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

[They don't make them like they used to. Can Renée Fleming and Audra McDonald save this endangered species?]
Divas are supposed to be larger than life and do whatever they please, and perhaps once upon a time they actually did. Today, with opera-house budgets tight and bad behavior discouraged, offstage and on, divas can't carry on the way they used to, and the world is a duller place. Renée Fleming is one of the few American singers who now aspire to the title, and even her considerable clout with opera impresarios and record-company executives has definite limits. Perhaps that explains why her latest recital on the Decca label, HOMAGE: The Age of the Diva, has a certain wistful, wishful-thinking tone about it, beginning with the album cover photo: the soprano in a come-hither halter gown, a filmy wrap invitingly extended in outstretched hands, her bobbed hair held in place by one of those suggestive head straps that sex goddesses wore in the flapper era.
— Read more at New York Magazine

By the time her stepfather Herodes starts sucking Salome's naked breasts, it is clear that nothing will save William Friedkin's Munich staging of the 1905 Richard Strauss opera about the petulant veiled princess.
Director Friedkin, better known in cinema circles ("The Exorcist," "12 Angry Men") than in the opera world, piled on obscenity and indecency to depressing effect in his production of "Salome." Friedkin's second-ever opera staging read like a dreary catalog of beginner's errors, the most blatant being the assumption that nudity on the opera stage is the same thing as eroticism.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

Soprano Renée Fleming's tribute to opera's legendary leading ladies, the latest installment of the Michael Tilson Thomas/San Francisco Symphony Mahler cycle, the first live recording by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Esa-Pekka Salonen from Walt Disney Concert Hall, and a recital recording by young English trumpet soloist Alison Balsom have all landed on the latest Billboard classical chart.
HOMAGE: The Age of the Diva, a Decca release by Fleming and the Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theater (a/k/a the Kirov) under Valery Gergiev, arrives on the chart at no. 3. The disc is a collection of soprano arias associated with such great prima donnas of the past as Lotte Lehmann, Maria Jeritza, Rosa Ponselle and Mary Garden.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

This city's love affair with opera, now more than 350 years old, has survived the fires that regularly razed 18th- and 19th-century theaters as well as regime changes, revolutions, two world wars and, most recently, the reduction of crucial subsidies from Bavaria's regional government. In that context a change of command at the Bavarian State Opera can hardly be deemed traumatic.
— Read more at New York Times

There were the buff, hard-bodied male and female models in Egyptian garb serving as lobby eye candy and Miami Beach-style décor. There was a clever opening fanfare composed by Stewart Robertson for the occasion, and an assembly of singers and other personnel acknowledged for their contributions to Florida Grand Opera through the decades. There were the three half-hour intermissions that stretched the evening to Wagnerian dimensions. There was the warm water from the drinking fountains and the even hotter $18 glasses of champagne.
— Read more at South Florida Sun-Sentinel

When Julius Rudel stepped into the New York City Opera orchestra pit last week to conduct the debut of a new production of Mozart's "Così Fan Tutte," the applause was much louder and longer than what normally greets a conductor.
It was the audience's way of welcoming Rudel back after a long absence. He had not been at City Opera in 26 years.
— Read more at New York Daily News

San Francisco Opera has announced the twelve recipients of the 2007 Adler Fellowships for young artists.
The eleven singers selected are: sopranos Rhoslyn Jones (British Columbia), Heidi Melton (Washington state), Melody Moore (Tennessee), Elza van den Heever (South Africa), and Ji Young Yang (South Korea); mezzo-sopranos Kendall Gladen (Missouri) and Katharine Tier (Australia); tenors Matthew O'Neill (Indiana), Sean Panikkar (Pennsylvania), and Noah Stewart (New York); and bass-baritone Jeremy Galyon (Pennsylvania).
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Oswego Opera Theatre, Inc. proudly presents Guiseppi Verdi?s tragic love story, La Traviata, at Waterman Theatre on Nov. 4 and 5.
Both performances are matinees, Saturday at 4 p.m. and on Sunday at 2 p.m.
— Read more at Oswego Daily News

[Anna Netrebko is opera's fashion queen, but she has real substance, says Hugh Canning]
The antiheroine of Massenet's Manon is opera's Material Girl. It's a rags-to-riches-and-back-to-rags tale of an ingénue who escapes from her convent, falls in love with a young but impoverished aristocrat, then is seduced by the bright lights and gambling dens of 18th-century Paris and the money, jewels and clothes to be gleaned from rich and randy old men with an eye for a bit of skirt. It's appropriate, then, that the emerging superstar soprano from Krasnodar, in Russia, Anna Netrebko, should have sung her first Manon in a production by Vincent Paterson, who directed and choreographed Madonna's Blonde Ambition tour.
— Read more at Sunday Times

There's a new opera in town this week from the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. It's the orchestra's first commission in its 25 years. But there's no time like the present to uncork something new, like "To Hell and Back," to celebrate a group that celebrates the past. After all, says conductor Nicholas McGegan, the orchestra's director for the past 20 years, "we can't sit there and call up Bach and say, 'Could we have another Passion, please?'"
So that's one reason San Francisco composer Jake Heggie ("Dead Man Walking") was commissioned, in 2003 to write the new one-act opera. It has a libretto by Gene Scheer, who wrote the libretto for Tobias Picker's opera "An American Tragedy" and collaborated with Heggie on two song cycles, "Statuesque" and "Rise and Fall."
— Read more at sfgate.com

With a huge chorus, a formidable cast of soloists, and a massive orchestra spread over the stage of Symphony Hall Thursday night, the Boston Symphony Orchestra triumphed in its first performance of Schoenberg's colossal, daunting opera "Moses und Aron." It was a highlight of James Levine's local advocacy for a composer alternately feared, reviled , and lionized but never viewed with indifference.
— Read more at The Boston Globe

A Berlin opera house said on Friday it would go ahead with plans to stage a Mozart opera in which the severed head of the Prophet Mohammad is seen, after police reversed their earlier finding that it posed a security risk.
"Those in charge of the decision over whether to stage the Mozart opera 'Idomeneo' ... have decided to aim for two performances this year," the Berlin-based Deutsche Oper said in a statement
— Read more at Yahoo! News

Usually at the Metropolitan Opera, a single debut among the leads or on the podium is enough to create advance buzz. But on Wednesday night, when Otto Schenk's grimly realistic 1989 production of Verdi's "Rigoletto" returned to the repertory, there were three notable debuts: the young Malta-born tenor Joseph Calleja, who sang the Duke of Mantua; Ekaterina Siurina, a lovely Russian coloratura soprano, as Gilda; and the experienced Austrian conductor Friedrich Haider. The Met veteran in the cast was the powerful Spanish baritone Juan Pons, who has been presenting his impetuous, if vocally blustery, portrayal of Rigoletto at the house since 1990.
— Read more at New York Times

Can theatrical lightning strike twice? That is the pressing question surrounding the Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, to give the full title of a £3.5m musical opening next month, of which one thing is already certain: no competing show has a better score. But its director, Trevor Nunn, has set himself a sizeable challenge.
It is 20 years ago since Nunn electrified Glyndebourne with a production of Porgy and Bess, starring Willard White and conducted by Simon Rattle, that remains stored on this theatregoer's mental hard drive. Passionate and furious, soaring and soulful, it restored a would-be opera from 1930s America to its proper place in the international canon. Performed across three Glyndebourne seasons, and in a revised form at Covent Garden, it lent a racial diversity to a repertoire that wasn't used to mixing the Gershwins' Catfish Row with Mozart and the like.
— Read more at Sunday Times

When it comes to opera, Rhode Islanders seem to go in for Verdi and Puccini, anything with high drama and lots of spectacle. But Opera Providence is trying to change all that.
The company is opening its season next weekend with an impressionistic "tango operita" by Argentine Nuevo tango master Astor Piazzolla. Performances of Maria de Buenos Aires are scheduled Friday and Saturday at the Columbus Theatre on Broadway.
— Read more at The Providence Journal

A German opera company said yesterday it would bring back a Mozart opera cancelled because of security fears over a scene featuring the severed head of the Prophet Mohammed. The Deutsche Oper Berlin said it hoped to stage two performances of the controversial Hans Neuenfels production of Mozart's Idomeneo before the end of the year, after receiving a new security assessment from police.
— Read more at globeandmail.com

[Marcello Giordani hits his stride at the Metropolitan Opera]
Talk about back-door debuts: Tenor Marcello Giordani's first performance with the Metropolitan Opera took place in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. That was 1993, but this year, the Sicilian-born Giordani has nabbed the glitziest gig of all: opening night as Pinkerton in Anthony Minghella's new staging of Puccini's Madama Butterfly. Pinkerton is one of four roles Giordani, now 43, sings at the Met this season, along with Enzo in Ponchielli's La Gioconda, Rodolfo in Puccini's La Bohème and Gabriele in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra. He also performs during the Columbus Day Parade and takes part in the Richard Tucker Music Foundation gala in November. So how is he feeling before his New York stagionissima?
— Read more at Time Out New York [thanks viliane fille]

Handel's oratorio Theodora (1750, HWV 68) is set during the persecution of Diocletian. To honor the emperor's birthday, the President of Antioch, Valens, orders the universal acceptance of the rites in honor of Jove, knowing that the local Christians will not accept. In this infamous staged production from Glyndebourne in 1996, director Peter Sellars cast the Romans as a modern imperialist nation -- you know who! -- with Valens (the booming Frode Olsen) as a business-suited American president, with his "crowd of heathens" as a band of ugly Americans holding cans of soda, his soldiers Septimius (the sweet tenor Richard Croft) and Didymus (countertenor David Daniels) and their legion as orange-jumpsuited paratroopers.
— Read more at Charles T. Downey - ionarts

Before settling on the title "Otello," Verdi played with the idea of calling his second-to-last stage work "Iago." Wednesday's production by the Vienna State Opera showed why.
Like the Shakespeare play it is based on, the opera focuses on the Moorish general and his wife, Desdemona, and their story of love gone wrong.
— Read more at canoe.ca

Desire, anarchic and insidious, snakes its way through the opening measures of Mozart's "Così fan tutte." Sinuous woodwinds and breathless strings flutter and cascade, introducing this inscrutable romp, which centers on a scheme designed to reveal the supposed inconstancy of the fair sex - hence the title, "So Do All Women."
— Read more at Newsday.com [thanks viliane fille]

[Magdalena Kozená brings her sensational artistry to Lincoln Center's Great Performers series in November.]
Her singing voice is lit from within with shades of amber and gold. So when mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozená speaks, her earthy, assertive inflections and throaty laugh come as a surprise.
— Read more at PlaybillArts [thanks viliane fille]

A rising opera star who gained fame by subbing for Luciano Pavarotti suffered an accident on a Manhattan street. But tenor Salvatore Licitra was ready to take the stage Thursday with his entire arm in a sling, singing the role that was Enrico Caruso's trademark.
"The pain was unbearable," tenor Salvatore Licitra said after the mishap. "But I hate not to sing this role that was made for my vocal cords. I promised people that I'd sing."
— Read more at International Herald Tribune

Just as she found food and the Bard's work to be an excellent pairing, Segan has found a natural match in food and opera for a delectable reprise.
"The Opera Lover's Cookbook" is a lavish production stuffed with more than 125 recipes. It's launched with a foreword by delicious diva Renee Fleming and a nod to Rossini with a William Tell apple martini from chapter one, "Bel Canto Elegant Five-Course Dinner."
— Read more at The Oneida Daily Dispatch

When most people hear the word "opera," they think of a convoluted plot set to a complex musical score - and it frightens them.
If that's the case, those wanting to get a taste of opera may want to venture out to the James Madison University Opera Theatre's production of "The Magic Flute" at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday in the Wilson Hall Auditorium.
— Read more at The Daily News Record

New York's Metropolitan Opera is to relay live broadcasts of its performances on the Internet as part of its policy to open the rarefied world to a wider audience, the company announced.
The weekly performances start Wednesday and will feature top artists such as Placido Domingo, famed as one of the Three Tenors, and longtime Met conductor James Levine.
— Read more at Yahoo! News

The clearer experimental theater becomes, the more its poetic allure is threatened.
That threat was ever present last week when Violet Fire, a minimalist opera about electricity wizard Nikola Tesla, emerged at the Brooklyn Academy of Music after a workshop two years ago at Temple University.
— Read more at Philadelphia Inquirer

The Granite State Opera presentation of "Carmen" is a done deal. Yes, you've missed another one. This latest production was lovely, the vocals quite wonderful. But it never pushed the passion the piece calls for. This after all is "Carmen." It's about passion. It's a bubbling cauldron of greed, seduction, infatuation, betrayal and lust. There's an expectation it will dazzle beyond the vocals.
— Read more at seacoastonline.com

Washington National Opera and the National Museum of Women in the Arts will celebrate "The Year of the Woman in Opera" during WNO's 2006-2007 season. The two organizations will offer a series of three events featuring performances, discussions, and lectures by singers, artistic staff, and opera experts.
The series begins on Sunday, October 29 with "How the Masters Wrote for the Female: Puccini's Butterfly and Beyond," hosted by William Berger. Incorporating live performances as illustrations, Berger will discuss how Puccini and other composers utilized women, both as performers and characters, in writing for opera.
— Read more at Yahoo! News

Cadboro Bay is a long way from the bright lights of New York and Paris. And it's been a long time since Pierrette and her late husband Leopold Simoneau were the toast of opera lovers the world over.
Their remarkable career is recognized on new postage stamps issued by Canada Post last week.
— Read more at oakbaynews.com

A selection of opera's best-loved and most recognized arias will be performed by a stellar cast of internationally renowned singers and musicians as part of a festive Alumni Opera Gala.
The performance, titled "Bravi, tutti!": thank-you, everyone; will be held Thursday, Nov. 9, and Saturday, Nov. 11, at 7:30 p.m. at the School of Music at UNCG.
— Read more at uncg.edu

Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" sometimes seems cursed by its own easy charm. The story deals with very ordinary people -- indeed, ordinary poor people -- and its bounty of popular tunes more readily invites comparison with Broadway than with grand opera.
At best, "Porgy and Bess" sustains a kind of grudging respect as a "folk opera" -- of the folk and for those folks who perhaps aren't quite up for legitimate opera.
— Read more at The Detroit News

Portland Opera has received a $2.1 million grant from the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation. The grant is the largest in the opera company's 42-year history and will provide general operating support over three years.
"Receiving this grant bolsters our confidence in our plans for the future," said Christopher Mattaliano, general director.
— Read more at oregonlive.com

Seventh and eighth grade students of Canyon Middle had the most exciting Thursday last week, with SF Opera singers performing for them in the school auditorium.
Along with Jennifer Ashworth (soprano), Jason Sarten (tenor) Chris Corley (baritone), and Mary Martin (piano), school children were on stage in supporting roles, properly dressed in costumes and collaborating with professionals as if they have been doing it all their lives.
— Read more at ebPublishing.com

The Richmond Area Arts Council will present a 3 p.m. opera and choral concert Sunday as part of its popular Stained Glass Series.
Rising opera star Mela Dailey will join Louisville's Derby City Chorus for a special double-bill presentation at the First Presbyterian Church, 330 West Main St., Richmond.
— Read more at The Richmond Register

An eastern Idaho woman was among 18 hopefuls who tried out over the weekend for the Metropolitan Opera during auditions for America's most prestigious competition for young opera singers.
— Read more at Times-News Online

Deborah Voigt used to joke that if she were ever to portray Strauss's Salome, the "Dance of the Seven Veils" would have to be turned into the "Dance of the Seventy-Seven Veils."
But that was in the days when she struggled with obesity. On Saturday night at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, two years after undergoing gastric bypass surgery and slimming down to her svelte new figure, Ms. Voigt sang her first staged performances of "Salome"in a new production of Strauss's 1905 opera directed by Francesca Zambello. It was a personal and artistic milestone for this beloved Illinois-born soprano, who must have felt as if she were making a second professional debut.
— Read more at New York Times

The plush Royal Opera House, more accustomed to the strains of Puccini, Verdi and Mozart, is reverberating to Caribbean rhythms and dialects with a new work called "Bird of Night".
The opera is the first composition by a woman to be commissioned by Covent Garden, and the fact that Dominique Le Gendre is from Trinidad makes her breakthrough into the white male-dominated world of classical music all the more surprising.
— Read more at Scotsman.com

The Museum of Modern Art raised more money from private sources in 2005 than any other not-for-profit museum in the U.S., while the Metropolitan Opera received the most donations among performing arts institutions that year, according to a new survey.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

Lavish scenery and large casts can make full performances of Richard Strauss' opera "Der Rosenkavalier" ("The Knight of the Rose") cost-prohibitive.
As condensed versions go, opera fans would be hard-pressed to find one finer than that presented Saturday by the Illinois Symphony Orchestra, sopranos Saundra DeAthos and Steffanie Pearce and mezzo-soprano Leah Wool.
— Read more at SJ-R.COM

What an exciting time to be living in Brampton! A national award for our beautiful gardens and parks, the opening of the spectacular Rose Theatre, and the bourgeoning of Brampton's arts and culture are all evidence of Brampton's renaissance.
Brampton Lyric Opera, winner of the Best Overall Production at the 2006 Bloom Awards for the arts, and one of only 11 opera companies nationwide, is extremely proud to be part of this rebirth. Brampton can now rightly claim to be the cultural epicentre of Peel Region. There are more arts groups registered with the Brampton Arts Council than ever before ? including Brampton Lyric Opera, the only opera company in Peel.
— Read more at thebramptonnews.com

In talking of Lyric Opera's new production of Richard Strauss' "Salome," one could take up time and space with recitations of American soprano Deborah Voigt's banishment from the Royal Opera House Covent Garden because she could not have fit into that "little black dress" a director envisioned her character wearing. Or one might consider the pros and cons of today's possibilities for weight-loss surgery. But to do so would miss the real news of Saturday night's opening performance:
Voigt sings the hell out of this role.
— Read more at CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

[Singer Anna Russell got start in T.O. Took cheeky shows around the globe]
The fat lady has sung.
After a dazzling, often zany career spanning six decades, singer and comedian Anna Russell died Wednesday at 94 in the Australian seaside town of Bateman's Bay - half a world away from her former home in Unionville, Ont.
— Read more at TheStar.com

Lyric Opera of Chicago has received a grant from the Matthew Bucksbaum Family to support the company's local and national radio broadcasts.
The first broadcast of the current season - and the first for the company in four years - was of the October 21 opening performance of the new Francesca Zambello production of Salome, with Deborah Voigt in the title role.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Last Friday, members of the Washington Wagner Society, Wagnerians, and a few people who love Wagner got together for their 13th Evelyn Lear & Thomas Stewart Emerging Singers Concert at the German Embassy which was turned into a Thomas Stewart memorial event after his death on September 24th. Without his involvement, efforts, and energy, the Emerging Singers program would never have been what it is - or more likely never been at all. Introduced by an emotional Evelyn Lear, the performances (opera excerpts accompanied on the piano by Ms. Betty Bullock) were much more to the listeners than just variously successful interpretations of Elisabeth, Lohengrin, Sieglinde, Amfortas, et al. - they were tear-moist memories to a great Wagnerian and teacher who was with the performers and the audiences in heart and mind.
— Read more at ionarts

IN 1995, when Matthew Broderick was starring on Broadway in a popular revival of the Frank Loesser musical "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," I asked him a rather naïve question during an interview.
Once the producers had decided to revive this show, I wondered, when did they approach him to take on the daunting lead role, J. Pierrepont Finch, a blithely self-assured corporate climber?
— Read more at New York Times

It was no surprise that the formerly fat lady sang - and magnificently - in the opening of Richard Strauss' "Salome" at Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Soprano Deborah Voigt is a celebrated Strauss specialist, so her vocal glory was almost a given. But Voigt showed off some considerable acting skill Saturday night, as well; and she also got to dance and disrobe - at least partially.
And even when she died, as all Salomes must, Voigt did so with a difference.
— Read more at mercurynews.com

[Forget the rest - the diva to watch is Anna Caterina Antonacci. She talks to Rupert Christiansen]
Tall, raven-haired and classically beautiful, Anna Caterina Antonacci was born to be a prima donna. She's not one of those who flounce about huffing and squabbling, but golly, does she know how to pull rank and assert her dignity, both on stage and off. Recently, for example, her debut at New York's Metropolitan Opera was cancelled when her contract to sing Elvira in Don Giovanni was transferred to Angela Gheorghiu. As a sop, Antonacci was offered another role in the future. No thank you, she replied icily, she was no longer interested in appearing at the Met. In effect she had told the most powerful and prestigious opera house in the world to get stuffed. It takes guts to do that.
— Read more at telegraph.co.uk

At Covent Garden, the Royal Opera House made a substantial contribution to the Shostakovich (1906-1975) centenary by reviving Richard Jones's 2004 prize-winning production of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. It played through October 17th. At the October 13th performance, a full house thrilled to orchestral and vocal virtuosity, as well as acting of an unusually high caliber. The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, under conductor Antonio Pappano, would have been the undisputed star of the evening had it not been for the quality of the singing from most of the principals and even those in the minor roles.
— Read more at ionarts

Richard Strauss's Elektra (1909) has one of the great opening measures in operatic history. With a blare of brass (the same notes that will be heard again at the moment of Elektra's death) that gradually recedes to reveal the bleat of a bass clarinet, the audience is launched into the first scene, with the maidservants gossiping about Elektra's bizarre, enraged behavior. In this 1989 production at the Vienna State Opera, directed by Harry Kupfer, that shocking opening is underscored by the staging: the scene is wrapped in a black shroud-like curtain, ripped away at the opening brass shriek. The casting reunites two of the singers in the last Strauss DVD I reviewed, Die Frau ohne Schatten: Hungarian soprano Éva Marton in the title role and Michigan-born soprano Cheryl Studer as Chrysothemis, both of them for the first time in their respective roles.
— Read more at Charles T. Downey - ionarts

Kristin Chenoweth is going back to her roots as an opera singer.
The Tony winner will give a solo concert at the Metropolitan Opera on Jan. 19 and make her formal Met debut as Samira in John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles in March 2010.
"I kind of trained that way, and now I actually get to do it," she said this week.
— Read more at The Columbus Dispatch

Jules Massenet's Manon is Los Angeles Opera's latest large-scale production. It is a romantic drama about a young woman torn between true love and the promise of an extravagant lifestyle.
— Read more at The Epoch Times

Washington National Opera has announced that it will present a free, big-screen simulcast of the company's Madama Butterfly on November 12, at 2:00 P.M. to the public on Washington, D.C.'s National Mall.
The performance, which will feature Tatiana Borodina as Cio-Cio-San, Arturo Chacón-Cruz as Pinkerton, Elizabeth Batton's Suzuki and Luca Salsi as Sharpless is being presented as a gift from the company's trustees and other underwriters to the citizens of Washington, D.C. The production by Polish director Mariusz Trelinski premiered at Washington National Opera in 2001. The performance will be led by WNO's general director, Plácido Domingo.
— Read more at Opera News

In the past decade there has been an explosion in American opera with works such as Mark Adamo's Little Women, William Bolcom's A View From the Bridge, and Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking enjoying critical raves and audience popularity.
In terms of South Florida's opera scene, that success has had about as much local impact as early blizzards in Buffalo. Yes, Florida Grand Opera is premiering Daniel Carlson's Anna Karenina this season. But with a wealth of terrific, accomplished works from composers as stylistically diverse as John Adams and Marvin David Levy, American opera should be a regular component of local schedules, not a once-in-a-decade "event."
— Read more at South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Anna Russell, the prima donna of operatic parody who claimed to have begun her career as "leading soprano of the Ellis Island Opera Company," who said she learned to play the French horn from an article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and who gave indelibly grating performances of a song she identified as Blotz's Schlumpf to demonstrate what it is like to sing with "no voice but great art," died Wednesday in Bateman's Bay, New South Wales, Australia. She was 94.
— Read more at The Columbus Dispatch

Of all the characteristics which define Argentinian tenor Marcelo Alvarez, one shouts loudest: he had never been to an opera until he was 32.
Too busy running the family furniture business, he confined his singing to parties, with imitations of the Bee Gees a speciality.
— Read more at This is London

Like Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut's novel "Slaughterhouse-Five," Nikola Tesla is unstuck in time in "Violet Fire," a new opera that received its American premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Wednesday night. Tesla, an inventor and a pioneer in electricity and radio broadcasting, appears alone in the prologue, set after the demolition of his visionary World Broadcasting Tower in 1917.
— Read more at New York Times

In its continuing efforts to win a wider audience, the Washington National Opera plans to present its second free live simulcast from the Kennedy Center to the Mall on Nov. 12.
The opera will be Giacomo Puccini's "Madama Butterfly," in the acclaimed 2001 production by director Mariusz Trelinski. Tatiana Borodina will sing the title role, with Arturo Chacón-Cruz as Lieutenant Pinkerton. Placido Domingo, WNO's general director, will conduct the Washington Opera Orchestra and Chorus.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

It is not often that traditional Caribbean rhythms can be heard coming from London's Royal Opera House.
But Bird of Night, the first full-length opera from Dominique Le Gendre, intertwines the composer's background in classical music with the sounds she remembers from her native Trinidad.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

One of the world's most celebrated tenors, José Cura, opens the Belfast Festival at Queen's tomorrow night. Here, our classical music correspondent Rathcol catches up with the mellow maestro at his home in Madrid, and finds him insisting that good music is just like good wine and good sex - you just need to take your time.
Maestro Cura, can I ask you a few questions about your forthcoming concert in Belfast? "Well, ok, yes, but I must tell you that I am drunk."
— Read more at Belfast Telegraph

In the home designed by Christian de Portzamparc for New York City Opera, a great curving shell in bright red would wrap itself around the audience as everyone ascends an escalator to their seats.
De Portzamparc, 62, created a design that offers many sublime moments, one that orchestrates audience movement with the kind of balletic theatricality not seen since the Opera Garnier opened in 1874 -- in Paris, where de Portzamparc is based.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

It's a universal truth as old as time - musical guys get the girls.
But Philip Grant, Ken Lavigne and Frédérik Robert are proof that you don't have to be a long-haired, guitar-wielding badass rocker to do it.
As Romanza, they've been winning hearts and wooing audiences of all ages across North America for the past two years with their opera arias, love ballads, melting serenades and spine-tingling high Cs.
— Read more at Brockville Recorder & Times

Carolina Baroque's latest offering, "Handel at the Opera House," was an evening of enjoyment and enlightenment for the audience attending the Oct. 13 performance in the chapel of St. John's Lutheran Church. Not only were attendees treated to a high-quality musical performance, it was an education to experience Handel's music in a manner approximating that of the Baroque period. Music Director Dale Higbee selected an all-Handel program highlighting the composer's opera career.
— Read more at Salisbury Post

Lyric Opera of Chicago is seeking "street-fightin' men" for their production of Romeo and Juliet, directed by Ian Judge, which opens November 20.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

"It's a little funny in a way, the attention I'm getting for going back to City Opera," Julius Rudel said last week. "For 25 years I have been conducting at the Metropolitan Opera and nobody has written anything, or even noticed."
Mr. Rudel, 85, his crisp white hair still in its familiar combed-back wave, was sitting in his spacious Upper West Side apartment in the late afternoon sun, relaxing after a rehearsal for "Così Fan Tutte," which opens on Saturday. It will be the first opera he has conducted at New York City Opera since 1981. But before that - from 1957 to 1979, when he was the director of the company - Mr. Rudel conducted practically everything at City Opera, from new works by Carlisle Floyd to the company's first Handel opera, "Giulio Cesare." Today, City Opera is known for its Handel productions; in 1966, nobody did Handel at all.
— Read more at New York Times

Is it possible in today's climate for an opera diva to achieve mainstream stardom? Cover girl and TV personality Beverly Sills talks to the Met's Elena Park about the changing place of opera in contemporary culture...
— Read more at PlaybillArts

At 76, retired University of Wisconsin-Madison music professor Karlos Moser remembers the first time he heard and saw grand opera produced grandly.
He was studying at Princeton University in New Jersey and would slip into New York City to see productions at the famed Metropolitan Opera. That's where he saw the world's greatest singers in the world's greatest operas.
— Read more at The Capital Times

nternational opera star Ruth Ann Swenson has been diagnosed with breast cancer, her publicist said Wednesday.
The 43-year-old soprano, who has just completed singing the leading role of Marguerite in Gounod's "Faust" at the Metropolitan Opera, will undergo surgery Tuesday at Memorial Sloane-Kettering Cancer Center.
— Read more at nwsource.com

At the end of Mozart's 1790 opera Così fan tutte (commonly translated as "Women are like that"), the characters sing of how happy is the person who sees some good in everything. Well, there's plenty of good in this opera, both in the Canadian Opera Company cast and the orchestra, as premiered last night at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.
— Read more at TheStar.com

Richard Clifford gets a mischievous twinkle in his eye when he talks about the Intermountain Opera Association's fall production, Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Mikado."
He should. "The Mikado" has been delighting audiences young and old since its 1885 debut in New York City. It's filled with the beauty, humor and pageantry that made Gilbert and Sullivan among the most popular musical forces in history. Clifford -- a veteran British actor and director with dozens of credits ranging from feature films to acclaimed productions of the Royal Shakespeare Company in London -- will be directing "The Mikado" in Bozeman this weekend.
— Read more at The Bozeman Daily Chronicle

Love is never straightforward, it seems - in life or in art. Such is the case of the ill-fated romance in Verdi's opera "La Traviata."
In opera, casting is everything, and the most important role - that of Violetta - was cast well with soprano Maria Kanyova, who has an amazing vocal and stylistic range. She sang with sparkle and beauty, from the awe-inspiring vocal gymnastics of the first act to the softer, gentler passages in the last act ? and everything in between.
The only complaint about her voice was an occasional brief but tense-sounding growl at the onset of some of her vocal production. In a perfect world that wouldn't be there, but considering how great everything else sounded, it's forgivable.
— Read more at deseretnews.com

The Metropolitan Opera has named Donald Palumbo its new chorus master, beginning with the 2007-08 season. He succeeds Raymond Hughes, who is stepping down after sixteen seasons in the job.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Star soprano Renée Fleming will be making a personal appearance tomorrow at the Metropolitan Opera Shop to greet well-wishers and sign copies of her latest CD.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

WEST BAY OPERA, a small company performing in a small theater, is unfailingly big on quality.
"Macbeth" is not a huge audience draw anywhere, yet opera lovers are much poorer for not having experienced its power.
Giuseppe Verdi is indisputably the greatest opera composer. His melodic lines are genius; his orchestrations creative, leaving the listener in awe.
— Read more at Inside Bay Area

The capacity for reinvention is a necessary talent for any would-be diva. The transformation of an artist into a goddess ? for that is what "diva" means - must begin within; only self-starters need apply. If a lady wishes to be a diva, she must know her own worth, demand it from her colleagues and deliver it to her audience. Obstacles exist only to be demolished; nothing can stand in the way of a legend in the process of creating itself.
— Read more at Opera News

After a four-year hiatus, Lyric Opera of Chicago radio broadcasts will resume at 7:30 pm on October 21 with opening night of the company's new production of Salome, starring Deborah Voigt in the title role.
The performance will be broadcast live on WFMT-FM 98.7 in Chicago ? and streamed over the Internet at www.wfmt.com ? at 7:30 pm (US Central time).
— Read more at PlaybillArts

[American soprano Katie van Kooten has benefited from her time on the Royal Opera's Young Artists Programme even more than most.]
Back in November 2004, only a couple of months into her time at the ROH, she was offered a starring role in the last performance of a run of Puccini's La rondine, taking over from Angela Gheorghiu when the date became unavailable in her diary, and she later covered Rebecca Evans as Pamina in The Magic Flute at the last minute, to great acclaim.
— Read more at musicomh.com

Until his retirement at 37 from writing opera, Gioachino Rossini was incredibly lavish toward the art form, with nearly 40 operas to his credit. However, Seattle Opera has not been so generous to the composer. There have been many productions of "The Barber of Seville" -- no surprise -- and the occasional "La Cenerentola," but that is about the sum total.
— Read more at nwsource.com

The general and artistic director of the Shreveport Opera is going to China through a cultural exchange program to find new talent.
Eric Dillner will be in Beijing as a guest of the Chinese government between Oct. 31 and Nov. 3. ?I?m going there to audition Chinese artists to see if we can find ones that are the caliber of what we put on our main stage,? Dillner said.
— Read more at The Shreveport Times

Just when you think there can't possibly be anything new to see or hear in "Carmen," along comes Virginia Opera with a sparkling production that is equal parts glitter and nuance. General Director Paul Stuhlreyer III said it took 167 people to put together Friday night's performance at George Mason University's Center for the Arts. Every single participant deserves applause.
From the opening red-lit tableau, with cast members snapping their fingers like a 19th-century "West Side Story" gang, Dorothy Danner's staging was highly dramatic. The hustle-bustle of the first act was beautifully choreographed, especially a delightfully inventive children's chorus and changing of the guard.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

[Sets, costumes not missed in stripped-down performance of Massenet's Werther]
Opera on a budget -- no sets, no costumes, little direction, just singers standing on stage in a row before live musicians and their conductor who are not, for once, in a pit. It saves a bundle, reducing an opera to its basic music but it works if you use your imagination, and it doesn't take much. It's not such a stretch if you consider recorded operas, and this is better, being live.
— Read more at canada.com

The short but powerful opera "I Pagliacci" provided a winning start to Pittsburgh Opera's season Saturday night at the Benedum Center. Strong singing, dynamic conducting and a vibrant traditional staging of "I Pagliacci" made a strong case that this less than 80-minute opera, usually seen as part of a double-bill, is worth encountering on its own.
— Read more at Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Audra McDonald's career is as broad as her vocal range. (For the record, the Broadway star is a member of the exclusive high C club: "I'm a lyric soprano with low notes, that's how my voice teacher likes to describe me," she says.) Best known for her roles in "Carousel," "Master Class," and "Ragtime" - musical-theater productions that garnered her three Tony Awards in three successive years - McDonald has just surprised the Playbill set by releasing an album of songs by the likes of Neil Young, John Mayer, and Elvis Costello. In March, she made a crossover of a different sort: The singer made her operatic debut with the Houston Grand Opera. Her other spinning plates include dramatic stage acting (she won a fourth Tony for 2004's "A Raisin in the Sun"), roles on TV (she's a regular on NBC's new show, "Kidnapped"), and motherhood (she has a 5-year-old with husband Peter Donovan, a bass player).
— Read more at csmonitor.com

Following the premiere of its new production of Manon on September 30, the Los Angeles Opera has launched a podcast series which offers listeners insights into the creation of the production.
The four episodes of the podcast series feature director/choreographer Vincent Paterson, soprano Anna Netrebko (who sings the title role), tenor Rolando Villazón (who sings the male lead, the Chevalier des Grieux) and production staff.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Ah, the music of "Aida."
Giuseppe Verdi's 1871 classic is played and sung beautifully in Nashville Opera's current production. While the staging of the show's bigger moments is fairly static, his glowing composition moves through the artists engaged to present it.
— Read more at Tennessean.com

Donald Palumbo, chorus master of the Lyric Opera since 1991, will leave the Lyric at the end of the current season to become chorus master at the Metropolitan Opera in New York for the 2007-08 season, according to William Mason, the Lyric's general director.
Palumbo is widely credited with having raised the Lyric Opera Chorus to the highest technical and musical level in its history, making it one of the most distinguished ensembles of its kind in the world.
— Read more at Chicago Tribune

The Arizona Opera could have a new home at a historic Downtown site if a group of local and state officials get their way.
But it's going to take a dip into taxpayers' pockets to make it happen, and no one is quite sure yet what the bill will be.
A diverse group of interests - including Gov. Janet Napolitano's Office, elected city officials and members of the Tucson-Pima Arts Council, along with the opera - are pushing to move the opera into the historic Scottish Rite Cathedral on South Scott Avenue between Ochoa and Corral streets.
— Read more at azstarnet.com

Richard Clifford gets a mischievous twinkle in his eye when he talks about the Intermountain Opera Association's fall production, Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Mikado."
He should. "The Mikado" has been delighting audiences young and old since its 1885 debut in New York City. It's filled with the beauty, humor and pageantry that made Gilbert and Sullivan among the most popular musical forces in history.
Clifford -- a veteran British actor and director with dozens of credits ranging from feature films to acclaimed productions of the Royal Shakespeare Company in London -- will be directing "The Mikado" in Bozeman this weekend.
— Read more at The Bozeman Daily Chronicle

[Famous baritone leads HGO's Simon Boccanegra. But don't expect a scene-stealing solo.]
When a world-famous opera star says, "I will," opera companies smile, especially when he brings a new work to the repertoire. So there will be smiles Saturday when Siberian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky sings his first performance of Simon Boccanegra in Houston Grand Opera's first production of the Verdi drama. For Hvorostovsky, the performance serves as a warm-up for later this season, when he'll perform Boccanegra at Paris' Opéra Bastille.
— Read more at chron.com

They don't live happily ever after, but we do. Puccini's La Boheme always satisfies the audiences that flock to see it. The only question is how much.
In the case of Piedmont Opera's production, which opened last night in the Stevens Center, the answer is a great deal.
The singing is first-rate.
— Read more at journalnow.com

Miriam Casassa has been presenting the Bel Canto singers since 1987, and at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 21, at the Alumni Center for the Performing Arts at Applewild School, she will be doing it again. Scenes from the operas of composers Puccini, Mozart, Verdi, Bizet, Massenet, Charpentier and Dvorsak, as well as a selection of favorites from American musical theater, such as Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess," will be performed.
— Read more at Worcester Telegram & Gazette

No white hair here: The Pittsburgh Opera has gone after a young and relatively unknown maestro to be its new music director.
Australian Antony Walker, 38, was hired yesterday to succeed John Mauceri, making him among the youngest directors of a major American opera company.
"He is not a household name now," said Mark Weinstein, the opera's general director. "But within the industry, his name is hot. We think we are grabbing onto a superstar. This has nothing to do with money. This is the best person for the company."
— Read more at post-gazette.com

Adrianne Pieczonka knew her life had changed when she read about her ankle in The New York Times.
"It was my first taste of stardom, if you want to call it that," the Ontario-born soprano said, referring to the exaggerated attention paid to a sprain (not a break, as first reported) she suffered last month while playing tennis. The idea that her ankle might be as newsworthy as Pavarotti's pancreas "kind of freaked me out," she says.
— Read more at globeandmail.com

If you discount it, they will come. That is the idea at San Francisco Opera, where general director David Gockley has decided to sell $50 orchestra seats to build the opera audience of the future. The tickets normally sell for $87-$155.
Gockley has committed to making 15,000 orchestra seats available to Bravo Club members every season for the foreseeable future. Thursday is the first day of this ambitious program. Bravo is the Opera's young professionals group; annual membership in it costs $60.
— Read more at San Francisco Business Times

Ten years have passed in what seems like the blink of a light cue. At least it seems that way to Woodland Opera House Director Jeff Kean. Kean, who began work at WOH in July of 1996, recently reflected on his tenure.
"I knew when I interviewed here that this could be a first-rate operation. The city was fully vested in the facility and the historical aspect of the job was very appealing. Now when I step back and look at the building I can see changes and improvements in virtually every corner."
— Read more at Daily Democrat Online

When Lawrence Brownlee made his local debut -- singing Don Ottavio in Seattle Opera Young Artists Program's production of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" -- he was just another tenor with hope, ambition and talent but no career.
— Read more at nwsource.com

To do a proper production of Franz Lehar's operetta "The Merry Widow," a theater company needs large, lush sets, gorgeous costumes and, most important, amazing singers. Luckily, Lyric Opera San Diego has all these elements in place, and the result is just as magical as Lehar intended.
— Read more at North County Times

It was just like the old days. David Alden, the scourge of many a controversial opening at English National Opera during the so-called "powerhouse" era, was back - via Houston, it's true, but back. And didn't we know it. Alden may have mellowed in the years since his last new production here, but the old edge is still there.
— Read more at Independent Online

Here's the thing about Wagnerians and their favorite composer's beloved "Ring" cycle: If you stage the operas, pretty much anywhere, they will come, from pretty much anywhere else.
Hence the presence in Costa Mesa this week of Leona Geeves of Sydney, Australia; Ray Gildea of Madison, Miss.; June Slobodian of Winnipeg, Canada - she's the one in the plastic Viking helmet - and scores of other impassioned strangers with deep knowledge of Norse myth, Romantic orchestration and German pronunciation.
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

OPERA as we know it is generally thought to have had its beginnings back in 16th century Italy when composers began setting the idyllic, pastoral poetry of the time to music - and the world has never been the same.
Shortly thereafter, the Florentine Camerata, a bright bunch of literati in the city state of Florence, began experimenting with a musical style featuring a single human voice performing a monodic (single line of music) melody that allowed for a clear exposition of narrative as well as a distinct expression of emotion.
This was a rather sharp departure from the other popular musical forms of the day that included polyphonic motets and madrigals or liturgical chant. One of the Camerata's most thoughtful members happened to be Vincenzo Galilei, father of famed astronomer Galileo Galilei.
— Read more at Inside Bay Area

Worldwide devoted fans of composer Wilhelm Richard Wagner's "The Ring of the Nibelung" have flocked to Orange County, Calif., for a showing of the opera cycle.
The cycle is running in Orange County until Wednesday, and is made up of four plays from the famed German composer and traditionally draws its loyal international fans to its performances no matter what, said the Los Angeles Times.
— Read more at United Press International

The Palladium Theater is adding a new monthly event to its slate of special events - Side Door Opera, with the premier show - A Night at the Opera Soprana, Liana Valente on Friday, Oct. 13, 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20.
Side Door Opera will be presented cabaret-style in the Stavros Great Room. It will be a comfortable, casual and intimate show, with night-club lighting, audience seating at round tables decorated with candles and snacks, a cash bar available throughout the show, and wonderful music, up close and personal.
— Read more at tbnweekly.com

The winners of the second annual OPERA NEWS Awards were announced today, with this year's recipients including: tenor Ben Heppner; conductor James Levine, Music Director of the Metropolitan Opera and the Boston Symphony Orchestra; bass René Pape; soprano Renata Scotto; and soprano Deborah Voigt.
Designed specifically to recognize distinguished contributions from leading figures in the world of opera, the awards salute some of the most admired and successful individuals working in the field.
— Read more at Opera News

[Today's most exciting operatic productions are often created by small, maverick companies. Rupert Christiansen picks the best]
Opera is such an expensive and high-risk business that there's a tendency among both its producers and audiences to play safe and plump for familiar favourites - Tosca, Carmen, Così fan tutte - where you can be sure of knowing at least one of the tunes.
— Read more at telegraph.co.uk

Does Donizetti's "L'Elisir d'Amore," now in a new production at the New York City Opera, anticipate Wagner? Probably not. Yet in reading the story of Tristan and Isolda, one could be forgiven for thinking so.
In Donizetti's opera, the young widow Adina sets the plot in motion by giving her gullible admirer Nemorino the idea that a love potion actually exists. And what character in opera has a more Lohengrin-like entrance than the quack Dr. Dulcamara, glimpsed at a distance by an awe-struck chorus whose wonderment grows as the mysterious figure draws ever nearer?
— Read more at The New York Sun

Joan Henkelmann believes so strongly in the future of opera and operetta, she works year-round to nurture young singers, even though she's not a singer.
"I love it (singing), but I just can't do it," said Henkelmann, who come Saturday will oversee the 48th annual Metropolitan Opera/San Diego District Auditions for the eighth consecutive year.
— Read more at SignOnSanDiego.com

Tony Award-winner Patti LuPone, currently on Broadway as Sweeney Todd's Mrs. Lovett, will headline Jake Heggie's To Hell and Back at a number of California venues from November 2nd through November 5th.
According to Heggie's website, To Hell and Back is a "short lyric drama" based on "The Rape of Persephone." LuPone will join soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian for the performances, which will also feature the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, led by Nicholas McGegan.
— Read more at broadwayworld.com

On November 2, Isabel Bayrakdarian and Broadway superstar Patti LuPone will sing the world premiere of composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer's one-act opera To Hell and Back with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. Based on the Greek myth of the rape of Persephone, Heggie and Scheer's work is a modern tale of a young woman coming to terms with both an abusive marriage and her mother-in-law. To Hell and Back is the first commission for the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in its 25-year history. Conductor Nicholas McGegan will lead four performances of the opera in northern California, including stops in San Francisco and Berkeley.
— Read more at

Three Steinways line up parallel to the apron of the stage at the Metro on Broadway, facing the podium to the right. Onstage is a pair of iron-frame beds, draped in magenta sheets, while a vertiginous flight of gold-orange steps leads up towards the flies, past a mezzanine to an aqua door.
These are the playing fields for The Game which brother and sister play in The Room, an autosuggestive and incestuous symbolic game that remakes the world they escape, yet spreads like poison into their tiny coterie in that world as they grow up.
Oakland Opera Theater's production of Philip Glass's Les Enfants Terribles, after Jean Cocteau's 1929 novel and later play, with musical direction by Deirdre McClure and stage direction by Tom Dean, is reset in Saigon from Paris, which eliminates the ever-falling snow of the original and suggests a colonial ambiance to the milieu and action.
— Read more at Berkeley Daily Planet

Launching an ambitious Baroque season of four operas and an oratorio, English Touring Opera showed impressive musical flair in Cavalli's Erismena, a 1655 rarity written for the Venice Carnival.
ETO's deft period instrument ensemble, conducted by Brian Gordon, kept musical longueurs to a minimum - this is a drawn-out affair with much coming and going yet little action - and the singers had class, especially the women, Laura Mitchell, Rachel Nicholls and Patricia Orr.
— Read more at This is London

Cole Porter couldn't have said it better: She's delightful, she's delicious, she's diva-lovely.
Or to use the parlance of the occasion, "Enchanteresse! Au charme vainqueuer. Vous etes la maitresse de mon coeur!"
Those words, from the hero of Massenet's "Manon," as he describes the object of his affections, also sum up the radiant charms of Renee Fleming, opera's reigning diva.
— Read more at CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

Jaws no longer drop at the thought of paying $375 for a prime seat at the Metropolitan Opera.
It's the $20 orchestra seats that have people gaping.
Last week, the opera house announced that it would sell 200 seats for every weeknight performance for just $20 each. Tickets for these seats, which would normally sell for $100, go on sale two hours before curtain time. On Tuesday, the day of the announcement, 160 tickets were sold in 20 minutes. The remaining 40 were sold out by 7:10 p.m.
— Read more at New York Times

It's a persistent stereotype in opera: the big, middle-aged soprano playing a poor, consumptive coquette who coughs her way through a death scene finale while looking really quite healthy.
But Utah Opera's "La Traviata" is an example of how that stereotype has largely gone the way of the Viking helmet. Soprano Maria Kanyova, who plays tragic heroine Violetta, is tiny - which doesn't stop her from playing big roles.
— Read more at Salt Lake Tribune

Sometimes being ambitious comes at a price. Take Arizona Opera's $800,000 production of Verdi's "Macbeth," as envisioned by the innovative stage director Bernard Uzan.
— Read more at azstarnet.com

House of the Gods, Lynne Plowman and Martin Riley's second opera for Music Theatre Wales, is billed as a gothic horror comedy. A tale of blood-sacrifice, pseudo-science, bare-knuckle boxing and Aberystwyth B'n'Bs, the opera works hard to raise a smirk in Michael McCarthy's energetic touring production, but fails to provoke any chills. In its purest form - young man discovers sinister secrets in a cellar - it could have been both comic and horrific. But Plowman and Riley have made their WWI mystery a metaphor for, you guessed it, Iraq, with a sub-plot involving the retirement plans of three Celtic gods.
— Read more at Independent Online

Many consider New York City the nation's cultural capital. Yet for tourists eager to sample that culture, a night at the opera might seem a little too exotic or esoteric - less accessible than, say, a Broadway show.
As the new general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, Peter Gelb sees it as a big part of his job to change that perception.
— Read more at USATODAY.com

ALTHOUGH music lovers here appear to be very excited about the new home of the Canadian Opera Company, people have been taking affectionate pokes at the place, calling it the Ikea Opera House.
In comparison with similar facilities, this 2,000-seat house in the new Four Seasons Center for the Performing Arts was built on the cheap, for just $135 million. Though backstage spaces, storage areas and rehearsal rooms are ample, the budget was kept in line by dispensing with frills and using unfancy building materials. Both the auditorium and the commodious lobbies have a clean-lined, smartly modern and, yes, somewhat Scandinavian look.
— Read more at New York Times

One way of describing a Wagner opera is as an elaborate orchestral score with vocal writing laced across the top. That line of thought doesn't hold much water -- it leaves out far too much that's distinctive and even revolutionary in the composer's theatrical world -- but it seemed all too apt during Thursday's underwhelming performance of "Tristan und Isolde" at the San Francisco Opera.
— Read more at sfgate.com

[Wagner's epic opera succeeds on the strength of its fine cast and well-focused music director]
Wagnerites and neophytes alike were in a state of bliss Thursday night at the War Memorial Opera House, induced by the San Francisco Opera's splendid opening-night performance of "Tristan und Isolde." The company hadn't presented Wagner's 1865 opera since 1998, but it's been much longer than that since Bay Area audiences have seen and heard the work come together in a production so brilliantly conceived and thrillingly integrated.
— Read more at ContraCostaTimes.com

[Financial woes leave city's premier company with an uncertain future]
"Money, money and money." That is what Pierre Dufour, 43, the new managing director of the Opera de Montreal, said when asked to name, in order, the three most salient causes for the rapid transformation of a new-look company with an exciting future to an arts invalid on life support that seriously considered cancelling the 2006-2007 season.
— Read more at canada.com

Joseph Quesnel died in 1809 and, by rights, his ghost should be haunting Toronto's new Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. Quesnel composed the first opera ever written in Canada, and neither he nor any of his successors is getting any time this year in the first Canadian theatre built specifically for opera.
— Read more at globeandmail.com

THE VERY fine art of opera will live long and prosper if David Gockley, Jose Luis Moscovich, Irene Dalis, Tom Dean, Michael Morgan, Pauline Krieger, Marilyn Kosinski and Jonathan Khuner have their wishes fulfilled.
All are either artistic directors, music directors, general managers, conductors or board members of one of the growing, glowing collection of opera companies throughout the greater Bay Area.
— Read more at Inside Bay Area

In the face of rising debt and a badly shrinking budget, the Opéra de Montréal considered canceling its 2006-07 season, reports the Montreal Gazette.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Lyric Opera of Chicago is seeking a big, muscular, threatening-looking man - at least six feet tall - to portray the executioner in the company's upcoming production of Richard Strauss's Salome, directed by Francesca Zambello and starring Deborah Voigt in the title role.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

When the Metropolitan Opera presented its new staging of Gounod's "Faust," by the theater director Andrei Serban, in 2005, the production quickly came under fire for the same excesses that had long been the house trademarks of the filmmaker-turned-opera-director Franco Zeffirelli. Like Mr. Zeffirelli, Mr. Serban seemed enamored of overpacked, hyperactive crowd scenes and eye-catching but otherwise pointless costumes, characteristics that play to the Met's interest in courting as much applause for the scenery as for the singing.
— Read more at New York Times

At a black-tie gala recently celebrating the opening of the Washington National Opera season at the Kennedy Center, Placido Domingo, the company's general director, lauded William Friedkin, who directed the evening's productions of Bartok's "Duke Bluebeard's Castle" and Puccini's "Gianni Schicchi."
"He knows and loves music, and he is a real director," Domingo said.
— Read more at International Herald Tribune

If you love opera, or if you think you might love opera, beg, borrow or steal, but don't miss "Manon." Los Angeles Opera's cinematic rendering of Jules Massenet's portrait of a girl torn between the desire for love and the desire to glitter and be gay, which opened Saturday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, is a blockbuster on every level.
— Read more at dailybreeze.com

Scottish Opera has devised an unusual fundraising plan to support its current revival of David McVicar's production of Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, which opened last night at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow: Audience members have been invited to sponsor a character in the opera. Leading roles such as the Marschallin cost £1,000, while servants can be snapped up for a bargain £25.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Berlin's city government said Thursday it will soon reassess the security risks associated with a Mozart opera that was canceled over fears it could anger Muslims, a move the city's Deutsche Oper requested before deciding whether to reverse its decision.
— Read more at Yahoo! News

The Boston Conservatory Theater Ensemble presents Gilbert & Sullivan's comic opera Iolanthe (1882), Oct. 25?29 at The Boston Conservatory Theater, 31 Hemenway St., Boston. Performances are Wednesday through Saturday at 8 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $16 general admission, and $5 for students and senior citizens. Box Office: (617) 912-9222. Directed by Neil Donohoe. Musical Direction by Bill Casey. Conducted by Reuben Reynolds III. Choreographed by Michelle Chassé.
— Learn more at bostonconservatory.edu

San Francisco Opera has joined the iPod generation. The first of a new series of podcasts from the company, a conversation with soprano Deborah Voigt, is now available on the San Francisco Opera website.
Conducted by SF Opera general director David Gockley, the interview was recorded live on the stage of San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House in September. Voigt discusses her recent weight-loss surgery as well as personal and professional topics ranging from her singing career and future operatic roles to dating. She even talks about her dog, Steinway.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

[Graves plays chairman of her own board, while two divas go back to school: Blythe for a new opera at Crane, McNair to the faculty of IU Jacobs.]
Denyce Graves is back at Washington National Opera this month for William Friedkin's production of Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle. She appeared in the production's first run in 2002, in Los Angeles, opposite Samuel Ramey, and the two stars are reunited for Washington's revival. It's a staging close to Graves's heart. "Bill Friedkin allowed us a lot of room to discover the characters," she says. "I remember we had meetings at his office at the beginning, where we just spoke about the characters. He really just came from the text - we spoke all the time about what the words meant."
— Read more at Opera News

Houston Grand Opera hits the airwaves with its eighth season on National Public Radio's World of Opera, beginning on Saturday, October 14, 2006.
— Read more at Opera News

If she ever decides to abandon singing, Christine Brewer would be a natural for joining Barbara Walters on "The View." An amply proportioned woman (and resigned to being so), the Illinois-based soprano converses volubly, listens intently, laughs heartily (mostly at herself), wrestles with the dilemmas faced by working mothers everywhere and boasts "a rather bawdy sense of humor," illustrations of which cannot possibly be cited here.
— Read more at sfgate.com

A highly acclaimed version of Dmitry Shostakovich's opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" has returned to the Royal Opera House on the 100th anniversary of the Russian composer's birth, bowling the critics over with its originality.
The first revival of the Richard Jones' 2004 production features Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek as Katerina Ismailova, the bored Soviet housewife whose passionate affair leads to murder, betrayal and slave labour.
— Read more at Reuters.co.uk

After their sensational triumph with the Ring Cycle, a good question for Richard Bradshaw and the Canadian Opera Company might be: what's next?
Well, since Toronto is about to launch a new annual arts festival called Luminato and operas have been central to the success of arts festivals elsewhere, it would make sense for Luminato and the COC to come up with a sensational collaboration next year.
— Read more at TheStar.com

University of Kentucky Opera Theatre opens its stunning season of grand nights at the opera with composer Giuseppe Verdi's "La Traviata." The opera will be presented at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 6, 7 and 13, at the Lexington Opera House. UK alumnus and Metropolitan Opera star Gregory Turay will join the cast for one performance only and present his inaugural performance portraying "Alfredo" at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 15, 2006 at. This "Very Special Opera Performance" will launch the UK Opera Orchestra Scholarship Endowment fund.
— Read more at University of Kentucky News

San Francisco Opera has announced that Jeannik Méquet Littlefield, the inaugural patron of the opera's sponsorship program in 2002 and the widow of Edmund Wattis Littlefield, the CEO of Utah Construction Company, has made a pledge of $35 million to the company.
The gift, announced by San Francisco Opera president George Hume on Tuesday evening from the stage of the opera house, is the single largest commitment by an individual ever to San Francisco Opera, and stands as one of the largest ever made by an individual to an American opera company.
— Read more at Opera News

At the bottom of one of the Metropolitan Opera's winding staircases, you can find a medium-sized wall plaque in honor of the arts patron Otto H. Kahn, who, decades ago, tried to change this grandest of opera houses into a more modern place. Once ubiquitous and now mostly forgotten, Kahn brought the Ballets Russes to America, backed modernist poetry in The Little Review, showed up in Cole Porter lyrics, and inspired aspects of "Citizen Kane." He long served as the chairman of the Met board, and never tired of offering up new ideas for the company's future. He hoped to build a new theatre on a site below Columbus Circle, and had Joseph Urban draw up plans for a Bayreuth-style amphitheatre where even the cheapest seats would have good views. He spoke of commissioning provocative modern works and of attracting new audiences through education programs, radio broadcasts, and outdoor concerts. A pop-music enthusiast, he invited Jerome Kern and George Gershwin to write jazz-themed operas for the house. Inevitably, the old-money families on the Met board insured that most of these plans came to naught. Urban's theatre was never built. Kern and Gershwin did write their jazz grand operas - "Show Boat" and "Porgy and Bess" - but they played on Broadway. Sundry new works came and went, generally unwanted.
— Read more at Alex Ross - The New Yorker

The Oakland Opera Theater opens this Friday its third Philip Glass opera?the compelling dance opera Les Enfants Terribles. This final opera of his trilogy based on the work by French artist Jean Cocteau, Les Enfants Terribles has been described by Glass as Cocteau's "tragedy":
"If Orphée is Cocteau's tale of transcendence and La Belle et la Bête his romance, then Les Enfants Terribles is his tragedy. Like the others, it articulates Cocteau?s belief in the power of imagination to transform the ordinary world into a world of magic. But unlike the two previous works, in which transformation leads to love and transcendence, Les Enfants Terribles takes us to the world of Narcissus and, ultimately, Death."
— Read more at Berkeley Daily Planet

At last May's Joseph Volpe farewell gala at the Met, Susan Graham sang a song by Ben Moore about the important role the audience plays in opera. I was beginning to wonder if anyone cared anymore. When did the people sitting in the seats cease to be of central importance to so many singers and composers? That may sound harsh, but how else can one explain the element of dryness that blights so many vocal recitals and new operas? Simply put, programming seems to have been getting a little anemic for a long time. There's a decided lack of showmanship - a word that doesn?t get tossed around a lot in today's opera world.
— Read more at Opera News

The return to Scotland of David McVicar should be a straightforward, uncomplicated affair. The Glasgow-born opera director is back with Scottish Opera to recreate, for the third time, his acclaimed production of Richard Strauss's opera Der Rosenkavalier, which opens tonight at the Theatre Royal.
— Read more at The Herald

Pressure mounted Tuesday on the Deutsche Oper Berlin to rescind the cancellation of a production that depicted the beheading of the Prophet Muhammad, with Chancellor Angela Merkel saying "there can be no compromises" on free speech.
In addition, Berlin's top security official suggested the cancellation was a mistake, and Germany's top Protestant cleric added his voice to those calling for the opera to be re-staged as soon as possible.
— Read more at TheStar.com

Placido Domingo took the stage at the Kennedy Center Opera House Friday to advise a mostly young-adult audience, "Feel free to laugh -- a lot." General director of the Washington National Opera, the distinguished tenor and conductor was introducing a performance of Puccini's only comic opera, "Gianni Schicchi," by the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists. The two-year project, which offers intensive training for singers, coach-accompanists, directors and conductors, is part of "Generation O," a free program of performances and related events for those 18 to 35 -- all aimed at capturing future opera audiences.
— Read more at