— Read more at TheStarcom

It might not yet be brave last days for the beloved Franco Zeffirelli production of Puccini's "Tosca," which came back for yet another run at the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday night. But with Peter Gelb about to replace Joseph Volpe as the company's general manager, a number of productions are bound to be mothballed, and this "Tosca" may well be one of them.
— Read more at Newsday.com

Less than a month away from its first mainstage presentation after a year without a large-scale opera performances, the embattled Scottish Opera is reportedly being sued by British actors' union Equity for reneging on its promise to rehire choristers that it was forced to fire in 2005 during the company's mandated restructuring, the Glasgow Herald has reported.
Scottish Opera was forced to fire its full-time chorus - counted among some 102 jobs made redundant, roughly half of the company's workforce - following a fiscal crises and a yearlong "dark season" enforced by the Scottish Executive, which required that the company use its annual £7.8 million ($13.96 million USD) subsidy towards repaying a substantial deficit.
— Read more at Opera News

["People who say they don't like opera, may not have actually seen one." - Clare Barca, artistic/general director, Opera Fresca ]
Last weekend, grand opera took the stage of Eagles Hall as Opera Fresca presented Giacomo Puccini's great love story, "La Bohème," to a large and truly delighted audience. "Just as La Bohème' leaves slight impression in the spirit of listeners, so will it leave a scant trace in the history of our opera, and the author would be well advised to consider it a passing error," wrote opera critic Carlo Bersezio in a review published in the Gazzeta Piemontese after "La Bohème" premiered on Feb. 1, 1896.
— Read more at Ft. Bragg Advocate-News

James Levine is still on the shelf after his recent injury, but the good work of the Met Chamber Ensemble goes on. Chamber concerts sponsored by orchestras can be little more than public psychotherapy for individual musicians otherwise lost to notice in a symphonic crowd. The Metropolitan Opera players have turned the thought into one of the most interesting and well-played series in the city.
— Read more at New York Times

[What inspired Asian Dub Foundation to compose an opera about the famous Libyan dictator? Stuart Jeffries finds out]

Can an opera about the Libyan dictator Muammar Gadafy really be a good idea? There are precedents: in John Adams' Nixon in China, for instance, Mao duets with the American president. Evita's husband was a despot. Hitler is name-checked in Mel Brooks's The Producers. And let's not forget Trey Parker's film Team America: World Police, in which a puppet North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Il, sings a torch song about how lonely it is at the top - which it probably is.
— Read more at Guardian Unlimited

The Berlin State Opera's 2006-07 season will include a new work by the "virtual rock band" Gorillaz, a double bill from director Robert Wilson, and new productions of Donizetti's Maria Stuarda, Busoni's Doktor Faust, Massenet's Manon, and Mozart's La clemenza di Tito, as well as a pairing of Monteverdi's scena Combatimento di Tancredi e Clorinda and his Marian Vespers.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The Canadian Opera Company's new Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts will include a Luminaries Gallery honoring "individuals who have made an invaluable contribution to opera in Canada," the Toronto-based company announced.
The inaugural inductees will be Lotfi Mansouri, the former general director of COC (and San Francisco Opera); contralto Maureen Forrester, a native of Montreal; tenor Jon Vickers, who was born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan; COC founder Nicholas GoldSchmidt; and Hermann Geiger-Torel, the company's first general director.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

One of opera's most famous tales of seduction, revenge and murder will steal the hearts of audiences at Sacramento State for the performance of Don Giovanni, opening at 8 p.m., Friday, May 5 in the University Theatre. Performances continue on May 7 at 2:30 p.m., May 12 at 8 p.m. and May 14 at 8 p.m.
The opera, first directed by Mozart in 1787 in Prague, centers on Don Giovanni, a libertine who lures women into his clutches. His untamed conquests lead to him killing a man - after seducing his daughter - and enticing a married woman, only to be dragged by demons into the fiery depths of hell.
— Read more at Sacramento State News

[Opera San José's puts all its skills together for masterful 'Don Giovanni']
IN THE BEST SENSE, Opera San José is always a work in process. Its Don Giovanni on Sunday pulled together many of the company's best qualities in a lavish performance that felt shorter than its 3 1/4 hours. The sure Mozartian hand of George Cleve kept the pit orchestra and the stage action running smoothly forward, even in some of the opera's most challenging and slow-paced arias. It was here that some of the singers were at their max in sustaining long lines punctuated by florid melismas, the clearest indication that Mozart had a wickedly seductive mean streak.
— Read more at metroactive.com

[Spiro Malas, who has sung his way across many an opera stage -- Broadway, too -- is back where he began, with the Baltimore Opera Company]

Mario Lanza didn't enjoy a long or critically beatified career, but the movie star tenor sure left a legacy of inspiration.
He has been mentioned as a prime influence on the early development of many singers, from pop crooner Al Martino to all of the famed Three Tenors.
— Read more at baltimoresun.com

Equity, the British actors' union, has sued Scottish Opera over its failure to hire two former choristers, the Scotsman reports.
Struggling with debt last year, the company eliminated 88 jobs, including its full-time chorus, and shut down for the entire 2005-06 season. At the time, the company promised that former chorus members would get first consideration for freelance appearances with the company.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

According to information gathered by Helsingin Sanomat, the recovery programme to be submitted to the Board of the National Opera today does not include dismissals of staff. However, the Opera is bound to require dozens of reductions in the number of staff employed in the near future. To avoid compulsory redundancies, the Opera is considering other steps such as the use of natural wastage.
Even extensive lay-offs are proposed to the Board in the recovery plan. The lay-off period would be timed to coincide with the planned renovation work in 2007, when the Opera House on Mannerheimintie will in any event be closed for four months, over the summer.
— Read more at Helsingin Sanomat

[Peter Jay Sharp Theater - 8:00 PM - New York City]
"Art," Macheath famously declares in Brecht's Threepenny Opera, "is not 'nice.'" Eight years after Threepenny's premiere in Berlin, an American novelist, Nathanael West, cast his vote with Brecht. West's 1933 tale of a male advice columnist - known to readers only by his nom de journal, "Miss Lonelyhearts" - is a fractured car crash of irony, surrealism, and alienation. The eponymous hero, convinced that he fails the desperate souls who write seeking his advice, ricochets through the streets of New York, from sex (usually frustrated) to Jesus Christ and back. West's version of Stephen Dedalus is not watched over by any kindly Bloom or even a stately, plump Buck Mulligan. Miss Lonelyhearts' mentor - and tormentor - is his cruelly sarcastic boss, Shrike, a kind of disembodied voice that mocks the hero's sincere, if overheated, religiosity, and tries to set the lad up with his wife. It is not a pretty picture.
Enter into that picture the American composer and Juilliard alumnus Lowell Liebermann.
— Read more at The Juilliard Journal Online

[Created by the design-direction team of Charles Allen Kein and Bliss Herbert, Verdi's grandest of operas is nothing short of magnificent]
Ten years and building smartly. That's the impression one gets from Michigan Opera Theatre's new production of Verdi's grandest of all operas, "Aida," unveiled Saturday night to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the opening of the Detroit Opera House.
— Read more at The Detroit News

All of us to be replaced
By a smiling china face ...
A screen of translucent panels parts reveals a bed with a blonde woman (Marnie Breckenridge as Nelle) in profile, her hand poised above the bed. Running her fingers along the covers, she brings about a curious, profane resurrection that is touched on throughout Berkeley Opera's Chrysalis.
— Read more at Berkeley Daily Planet

Simone Young faced a difficult task when she took over the Hamburg State Opera in the double role of chief conductor and music director this season. Between them, her predecessor Ingo Metzmacher and his stage director Peter Konwitschny won the house a reputation as one of Germany?s most innovative. At the same time, as their final productions showed, they had reached an impasse.
— Read more at FT.com

Neapolitans have been privy to some great musical performances this season. But it took Sunday evening's premier performance by a fledgling opera company in a packed high school auditorium to win my vote as one of the most exciting events in recent memory.
The opera was the much beloved "Tosca." The fledgling company is Opera Naples. Nearly 1,200 people packed the auditorium at Gulf Coast High School. A sufficient swell of them bought tickets at the box office at the last minute, forcing the start of the performance to be delayed nearly 15 minutes.
— Read more at naplesnews.com

The upcoming season of Berlin's State Opera will feature a collaboration between an acclaimed Chinese artist and virtual hip-hop group Gorillaz.
As part of the its 2006-07 lineup, announced by musical director Daniel Barenboim in Berlin Tuesday, the venerable opera company will debut a new work entitled Monkey Journey to the West.
— Read more at CBC Arts

[All 5 students who died in plane crash were heavily involved]
Now Jacobs School of Music officials say they are faced with the task of finding a way to fill the void left by the students who died in a plane crash late Thursday night.
"They were extremely visible," said Carmen Helena Téllez, a professor of music in the choral department. "Their profile in the school was very prominent. These people were gifted in many, many, many ways."
— Read more at IDSnews.com

The conductor is Richard Armstrong. The director is Tim Albery. Sounds familiar? In a moment of delusion, Scotland?s opera-goers might be tempted to think nothing has changed. Armstrong and Albery are the very artists who, 12 months ago, collaborated on Scottish Opera's Fidelio and put together its triumphant Ring between 2002 and 2005.
— Read more at FT.com

Some footnotes to my recent column. The obvious first choice among electronic simulations of Kaija Saariaho's music is the DVD of her first opera L'Amour de loin. Second choice is the 1993 Ondine recording of her early orchestral masterpieces Du Cristal... and ...à la fumée, both outwardly fearsome works that contain manifold hidden beauties.
— Read more at Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

The soprano Deborah Voigt had wanted to sing the title role of Puccini's "Tosca" long before she tried it out for the first time with the Florida Grand Opera in 2001. She adored the role and felt it was a good vocal fit. But, as she has recently explained, she was too uncomfortable with her considerable weight back then to make Puccini's character, an acclaimed prima donna in Rome of 1800 and a great beauty, part of her repertory.
— Read more at New York Times

After conquering opera stages in Wagner and Strauss, the slimmed-down Deborah Voigt has turned her attention to Italian roles for much of this season. Her portrayal of the title role in Puccini's "Tosca" came to the Metropolitan Opera for the first time on Saturday night in a revival of Franco Zeffirelli's opulent 1985 production. She offers fine singing, although at times seemed to be slightly hesitant on the acting details.
— Read more at heraldnewsdaily.com

Near the tragic end of "Lohengrin," the title character is forced to abandon his bride, Elsa, after telling her their story would have ended happily if only she had been able to wait a year before asking his name.
Audiences at the Metropolitan Opera have had to wait far longer ? more than seven years - to see the company revive Richard Wagner's romantic masterwork.
— Read more at deseretnews.com

[OPERA SAN JOSÉ'S PRODUCTION OF `DON GIOVANNI' BUBBLES WITH CHEMISTRY]
Mozart's "Don Giovanni" gives us the ultimate bad boy, an unctuous lecher who has bedded 2,065 women before the curtain rises. This supreme hedonist is a super-nihilist, a mythic modern man. No wonder this weird story, in which the Don is ultimately murdered by a ghost (karma, anyone?), maintains its appeal.
— Read more at MercuryNews.com

[Jackson State University professor spearheads campaign to revitalize historic company]
Phyllis Lewis-Hale wound up in the high school choir because she didn't want to take P.E.
In college at Jackson State University, she started out as an accounting major and was in the student choir. But it was at the urging of faculty members that she finally found her voice.
— Read more at The Clarion-Ledger

[A masterful staging of Orfeo gives the beleaguered ENO something to sing about, says Anthony Holden]
Whatever their merits, over-elaborate opera productions tend to commit the cardinal sin of getting in the way of the music. Many directors of current renown, who pride themselves on their ingenuity, should visit the Coliseum for a master class in the art of theatrical simplicity, which also pays the composer the rare compliment of giving his work pride of place.
Chen Shi-Zheng's elegant staging of opera's oldest masterpiece, Orfeo, puts itself entirely at the service of Monteverdi's wondrous score, beautifully rendered in early Baroque style by the ENO orchestra, supplemented on this occasion by members of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, under the period specialist Laurence Cummings.
— Read more at The Observer

Bidding goodbye to her press manager and awaiting the arrival of her wig, soprano Deborah Voigt looks composed, even wryly cheerful for someone who will step onto the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in 50 minutes for a dress rehearsal of "Tosca."
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

Every new opera should have the kind of lead performance that Denyce Graves gives in "Margaret Garner." For that matter, every old opera should.
"Garner" deals in a prime operatic archetype: a woman whose circumstances drive her to a desperate act. Graves throws herself into a part that's wide-ranging vocally, emotionally and theatrically, and her commitment never flags. In an opera that's big-hearted but sometimes wayward, she always brings things back to their center.
— Read more at Charlotte Observer

When baritone Alan Titus walked on stage in a G-string during Houston Grand Opera's first-ever production of The Coronation of Poppea, audience members whipped out binoculars.
Houston Grand Opera's latest production boasts better-looking leads -- physical standards for opera singers have risen markedly in the last few decades -- but you see less of their bodies.
— Read more at Chron.com

Although Central Florida has come to rely on the Orlando Opera for quality productions featuring superior singers, the company's guest performers usually have reputations that place them outside the first rank of international stars.
The Orlando Opera's production of Giacomo Puccini's Tosca, which premiered Friday night at the Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre, is thus an exception. It features one of the biggest names in recent memory to appear on stage with the local company.
— Read more at Orlando Sentinel

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

N a haze of blue light, Robert Wilson's shim mering yet controversial staging of Wagner's "Lohengrin" reappeared at the Metropolitan Opera House Monday night for the first time in seven years.
As then, the ever-improving Canadian heldentenor Ben Heppner took the title role, with the great Finnish soprano Karita Mattila as Elsa. Making her Met debut was American Luana DeVol as Ortrud, while Phillipe Auguin became the latest in the bench roster of conductors to substitute for the sidelined James Levine.
— Read more at New York Post Online

With music director James Levine sidelined with a shoulder injury, the MET Orchestra has turned its May 14 concert at Carnegie Hall into a showcase for newly minted star Erika Sunnegardh.
Conductor James Conlon, the incoming music director of the Los Angeles Opera, will replace Levine, the Met announced yesterday. Instead of performing the world premiere of a symphonic work by Charles Wuorinen (a Levine favorite), the orchestra will back Sunnegardh, tenor Ben Heppner, and bass René Pape in a program of opera arias.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Lawrence Brownlee, an American tenor specializing in bel canto repertoire, has won the prestigious Richard Tucker Award, an annual prize bestowed on an emerging young singer that carries a cash prize of $30,000 and installment alongside past winners ? some of the biggest names in opera - including Renée Fleming, Deborah Voigt, Dolora Zajick, Paul Groves, David Daniels and Matthew Polenzani.
— Read more at Opera News

The man dubbed 'the greatest operatic artist of modern times' is about to open in a little-known version of Cyrano de Bergerac. Placido Domingo tells Jessica Duchen why, at 65, he sings on.
— Read more at Belfast Telegraph

[This month, Lowell Liebermann's opera based on Nathanael West's trenchant novella, Miss Lonelyhearts, receives its world premiere at Juilliard. ARLO MCKINNON offers a preview of the work.]
Among the many artists commissioned to create works in honor of The Juilliard School's centennial, pride of place goes to Lowell Liebermann, whose new opera, Miss Lonelyhearts, will receive its premiere performances on April 26, 28 and 30, at Juilliard's Peter Jay Sharp Theater. With his first opera, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1996), Liebermann established himself as an important composer in the genre.
— Read more at Opera News

Soprano Erika Sunnegardh will make her Carnegie Hall main stage debut on May 14 with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra as part of a concert program revised because of conductor James Levine's shoulder surgery.
Sunnegardh was a relatively unknown singer before April 1, when the 40-year-old Swedish-American made her Met debut as the replacement for an ill Karita Mattila as Leonora in Beethoven's "Fidelio." The Saturday afternoon performance was broadcast internationally to about 11 million listeners in 40 countries.
— Read more at mercurynews.com

IS CLARK Suprynowicz ahead of his time? With his latest work, "Chrysalis," the Berkeley-based composer may have written the first opera about cosmetic surgery and genetic manipulation. The subject is ripe for exploration, Suprynowicz noted in an early morning interview last week.
"This is something that's going on in our own day and time," he said. "Composers have always mined contemporary themes for new operas, and this subject is one that's coming more and more into the forefront."
— Read more at ContraCostaTimes.com

"Lohengrin" is long. It is not incidentally long, not long just because it has so much territory to cover or characters to plumb. It has no plot to speak of: The opera's core riddle is like the question about Grant's tomb: What is the name of the title character in "Lohengrin"?
No, its stateliness is an essential quality, its length a technique of bewitchment. It is long enough to envelop the listener in an amniotic fluid of music, enough so that when the third act began, more than three hours into the Metropolitan Opera's revival, I had almost forgotten what it was like not to be in the presence of those hieratic figures, gliding in slow motion through Wagner's indigo score and Robert Wilson's landscapes of light and color.
— Read more at Newsday.com

Outgoing Metropolitan Opera general manager Joseph Volpe will discuss and sign his new memoir at the Barnes and Noble Lincoln Square on May 12 at 7 p.m.
The book, titled The Toughest Show on Earth: My Rise and Reign at the Metropolitan Opera, will be released by Knopf on May 2.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Kaija Saariaho, whose new opera, "Adriana Mater," had its première in Paris earlier this month, once said that she likes to explore the boundary between music and noise. Many of her large-scale works, "Adriana" included, begin with a great, heaving expanse of intermingled timbres, like a landscape turned molten, or an ocean boiling. Instruments cry out at high or low extremes; pitches are bent or broken apart; violins are bowed with such intensity that they groan; flutes are blown until they emit an asthmatic rasp. It's the kind of sound that boxes the ears and maxes out the brain; information pours in on all frequencies. But Saariaho is something other than a sonic terrorist out to shock whatever remains of the bourgeoisie. She makes her eruptions of noise seem like natural phenomena, the aftermath of some seismic break. Shapes emerge from the chaos, and the shapes begin to sing. The latter sections of her pieces often bring apparitions of rare, pure beauty-plain intervals that sound like harmony reborn, liminal melodies that disappear the moment they are heard. They are like the wildflowers that bloom in Death Valley, their colors intensified by the nothingness around them.
— Read more at Alex Ross - The New Yorker

It stands to reason that a high-concept new production at the Metropolitan Opera might take time to settle in and refine itself. The best example in recent years is Robert Wilson's staging of Wagner's "Lohengrin."
The revival that opened on Monday night, winning huge ovations, especially for the tenor Ben Heppner as the grail knight Lohengrin and the soprano Karita Mattila as the innocent Elsa, is not the same show that earned Mr. Wilson lusty boos when the production was unveiled in March 1998. Back then the abstract scenic designs, a Wilson trademark, made for some haunting, mystical Wagnerian imagery: against a backdrop with shifting hues of blue, gray and green, slowly moving luminous white rectangular beams crisscross the bare stage. Still, the glacial movements of the singers and the highly stylized hand and arm gestures made everyone look terribly uncomfortable.
— Read more at New York Times

Old operas never die. They either bang on at old opera houses or are metamorphosed by mad people with ideas. U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, a South African film of Carmen, and Tristan and Isolde, two hours of non-singing screen Wagneriana, each combine the ridiculous with the sublime. It?s a beguiling combination. It keeps the viewer saying, especially in response to the first: "They can?t do this, can they? Oh ? yes ? they can."
— Read more at FT.com

Keith Warner's staging of Wagner's "Gotterdammerung" brings the Royal Opera's new `Ring' cycle to an end. It has been a long journey, and 18 months have passed since "Das Rheingold" opened with magical swirls of light playing over three naked Rhine maidens.
It also has been a perplexing journey, with several baffling images and puzzles along the way. What was the enormous double helix in "Die Walkure" that surrounded Hunding's home? Why did Wotan climb out of a crashed plane in "Siegfried"? Why was a huge revolving white panel present in all four operas?
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

The Royal Opera's new Ring cycle comes full circle, its heroes briefly immortalised in gold like outsized Oscar statuettes, its heroine duly lighting the touch-paper for the eradication of one era and the beginning of another. And as Wagner's "redemption of love" motif finally finds serenity in the strings, there is hope, too, that new beginnings may bring better endings.
— Read more at Independent Online

[Sixth-grader studies at Eastman and dreams of singing at the Met]
Emily Tworek Helenbrook often makes people cry. Sometimes she gives them goose bumps.
And, always, she causes them to wonder how such a lush, emotive voice emerges from an 11-year-old. Even seasoned voice teachers are in awe.
— Read more at Buffalo News

Near the tragic end of "Lohengrin," the title character is forced to abandon his bride, Elsa, after telling her their story would have ended happily if only she had been able to wait a year before asking his name. Audiences at the Metropolitan Opera have had to wait far longer - more than seven years - to see the company revive Richard Wagner's romantic masterwork.
— Read more at mercurynews.com

The redheaded Puerto Rican soprano Scheherazade Pesante makes art out of nude pictures of herself.
She's been a truck driver and professional wrestler. She makes her own carnivalesque dresses, and wears lots of clinky-clanky jewelry. Oh, and she was a radiological surgical nurse in the U.S. Navy, too.
There's an Italian expression, "Se non e vero, e ben trovato," which translates as "If it's not true, it ought to be." It could have been created with Scheherazade in mind.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

More than most art forms, opera demands a suspension of disbelief. For a long time this included accepting that a man could sing with the voice of a woman. It was not a natural gift, but the results often drove audiences wild: castrati, as they were known, were among the rulers of the 18th-century opera stage.
— Read more at New York Times

East Bay composer Clark Suprynowicz and San Francisco playwright John O'Keefe have joined forces for the new opera Chrysalis, "a hallucinatory riff on cosmetic surgery and genetic manipulation," to be premiered by Berkeley Opera, April 22-30, at the Julia Morgan Theatre on College Avenue.
Jonathan Khuner and Sara Jobin are musical directors for the production and Mark Streshinsky is in charge of stage direction and design.
If a facelift for contemporary life and art seems a cogent a reading of O'Keefe's libretto of driven cosmetics magnate Ellen Ermaine (mezzo-soprano Buffy Baggott, with soprano Marnie Breckenridge as Ellen?s doppelganger) and the "twilight zone" of her new ways of transforming the body, Clark Suprynowicz wryly concurs.
— Read more at Berkeley Daily Planet

At curtain-down on Monday the Royal Opera passed the virility test of any self-respecting opera ensemble: it completed a new Ring, the first in its renovated Covent Garden home. It was a cause for minor rejoicing, not just because the evening was more successful than the three previous instalments of the Antonio Pappano-Keith Warner production, but because we can now look forward to the first integrated cycle of Wagner's tetralogy in London for a decade. Unlike English National Opera's recent attempt, which foundered through lack of funds and willpower, the Royal Opera promises three complete Ring cycles in 18 months? time, and is already marketing them.
— Read more at FT.com

He's handsome, housebroken and hounded by adoring fans.
The most recognized personality at Palm Beach Opera isn't a soprano or baritone, but a 7-foot dog: The Great Poochini.
Clad in top hat and tails, The Great Poochini, named after Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, has been the opera's official mascot for the last two years, spreading the word about family-friendly opera and exposing young audiences to the arts. Based on the storybook character by Gary Clement, The Great Poochini, now trademarked by the opera, even has his own merchandise, including a doll.
— Read more at kansascity.com

In this ecologically challenged age, it's fine if someone can make art out of found objects. Donald Knaack, who calls himself the Junkman, has made a whole career as a percussionist playing and composing for instruments made out of, well, junk: recycled oil drums, cooking pans, beer kegs, wine glasses.
For "Odin: The Opera," a work in progress that had its premiere in a semi-staged concert version at the Frederick Loewe Theater of New York University on Friday night, he used another found resource: the energy and talent of the university's mainly undergraduate vocal students and mainly graduate-student percussionists. Their raw energy coursed through the piece and helped infuse it with far more vitality than it might have manifested without them.
— Read more at New York Times

Tan Dun has bridged the waters between east and west like no other composer before him. He's best known for his award-winning soundtrack to Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
His The First Emperor, commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera, premieres in December with Tan conducting and Placido Domingo in the title role.
— Read more at Hamilton Spectator

The Los Angeles Opera commemorated Mozart's 250th birthday by presenting Le Nozze di Figaro (Trans: The Marriage of Figaro), one of Mozart's most well known operas, captivating audiences since its premiere in the year 1786.
Le Nozze di Figaro originated from the play 'La folle journe'e, ou Le marriage de Figaro' written by Beaumarchais, which was considered too revolutionary for its time and censored due to its intense attack on the establishment. The servitude was portrayed as a rebellious force against the aristocracy as exemplified by Figaro's aria "Signor Contino se vuol ballare", and causing Beaumarchais' subsequent imprisonment.
— Read more at The Epoch Times

Though Brown students might pride themselves on being a cultured, educated bunch, you probably won't find an abundance of opera in their iTunes collections. So what better way to start an opera company here than with a production about venturing into the unknown? For this reason alone, "The Medium," a play about a fraudulent psychic who accidentally encounters the supernatural, was an excellent choice for Brown Opera Production's inaugural show, performed this weekend in Alumnae Hall.
— Read more at browndailyherald.com

After a popular musician is told that his beautiful young spouse has died, his grief takes him to hell and back.
It's a story as fresh as a supermarket tabloid, and as old as the topsy-turvy lives of gods and humans in antiquity. Primal emotions know no time or place.
So it's not surprising that the Ancient Greek tale of Orpheus, the lyre player, and his betrothed Eurydice inspired Claudio Monteverdi to turn it into the world's first true opera.
— Read more at TheStar.com

Eighteen months ago, Nick Olcott picked up a 1964 Life Magazine and was struck by a picture of famed 1950s Italian actress Sophia Loren standing poolside in front of an 18th century Italian villa.
"What struck me about the photo was the fantastic nature of this classic villa in the same photo with a modern swimming pool and a woman in a 1960s bathing suit," says Olcott, director of the University of Maryland School of Music?s Maryland Opera Studio production, Il Matrimonio Segreto.
— Read more at Diamondback Online

The East Texas Symphony expands its traditional orchestral repertoire on Saturday, April 22, in a collaboration with Opera East Texas.
Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Hines of New York headlines as the petulant, quick tempered "Carmen" in the concert-style production of Bizet's famed opera with Per Brevig, conductor/artistic director of the ETSO, at the podium.
— Read more at Tyler Morning Telegraph

The Metropolitan Opera Guild will present an interview with soprano Aprile Millo on May 4 at Lincoln Center's Kaplan Penthouse. Millo will discuss her career and the lead role in Puccini's Tosca, which she sings at the Met on May 16, with writer Bridget Palolucci.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Theatregoers will be able to see Jerry Springer the Opera on May 1. The musical, based around the TV show, has been seen by more than 500,000 people in theatres and 2.4 million viewers on BBC2. But Christian groups are protesting outside the theatre in an attempt to stop the production going ahead.
— Read more at icnetwork.co.uk

Opera star Martina Arroyo has performed in all the world's major opera houses and concert halls. She is best known for her performances of Italian repertoire, but her legacy of opera recordings spans centuries and styles, including baroque oratorios by Handel, operas by Verdi, Mozart and Meyerbeer and even avant-garde music by Karlheinz Stockhausen.
The American soprano, who was born in New York City, made her Cincinnati Opera debut in 1964 at the zoo, in the title role of Verdi's "Aida." She is now a distinguished professor at Indiana University's School of Music in Bloomington. Last year, she held her first "Prelude to Performance" workshop for emerging opera singers, supported by the Martina Arroyo Foundation.
— Read more at The Enquirer

The Welsh National Opera, which is marking its 60th birthday this weekend, has launched an online auction enabling followers to share in its long history.
The online auction will run for a year with a changing series of bids posted each month.
Lots include costumes worn by star performers and the chance to play a WNO extra or conduct its orchestra.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

[It's personal for opera star Denyce Graves, who portrays a slave driven to a desperate decision]
t was a pre-Civil War tragedy all but forgotten: A slave escaped the plantation with her family, a search party closed in, and she killed one of her children to spare the child a life of servitude.
A century later, Toni Morrison expanded the saga of Margaret Garner into her best-selling novel "Beloved." A decade later, she and composer Richard Danielpour turned the story into an opera that has virtually sold out in the three cities that have seen it.
This week, Opera Carolina gives "Margaret Garner" its Southeastern premiere, starring Denyce Graves. Tickets are selling briskly. And in Charlotte as in the other cities, the performances are the centerpiece of an array of events.
— Read more at Charlotte Observer

[Michigan Opera Theatre and founder David DiChiera realize their dream of an $80-million world-class opera house with the completion of its education center. But with DiChiera inching toward retirement and challenges ahead, where do they go from here?]
"You know, after 10 years I still get a thrill every time I walk in here," says David DiChiera, sliding inside a wing entrance to the Detroit Opera House on a recent afternoon. And why shouldn't he?
For DiChiera, the genial founding general director of Michigan Opera Theatre, Detroit's $50-million opera house, along with the company that he built from the ground up, define his life's work. They are the products of his vision, his sweat, his moxie and his leadership. They are his destiny.
— Read more at freep.com

[Opera Pacific's production of 'Aida' brings together a pair of big-voiced singers for the first time.]
Although Angela Brown and Carl Tanner, who sing the roles of Aida and Radamès in Opera Pacific's production of Verdi's popular masterpiece this week, met only when rehearsals began a couple of weeks ago, they already get along swimmingly.
— Read more at ocregister.com

It's a classic scene, like something out of an etching: The composer sits at his instrument playing what he thinks to be the last few minutes of his opera while the librettist stands staring intently at the score over his shoulder. If you're picturing them huddled over a harpsichord in powdered wigs, your mental image of opera could use an update.
The instrument in this case is a high-tech control center ringed by musical and computer keyboards.
Clark Suprynowicz gazes at one of two stacked computer screens in a workroom in his south Berkeley house as he discusses the epilogue of his new opera -- which plays with themes of cosmetic surgery and designer genes -- with collaborator John O'Keefe. Developed in residence at the Berkeley Opera over the past 21/2 years and set to premiere this weekend, "Chrysalis" is the first collaboration between erstwhile East Bay jazz musician Suprynowicz and O'Keefe, the award-winning longtime San Francisco playwright and co-founder of Berkeley's legendary Blake Street Hawkeyes in the early '70s.
— Read more at An Opera For Our Times

Written in 1775, in tribute to Archduke Maximilian, youngest son of Empress Maria Theresa, Il re pastore gives little hint of the dramatic talent Mozart would later develop. As is customary in the period, two sets of lovers are threatened with separation, and eventually reunited. But instead of concentrating on their relationships, Mozart presents an opera of ideas - of magnanimity, of duty, of pacific leadership, of social order - the hero of which is a young shepherd who must accept the responsibility accorded to him at birth, in much the same way as 19-year-old Maximillian and 19-year-old Mozart were expected to do.
— Read more at Independent Online

[WORLD PREMIERE: ODIN Frederick Loewe Theatre at NYU on Friday, April 14, 2006]
The Junkman makes music with mailboxes, saw blades, frying pans and beer cans. But he has also composed two pieces for Twyla Tharp and performed with both Eminem and the Louisville Symphony.
— Read more at NPR

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.
Odin, the opera, is a full length spoken word opera based upon the Nordic Myth of the Viking God of War, the most feared and ruthless warrior the world had ever known. Odin was also the Viking God of Knowledge who, according to Nordic lore, invented the alphabet and poetry. This is the first opera by Knaack. His The Environmental Continuum, a 35 minute concerto for recycled materials and orchestra enjoyed a premiere at the Eastern Music Festival in 2003.

[Lavish opera production wouldn't have happened without pairing]
This production of "La Boheme" is shaping up like an ad for Doublemint gum.
The opera about young, broke artists has double the cast, double the rehearsals and double the hassle because it is a collaboration between the University of Minnesota's Duluth and Twin Cities campuses.
— Read more at Duluth News Tribune

While opera houses and musical groups struggle to attract young listeners, the Washington National Opera seems to have found the right formula. The company's sold-out Tuesday evening performance of Gaetano Donizetti's "L'Elisir d'Amore" showed that it is about more than low-price tickets, though that certainly helps. It is about creating a social atmosphere and making sure the quality of the artistry is there.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

Jealousy is at the core of Out of the Box Productions' new opera, The Third Taboo - and it's something the company's Gwen Dobie admits to having experienced firsthand.
"Oh, definitely," she says, on the line from Out of the Box's Victoria headquarters. "I've watched that green-eyed monster take over my rational thinking, and looked at myself and said, 'Why am I feeling this way?' It's not very attractive when you're acting jealous, and I wanted to explore that more, because we don?t like to talk about it. It's not a fashionable subject, and to admit that you?re jealous is very difficult to do. So we wanted to explore this for personal reasons, but also for our audience."
— Read more at Straight.com

The board of directors of Palm Beach Opera has announced that William Ryberg, current president of the Oregon Symphony and previously president of Michigan's Grand Rapids Symphony, has been named as the Florida company's general director elect. Ryberg's tenure begins on July 1, 2006.
"We are extremely pleased that our thorough national search has brought us an exceptional new general director," James W. Beasley, Jr., chairman of Palm Beach Opera's board of directors, is quoted as saying. "Bill Ryberg has a deep background in classical music and opera, combined with extensive managerial experience. I am confident that he will lead Palm Beach Opera to a highly successful future."
Opera News

Opera Pacific, led by Artistic Director John DeMain, presents its first production in 10 years of Verdi's "Aida" at Sergerstrom Hall of the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Opera Pacific's home opera house. The production will be conducted by DeMain, and directed and choreographed by Michele Assaf, who directed last season's "Samson and Delilah." The production from Opera de Montreal is designed by Bernard Uzan and Claude Girard.
lacanadaonline.com

Seen "Rent?" Or remember that scene from "Moonstruck" where Loretta and Ronnie go to the Met? Then you've got the basic idea about "La Boheme."
Here's the 411 on Puccini's peeps, sans pretension.
Puccini was the Barry Manilow of his day. "La Boheme" -- by the same Italian dude who wrote "Madame Butterfly" and "Tosca" -- premiered in 1896. Puccini didn't have much cred back in the day, but gained mass appeal because he was one of the first opera composers to write about ordinary people doing realistic things instead of wacky mythological characters and out-of-touch royalty.
— Read more at Duluth News Tribune

Striking theater workers are forcing German opera houses to cancel performances or stage them without sets, as stagehands, technicians, mechanics and workshop employees join protests against a longer workweek.
Of the 15 opera houses affected by strikes, Munich and Stuttgart are the hardest hit. Munich's Bavarian State Opera says it has lost more than 500,000 euros ($608,000) from missing ticket sales, refunds and the cost of substitute technical workers. Stuttgart calculates that a loss of 80,000 euros in ticket sales alone could have financed the creation of at least two new jobs.
Bloomberg.com

BRING the hankies if you venture to see a classic ballet performed in Manchester from May 17.
Madame Butterfly is the tragic story of the doomed relationship between an American serviceman staying in Japan and a 15 year old geisha girl.
A dashing American naval officer stationed in Nagasaki Bay contracts a 'marriage' with the girl, who is known as Butterfly, just to pass the time.
— Read more at thisislancashire.co.uk

Richard Pearlman's reputation as a bold and iconoclastic opera director was born at the Eastman School of Music. But it was felt most viscerally ? and physically ? at the San Francisco Opera.
During the early 1970s, Pearlman staged a half dozen productions at San Francisco's Spring Opera Theatre, and one of them actually prompted fistfights to break out in the lobby. Debates over the young dramatic director's aesthetics raged in the press for days after that.
— Read more at Democrat & Chronicle

The 8-year old new music series, Cutting Edge Concerts, continues its 2006 season with two remaining 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). Next Thursday, April 20, presents composers Allen Cohen, Matthew Greenbaum, and Allen Shawn performed by the Claremont Duo and composer/oboist Patricia Morehead performing her own composition. 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.

APRIL 20, 2006
The April 20's concert will feature Allen Shawn's From the Sad Café, Matthew Greenbaum's Squire Allworthy's Menuetto, and Allen Cohen's Duo-Partita, all performed by The Claremont Duo (cello and guitar). The evening will also feature Patricia Morehead's Multiples, for oboe, oboe d'amore, English horn and electric tape.

April 27, 2006
On April 27, Dean Drummond's Newband will perform two early and rarely heard works by Harry Partch: From 11 Intrusions ("2 Studies on Ancient Greek Scales," "The Wind," "The Street"), and Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po. Newband has been involved with resurrecting Partch's great works since it received custodianship of the original Harry Partch Instrument Collection in 1990. Performers will include Robert Osborne (bass-baritone), Dean Drummond (harmonic canon), Bill Ruyle (bass marimba), and Katie Schlaikjer (tenor violin). This program will also feature performances of Dean Drummond's Mars Face, commissioned by the McKim Fund of the Library of Congress and performed by Tom Chiu (violin) and Martin Goldray (synthesizer); Precious Metals, commissioned by The National Flute Association and performed by Stefani Starin; and My Data's Gone, from the new comic quasi-opera, Café Buffé, with text by Charles Bernstein, and performed by Robert Osborne (bass-baritone) and Martin Goldray (synthesizer).
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 gharts.org or welltonenewmusic.org.

While classical New York continues to mourn the absence of James Levine from the remainder of the season, there is much cause for rejoicing in the sopranos at the heart of the Metropolitan Opera's current productions of Fidelio and Don Pasquale.
Karita Mattila and Anna Netrebko are very different singers. Netrebko, who works mostly with the Italian repertoire, is known for the wide tonal range of her lyric soprano and her effortless high notes. Mattila, a dramatic soprano in the process of owning the most challenging roles in the German repertoire, is known for her vocal daring and power, as well as her dramatic flair. They are two of the most exciting sopranos working today.
— Read more at Columbia Spectator

In a rags-to-riches tale that should give struggling singers some food for thought, Erika Sunnegardh went from waitressing to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in just 18 months.
After nearly two decades of trying to break into the big time, the 40-year-old Swedish-American soprano made a triumphant Met debut as the replacement for star Karita Mattila in a performance of Beethoven's "Fidelio" that was broadcast internationally to about 11 million listeners in 40 countries.
— Read more at CNN.com

[PB Opera director brings singing, banking, symphony background.]
William Ryberg planned to be an opera singer. But while he was working on his master's degree in vocal performance at Indiana University, his voice teacher broke the bad news. The budding heldentenor's voice would not be developed enough to sing major Wagnerian roles for another 10 years. In the meantime, "I needed to make a living," he said.
— Read more at palmbeachdailynews.com

The Metropolitan Opera Guild's salute to outgoing Met general manager Joseph Volpe next week will include a duet by soprano Anna Netrebko and baritone Mariusz Kwiecien and a video skit featuring soprano Deborah Voigt.
The guild will honor Volpe at its annual membership luncheon on May 20 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

THE first performance of Adriana Mater, composer Kaija Saariaho's second opera, was delayed by four days because of a strike by backstage staff at Paris's Opera Bastille. The premiere was worth the few days' wait.
Paris-based Finn Saariaho, born in 1952, has an arresting sort of dramatic talent, a departure from her early style. Reflecting her studies at the Paris research institute IRCAM, such works as Verblendungen (1984) or Du Cristal (1989) are complex, electro-acoustic essays in which timbre and texture are the dominant force, and whose primary appeal, for all their nuances of colour, is abstract. But Orion (2002), for orchestra without electronics, is much more graphically direct. In between came the opera L'Amour de loin (2000), first staged by Peter Sellars in Salzburg.
— Read more at The Australian

Fat is funny when the fat man is Falstaff in Opera Lyra's hilarious romantic romp Falstaff.
The footloose and fancy-free knight first saw the light of day in Henry IV as Prince Hal's best friend and mentor. The swaggering, boasting and brawling character proved so popular that Shakespeare pulled a Rocky and worked his amazingly popular comic creation into Henry IV, part 2, Henry V, and finally, the rowdy battle of the sexes The Merry Wives of Windsor on which Verdi's opera is based.
— Read more at jam.canoe.ca

MUSIC buffs will be able to bid for slices of musical history after the Welsh National Opera launched an online auction. From this week, WNO's official birthday, the 60-year-old opera company will be online selling off some of its past history and offering experiences for sale such as the opportunity to be an extra in one of their productions.
— Read more at

Robert Orr, a composer, organist, and teacher who served as the first chair of the Scottish Opera, died on April 9, the Glasgow Herald reports. Born in Brechin, Scotland, Orr began his musical life playing an organ built by his father, an amateur cabinet-maker. He studied at the Royal College of Music and Cambridge before traveling to Italy to study with Alfredo Casella and to Paris to work with Nadia Boulanger.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

[The Met's least-inventive director turns in a bizarre swan song. But the stars of his Don Pasquale sound (and look) great.]
For nearly 40 years, the Austrian actor-director Otto Schenk has been a major force in defining the sober, conservative, inoffensively representative production styles that older Metropolitan Opera audiences seem to enjoy best. Seen in that light, Schenk?s ultrabusy new staging of Donizetti's charming opera buffa Don Pasquale, announced as his final Met project, is an astonishing nonstop celebration of vulgar comic shtick. What a difference from Schenk's most familiar and frequently revived Met production: Wagner's epic "Ring" cycle, a literal-minded, storybook approach that is not so much comfortably traditional as it is theatrically inert and intellectually brain-dead. You may not like his Don Pasquale either, but no one can say that nothing happens.
— Read more at New York Magazine

Melisande, so often a waif in a nightgown, gets a sexy red dress in the Salzburg Easter Festival's new production by Stanislas Nordey of Debussy's enigmatic opera.
In this "Pelleas et Melisande," Golaud and his relatives, the doomed royal family of Allemonde, all wear identical white Pierrot costumes. They move through a black, timeless space, past giant gray boxes which open like books to reveal bold illustrations in black, white and red. There is no attempt at realism. No props, no furniture, no sea, castle, pond or gate.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

Opera Memphis has announced its 2006-07 season, which features Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors, Ponchielli's La Gioconda, and Bizet's Carmen.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

University of Louisville Opera Theatre will take its annual spring production downtown this year when it stages Gilbert and Sullivan?s "The Mikado" in the Kentucky Center's Bomhard Theater.
The move will allow the group to produce a larger and more elaborate show than it can at the School of Music.
The limitation of performing theater in a concert hall is one factor that has determined the work Opera Theatre stages each spring, said stage director Michael Ramach. The show and the way it is produced have to "fit the space."
— Read more at University of Louisville

Blame the rain. William A. Ryberg, the Oregon Symphony's president for the past two years, is moving to Florida to lead the Palm Beach Opera. Actually, Ryberg, 48, is a singer himself, so the incessant rain isn't entirely to blame. He wants to rekindle his love of opera, he said Monday.
— Read more at oregonlive.com

This will go down as the season Metropolitan Opera audiences fell in love with Anna Netrebko.
The Russian soprano, with voice and acting ability to match her raven-haired beauty, is currently romping through the company's first production in a quarter-century of Donizetti's sometimes-frothy, sometimes-poignant comic opera "Don Pasquale."
— Read more at Yahoo! News

The Minnesota Opera's "Orazi & Curiazi" is more Romeo & Tybalt than Romeo & Juliet.
The most thrilling duet is between the two male leads, Scott Piper as Curiazio and Ashley Holland as Orazio, who share childhood memories, recall a battle in which one saved the other's life and then grumble about having to kill each other for the glory of Rome - everything short of "I wish I knew how to quit you."
— Read more at St. Paul Pioneer Press

Opera singer Placido Domingo will be honoured with a lifetime achievement award at this year's Classical Brit Awards. He will also perform at the event alongside the likes of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Vittorio Grigolo. The teenage violin virtuoso Nicola Benedetti has landed two Classical Brit Award nominations, a year after landing her recording deal.
— Read more at itv.com

[Stagings Range From Traditional to Postmodern, but the Singing Is Strictly Sublime]
When the Washington Opera made its first foray into Wagner -- a 1975 production of "Die Walkure," the second of four operas in the composer's epic cycle, "Der Ring des Nibelungen" -- fledgling Wagnerians wishing to explore the complete "Ring" had to satisfy themselves with one or two LP recordings, and use their imaginations to supply the costumes and scenery. Now, as the Washington National Opera unveils its first complete "Ring" (which began in March with the initial opera in the cycle, "Das Rheingold"), Wagner-curious listeners have four DVD "Rings" to choose from -- all featuring beautiful transfers and 5.1 surround sound -- to bring the sword-wielding heroes and treasure-hoarding dragons into their living rooms. And more video "Rings" are in the pipeline.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

Soprano Renée Fleming, who recorded a jazz-influenced album of standards last year, will appear on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz this week. The episode will be broadcast starting April 11 on NPR stations across the country; in the New York City area, it can be heard on WGBO 88.3 FM on April 13 at 6:30 p.m. (Check local listings.)
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Thanks to the unprecedented success of joint concerts by José Carreras, Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti, it has become easier to encounter tenors in threes, even at New York's Metropolitan Opera, where Canadians have formed the latest informal threesome.
It was Toronto-based tenor Richard Margison who brought this fact to my attention recently in a lounge at London's Heathrow Airport, as we were both returning from European musical adventures ? he from singing Radames in Verdi's Aida in the spa oasis of Baden Baden, Germany.
— Read more at TheStar.com

Singer Bryn Terfel and composer Karl Jenkins have both been nominated for two Classical Brit Awards alongside Scottish teenager Nicola Benedetti.
Terfel and Jenkins compete in the album of the year category - Terfel is also up for best singer and Jenkins is nominated for best contemporary music.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

Having filled 88 percent of capacity during its first season at the Stephen and Mary Birch North Park Theatre, Lyric Opera San Diego intends to build on that success.
"The first year was all about getting in as many people as we could and making them interested in the theater," general director Leon Natker says of the inaugural series that concluded earlier this month at the renovated, 713-seat venue. "The second season is part of the maturing process and will include works that are a little more sophisticated, even out of the ordinary."
— Read more at The San Diego Union-Tribune

A DISCIPLE of Maria Callas, la Divina? Who would have suspected?
The soprano Soile Isokoski, a preacher's daughter from rural Finland, is not the glamorous type. Onstage and off, her body language retains its rustic accent. Her Nordic timbre - true, clear silver ? has nothing to do with Callas's thousand hues of smoke and fire. Of the roles in her eclectic repertory (Mozart and Richard Strauss, light Wagner, gentle Verdi, unfashionable French), none are associated with Callas.
— Read more at New York Times

HAND-WRINGING seems to be the opera fan's stock in trade. Perhaps we even enjoy it. Nothing is as good today, we moan, as it was in the old days, and if you don't believe us, we can present you with stacks of recordings to prove it. If you're not familiar with our old recordings, it sends us into yet another paroxysm: not only is our beloved legacy vanishing, but it is being forgotten.
— Read more at New York Times

Rapturously received at the Théâtre du Châtelet in 2000, Laurent Pelly's production of La Belle Hélène has lost a little sparkle in translation to St Martin's Lane. Excepting an injudicious swipe at Charlotte Church in Act II - and whatever your opinion of her singing, Ms Church seems more likely to launch a thousand ships than Dame Felicity Lott - the problem isn't Kit Hesketh-Harvey's waspish libretto. It's the British attitude to sex.
— Read more at Independent Online Edition

The New York City Opera has divided its spring season down the middle, with box-office safeties on one side and more adventurous fare on the other. "Carmen," which obviously falls in the first camp, dutifully returned to the New York State Theater on Friday night in a traditional production by Jonathan Eaton.
— Read more at New York Times

At 7:30 p.m. Thursday at New Mexico State University-Carlsbad, Room 101, the Carlsbad Arts and Humanities Alliance will once again present the Santa Fe Opera apprentice singers in an exciting, up-close concert.
The event is part of the annual spring tour, which began March 23 in Taos and will end May 7 in Corpus Christi and will include performances in 19 communities throughout New Mexico and Texas. Admission is free and everyone is welcome.
— Read more at currentargus.com

Members of Glimmerglass Opera's Young American Artists Program will appear in a series of free concerts in New York State and New England from April 29-May 16, performing excerpts from the company's upcoming 2006 festival season, including a world-premiere opera.
The tour will include semi-staged arias and ensembles from the company's productions of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance, Rossini's The Barber of Seville, Janácek's Jenufa, and Stephen Hartke and Philip Littell's The Greater Good, which will get its word premiere at Glimmerglass this summer.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Standard-repertoire operas don't get much harder to pull off than Verdi's Falstaff, a subtle, sophisticated score that demands performance and production skills of a comparable sophistication.
Opera Lyra Ottawa's production, which opened Saturday evening in the National Arts Centre's Southam Hall, was an overall success and a major feather in the company's cape.
— Read more at canada.com

Donovan Singletary, the Stetson University senior who won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions March 26, will sing in "Porgy and Bess" Tuesday. The bass baritone's performance is part of the Stetson Opera Theatre's production of George Gershwin's classic opera.
— Read more at Daytona Beach News-Journal Online

Richard Pearlman was known to his colleagues at Lyric Opera of Chicago as a walking encyclopedia on every aspect of opera from stage direction to makeup and was happy to answer any question about opera on his Web site.
Beyond his love of opera and the singing voice, however, was his dedication to the training of young American singers. His appointment in 1995 as director of the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists, the company's apprentice wing, gave him the ideal base from which to prepare the next generation of vocal talent for the professional challenges awaiting them.
— Read more at Chicago Tribune

The Bavarian State Opera's 2006-07 season, the first under music director Kent Nagano, includes four new productions and two world premieres, the company announced.
Opening night on October 27 features a double bill of a new production of Strauss's Salome, directed by William Friedkin with sets by Hans Schavernoch; and the world premiere of Wolfgang Rihm's one-act opera Das Gehege, set to a libretto by Botho Strauss.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

SOPRANO ELZA VAN DEN HEEVER doesn't like to remember her first solo performance. She was still a teenager in her native South Africa, and it didn't go well.
"I went onstage and opened my mouth, and not a sound came out," she recalls. "I was so terrified, I ran off crying and vowed I would never sing again."
She's come a long way since then. Currently in her second year as a San Francisco Opera Adler Fellow, she's become a young artist of remarkable poise and assurance. Audiences can hear van den Heever in recital this Sunday at Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco. Appearing as part of the Schwabacher Debut Recital series, she'll sing a varied program of works by Berlioz, Berg, Debussy, Duparc, Brahms, Faure, Purcell and Walton.
— Read more at ContraCostaTimes.com

The Finnish National Opera once played to full houses but the company has reportedly fallen on hard times and low attendance rates may force it to lay off staff next year.
One in four seats stood empty during performances last year and the company reported a 1.8 million euro (2.16 million dollar) loss for the full year 2005, opera spokesman Heli Rislakki told AFP.
According to Finnish media, the opera house will have to temporarily lay off 600 full-time employees, including artists, technicians and administrative staff, and could even slash some jobs permanently in a bid to break even.
— Read more at Yahoo! News

A FORMER waitress became an operatic diva at the weekend with a triumphant debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York that was broadcast to millions around the world.
Erika Sunnegardh, working as an understudy, sang the starring role of Leonore in Beethoven's Fidelio to rapturous applause, after 18 years of waiting at tables and doing other odd jobs for a living.
— Read more at timesonline.co.uk

In a rags-to-riches tale that should give struggling singers some food for thought, Erika Sunnegardh went from waitressing to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in just 18 months.
After nearly two decades of trying to break into the big time, the 40-year-old Swedish-American soprano made a triumphant Met debut Saturday as the replacement for star Karita Mattila in a performance of Beethoven's "Fidelio" that was broadcast internationally to about 11 million listeners in 40 countries.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

Boy singers are key to the production of Mozart's "The Magic Flute" -- a trio from the Nevada Opera Youth Chorus will sing the parts of the genii, a comforting chorus in this fairy-tale opera. "It is important to have children in 'The Magic Flute,' because it adds an innocent wisdom to the opera," said William Russell, the executive director of Nevada Opera, which is producing the opera Friday and Sunday at the Pioneer Center. "These three spirits give enlightened information to help two of the major characters past their problems."
— Read more at RGJ.com

The Cleveland Opera and Lyric Opera Cleveland have merged into a new organization called Opera Cleveland, the two companies announced.
The board of the new company met yesterday and elected its chairman: Peter L. Rubin, formerly the president of the Cleveland Opera's board.
According to news reports, the boards of the two companies voted to approve the merger in February, but the official announcement of the merger was delayed, apparently because the companies were waiting for local foundations to commit funds for the transition. The foundations, including the Cleveland Foundation, have now pledged more than $1 million to the new company.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Beginning on April 18 and continuing through May 19, New Jersey Opera Theater will conduct a state-wide tour of their innovative children's program "Interact with Classics." This program consists of professional opera singers performing children's versions of Bizet's Carmen and Mozart's The Magic Flute for grammar and middle school children.
Prior to each performance, approximately 15 students from each school are chosen to participate with the singers onstage by collaborating in singing, dancing and performing minor roles. In addition to these student onstage participants, every child in the audience joins in the performance by becoming the chorus and singing along with the performers from their seats in the audience.
— Learn more at njot.org

As part of the week long Independent Voices Festival sponsored by Souvenir Press, London audiences will be able to enjoy a unique evening with one of the most celebrated singers in the world, the bass-baritone Sir Willard White, in his tribute to Paul Robeson. WHERE: Bloomsbury Theatre, London.
WHEN: Monday April 24th, 7.30pm
— Learn more at thebloomsbury.com

The week-long Independent Voices Festival, sponsored by Souvenir Press, comes to a triumphant conclusion with this rare chance to see the return of this world class French opera and cabaret star Hélène Delavault to London. This extraordinary recital ranging from Purcell to Brecht, Gainsbourg, Coward and Cole Porter, is intended to confront the reality of being a woman today and has been assembled especially for the Independent Voices Festival.
WHERE: Bloomsbury Theatre, London.
WHEN: Saturday April 29th, 7.30pm
— Learn more at thebloomsbury.com

At its most powerful, opera takes human, religious and political dramas of the past and gives them enduring relevance. "Adriana Mater," the new opera by the heralded Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, borrows its haunting narrative from our own age and shows it to be a story for all time.
— Read more at New York Times

The Holy Cross departments of theatre and music, supported by the Lilly Vocation Discernment Initiative, will present a rare opportunity to see an Arja prembon, or Balinese opera. Dr. I Wayan Dibia, visiting fellow in Balinese arts, has organized a New England tour of Adhipusengara, based on Sophocle?s Oedipus Rex. This performance will feature a cast of hugely accomplished musicians and performers of world renown, including I Wayan Dibia, Ni Made Wiratini, Ni Nyoman Manik Suryani, I Nengah Susila, Ni Made Pujawati, I Nyoman Saptanyana, and Ida Ayu Ari Candrawati.
— Read more at holycross.edu

Jealousy can be a bitch.
Exploring the impact of jealousy and its repercussions is the idea behind Victoria's Out Of The Box Productions' presentation of The Third Taboo. The opera debuts tomorrow night at Metro Studio, examining what stage director/writer Gwen Dobie calls one of society's long-standing mental battles.
— Read more at goldstreamgazette.com

The University of Wyoming Wind Ensemble, conducted by Robert Belser, will present its final concert of the 2005-06 academic year on Sunday, April 9, at 3 p.m. in the Fine Arts Center concert hall. Admission is free.
The performance offers the audience "Opera Without Singing," featuring marches, intermezzi, overtures, and dances from some of the most popular operas in the repertory. Special guests joining the Wind Ensemble on the second half will be the Alumni Concert Band -- former band.
— Read more at uwyo.edu

Although it may seem unnecessary to say so, sometimes opera can be fun. Italian comic opera can be musically formulaic, simplistic in plot, and even thin on entertainment. However, the best examples, when presented well, are irresistibly light-hearted. Washington National Opera's production of Gaetano Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore is just that. Yes, it's a silly story and the characters are flimsy, the staging is a reprise of Stephen Lawless's 1997 version -- altered in minor ways this time without the director's approval -- but it is well sung, beautiful to look at, and just plain fun.
— Read more at DCist.com

Katherine Jolly has been steadily climbing the career ladder, but on March 26 she took a big step up. Jolly, 28, a coloratura soprano, was one of five winners of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. That's huge in the world of opera. Winning the Met auditions brings a singer to the eyes and ears of the people who run the art form in this country.
— Read more at stltoday.com

While the Met orchestra's conductor is on the disabled list, five substitute conductors?usually booked years in advance-were coaxed into the pit.
— Read more at New York Magazine

Six years after the success of her first opera, L'Amour de loin, Kaija Saariaho is back with a modern fable [Adriana Mater], a striking story of lust and desire for vengeance.
Adriana is raped by Tsargo, who has been transformed by war from a drunk into a swaggering bully. He disappears. She gives birth and worries if her son Yonas will be Cain or Abel. Years later, the adolescent Yonas resolves to kill his father but falters when he sees Tsargo is now blind and a broken man.
— Read more at FT.com

English National Opera's production of Offenbach's La Belle Hélène, directed by Laurent Pelly and with Felicity Lott in the title role, opened on last night and runs through May 19.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The Ballad Singer strikes up with the one about Mack The Knife - "Mackie Messer," more properly - and the upside-down underworld odyssey of Brecht and Weill's Threepenny Opera begins.
The show runs the gamut through the stews, prisons and streetlife of a L ondon that?s really Weimar Republic Berlin (or anywhere "civilized" today) as the quarrels and antics of beggars, crooks and whores are valorized in great songs that have become the staple of cabaret.
Virago Theatre Co.'s reprise of their sold-out run of this masterpiece of musical theater, which plays this Saturday at Alameda's Masonic Hall, capitalizes on all these elements.
— Read more at Berkeley Daily Planet

UCA [University of Central Arkansas] Theatre and the UCA Department of Music will present "The Threepenny Opera" by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill on April 13, 14, and 15 at 7:30 p.m. in the Reynolds Performance Hall on the UCA campus.
— Read more at UCA Today

For most of her adult life, Erika Sunnegardh was the epitome of a frustrated performer in New York City. Her artistic vocation was singing, but to make ends meet she endured the usual drudgery - waiting on tables in the Bronx where she lives and working as a tour guide. To keep her vocal chords alive, she did the occasional wedding and funeral.
— Read more at Independent Online

It all looked so promising on paper: Four winning principals in Donizetti's "Don Pasquale," the wise and urbane 1843 masterpiece last heard at the Metropolitan Opera more than a quarter-century ago.
Alas, that the task of staging "Don Pasquale" was entrusted to Otto Schenk. A house regular since 1968, Schenk is best known locally for his Met production of "The Ring of the Nibelungen," which embalms Wagner's would-be revolutionary saga in caveman kitsch. For "Don Pasquale," an end-of-an-era work that gently parodies the musical and dramatic stuff of earlier comic operas, Schenk served up a mishmash of slapstick cliches: overblown hand gestures, rickety furniture that gives way when sat upon, a chorus of servants who twitch and shimmy as if at a hoedown.
— Read more at Newsday.com [thanks vilianefille]

[Adamo's new opera of Lysistrata is as timely as can be, despite a few too many camp touches.]
It's eerie, even disturbing, how relevant some operas can seem in troubled times. Beethoven's Fidelio, now playing at the Metropolitan with Karita Mattila as a sizzling Leonore, makes an impassioned statement about abusive political-imprisonment practices-in no particular country, but the gritty contemporary setting of the Met's current production will inevitably conjure up thoughts of Gitmo or Abu Ghraib.
Meanwhile, over at the City Opera, Mark Adamo's Lysistrata, or the Nude Goddess hits even more sensitive nerves as the on-strike women of Athens and Sparta march across the stage carrying stop this war signs and deliver a jolting ultimatum to their menfolk: no peace, no sex. If only Iraq could be solved so simply.
— Read more at New York Magazine [Related news items]&nb