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

As sopranos age, it is natural to expect their voices to mature, to grow darker and thicker. Karita Mattila is now 46. And, as her riveting portrayal of the title role of Janacek's "Jenufa" on Monday night at the Metropolitan Opera made vibrantly clear, Ms. Mattila's artistry is maturing.
— Read more at New York Times

Three years ago, opera star Deborah Voigt made international news when the beautiful, blond, blue-eyed and, yes, full-figured American soprano revealed that she had been fired from a production at London's Royal Opera House.
Why? She was deemed too fat for the costume, the now infamous "little black dress."
The role she was to have sung was the title one in Richard Strauss' "Ariadne auf Naxos," Voigt?s signature role ever since singing it with Boston Lyric Opera in 1991 catapulted her into the operatic big-time. But in Boston, as in most productions around the world, she wore the Greek myth character's more customary (and concealing) flowing robes.
— Read more at BostonHerald.com

Kansas University Opera in the Department of Music and Dance will present The Tales of Hoffmann, Jacques Offenbach's great masterpiece and perennial favorite, for five performances beginning February 1st. The opera will be sung in English and accompanied by a small combo led by Mark Ferrell, KU Opera music director and associate professor of music.
— Read more at Huliq.com

You might not make it to the Metropolitan Opera this season, but you can come close. On December 30, 2006, the Metropolitan Opera began a series of high-definition telecasts of live Saturday matinee performances in more than 100 movie theaters in North America and the United Kingdom.
— Hear more at NPR

Underwear tossing was the deal breaker, a lawsuit brought against renowned opera singer Dame Kiri Te Kanawa contends.
Dame Kiri pulled out of a series of concerts with Australian crooner John Farnham after learning that fans sometimes threw underwear at the pop star, according to testimony in court Monday.
— Read more at First Coast News

I listened to the opening night broadcast of Jenufa on Sirius last night. (Master Ionarts, unable to sleep for some reason, even shared one of my earpods for about ten minutes, when he came downstairs.) This opera should be one of the Met simulcasts this year but -- no surprise -- is not. Leos Janácek is one of the big three opera composers of the first half of the 20th century, but he does not sell tickets. This production of Její pastorkyna, as it was called originally in Czech, boasts soprano Karita Mattila in the title role, as well as Anja Silja as the dragon lady, Jenufa's domineering stepmother, Petrona Slomková, whom everyone calls the Kostelnicka, or the sacristan lady (an important position in the village church). Thanks to the work of pioneering conductor Charles Mackerras, the world has mostly readopted the score that Janácek wanted for this opera, not the revisions forced on him later by the Czech National Theater in Prague.
— Read more at Charles T. Downey - ionarts

The traveling sideshow of "I Pagliacci" added a strongman act to its clowns, acrobats and derailed theatrical entertainments on Friday night. Salvatore Licitra was scheduled to sing Leoncavallo's Canio at the Metropolitan Opera, while Frank Porretta would be Mascagni's Turiddu in "Cavalleria Rusticana." On Thursday Mr. Porretta reported in sick. Rather than let a cover singer be called for, Mr. Licitra said he would sing both operas.
— Read more at New York Times

Renata Scotto loves directing and teaching as much as she did singing.
"I like to live in the present," she said. "Of course, I watch my DVDs. I enjoyed every second of my career. Now I live with the young singers. I love them so much."
The retired soprano, who turns 73 next month, was among five people honored Sunday night by Opera News with awards for distinguished achievement, joined by Metropolitan Opera music director James Levine, soprano Deborah Voigt, tenor Ben Heppner and bass Rene Pape.
— Read more at mercurynews.com

Finnish soprano Karita Mattila, an opera star celebrated for her vocal and musical gifts, her compelling acting and her physical beauty alike, begins a six-performance run tonight in one of her most acclaimed roles, the title part in Janácek's gripping drama Jenufa.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Due to a back injury sustained late last week in her New York apartment, Deborah Voigt was forced to withdraw from a high-profile appearance at Philadelphia's Academy Ball this past weekend.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Virginia Opera opens its 2007-2008 season Sept. 28, 2007 with a new production of Jacques Offenbach's tragic The Tales of Hoffmann - last staged in 1989 - in which a poet tells the fantastical stories of his three great loves and how they ended in misery due to the meddling incarnations of a supernatural villain. Beautiful French soprano Manon Strauss Evrard makes her company debut as Olympia, Giulietta, Antonia and Stella.
— Read more at Huliq.com

Sarasota is 229 miles and a 3 1/2-hour non-scenic drive from Miami. But hardcore opera fans may want to consider making that trip: Beginning Saturday, Sarasota Opera will offer the rare chance to hear Stanislaw Moniuszko's Halka, in what will likely be the Polish opera's first professional American performances in 50 years.
— Read more at MiamiHerald.com

President and General Director Peter Russell is pleased to announce Opera Colorado's 25th Anniversary season, where the company will once again expand its offerings to celebrate a milestone year. The grand opera season begins in the fall of 2007 with a remounting of Verdi's La traviata in the beautiful staging that was a box office hit with Denver audiences in 2004.
— Read more at Huliq.com

Thais, the French opera about a legendary Alexandrian courtesan, has come back in favor of late, and the Palm Beach Opera's musically sumptuous rendition is the evidence.
— Read more at South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Given the general popularity of "Susannah," artistic director Peter Rothstein was wary of claiming the title "Area Premiere" for his upcoming Theatre Latté Da production. He could find no evidence of previous stagings and agreed over the phone when told that a search of the Star Tribune library contained no reviews of Carlisle Floyd's opera in the past 20 years. Still, we're talking about one of the most-produced American operas ever written.
— Read more at startribune.com

Renowned opera tenor Placido Domingo will sing baritone for the first time in 2009, realizing a long-held ambition to sing the title role in Verdi's "Simon Boccanegra," his representatives said.
The silver-haired Spaniard, who gained international stardom as one of "The Three Tenors" with Luciano Pavarotti and Jose Carreras, will perform in the opera's title baritone role at Berlin's Staatsoper Unter den Linden, spokeswoman Nancy Seltzer said on Friday.
— Read more at Reuters.com

If Rossini had been in the audience on Thursday night at the Harry de Jur Playhouse, he would surely have found the stylish and witty new production of "Il Signor Bruschino" by the Gotham Chamber Opera as cheekily funny as everyone else did.
— Read more at New York Times

Although it exists in more than one performing version, Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov is probably unique. You would be hard pressed to find another major opera in which a basso is not only the central character, but virtually the only character of any enduring interest whatsoever. In fact, some prominent bassos have appeared from time to time (and presumably still do) in extremely successful concert versions of "Scenes from Boris Godunov." Accompanied by chorus and orchestra, the singing protagonist goes it all alone - from coronation to madness and death - without any interference from those annoying "secondary" characters.
— Read more at sandiego.com

Composer Hollis Thoms has spent much of his life as an educator and just completed a master's degree at St. John's College, so maybe his latest work was predestined.
Mr. Thoms, 58, of Edgewater, has written a one-act opera about the Greek philosopher and teacher Socrates, one of the thinkers at the core of the Annapolis school's curriculum.
The work, titled "Socrates," will premiere next month at a free performance that features four members of his family.
— Read more at hometownannapolis.com

Celebrated opera collaborators John Estacio and John Murrell are set to raise the curtain on their latest full-length work, Frobisher, in Calgary this weekend.
The new opera, which the Banff Centre and the Calgary Opera commissioned from composer Estacio and librettist Murrell, will have its debut at Jubilee Auditorium Saturday evening.
— Read more at CBC.ca

The LA Opera is going digital as they look to expand their reach by using podcasting as a tool. They have just committed themselves to producing fourteen espisodes of its "Behind the Curtain at the LA Opera" podcast series, they are hoping to capture the mobile generation that puts the iPod on the top of their portable MP3 devices list.
— Read more at NAMC Newswire

Significant changes are happening in America's opera landscape as new directors take over some of the country?s major companies. But in a field in which artists are booked several years in advance, it takes a while for season programs to reflect those changes.
This week David Gockley, who became general director of the San Francisco Opera in January 2006, announced what amounts to his first season. Not quite all of the 2007-8 season is his: he has inherited the opening production, "Samson and Delilah" (with Olga Borodina), and David Pountney's Zurich staging of Verdi's "Macbeth" (with Thomas Hampson). But he has at least instigated the other nine productions, although most are co-productions with other companies.
— Read more at New York Times

Divas, divas, divas. That's what stands out when contemplating the first SFO season planned almost entirely by General Director David Gockley. Not just divas-in-waiting, or divas in the making, or divas San Francisco knows and loves, but full-fledged, 100% certified ripe divas who have been too long absent from the stage of one of America's most significant opera companies.
— Read more at The Bay Area Reporter

Il Signor Bruschino, a one-act comic opera by Rossini unseen in New York City for more than 70 years, begins a five-performance run tonight in a new production from the enterprising Gotham Chamber Opera.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

When Philadelphia attorney and philanthropist William Parker Foulke first entertained ideas of building a Philadelphia opera house in 1841, he had little idea it would actually be built, let alone last as long as it did. After 14 years of debating over the perfect locale, the groundbreaking ceremony was finally held on Broad and Locusts Streets in 1855, with President Franklin Pierce in attendance. The venue eventually opened on Jan. 26, 1857 with a grand ball extravaganza, featuring the Philadelphia Orchestra. The first opera performed there was Verdi's "Il trovatore (The Troubador)," the "western hemisphere premiere," in Feb. of that same year.
— Read more at The Evening Bulletin

About 300 people crammed into a movie theater at Cottonwood Mall earlier this week, nearly filling it, to take in an international blockbuster.
A typical Hollywood offering drawing a Tuesday night crowd? Think again.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart penned this one in 1791. "The Magic Flute" was performed by New York's Metropolitan Opera and beamed via satellite to select theaters around the country.
— Read more at Albuquerque Tribune

The second annual Opera News Awards are to be presented this weekend at a gala reception and dinner in the ballroom of the Hotel Pierre in New York City on Sunday, January 28. The recipients, announced in October, are Wagnerian tenor Ben Heppner, longtime Metropolitan Opera music director James Levine, bass René Pape, retired soprano and currently active director Renata Scotto, and dramatic soprano Deborah Voigt.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The world premiere of "Appomattox" by American composer Philip Glass and the first installment in a new "Ring" cycle are among the highlights of the San Francisco Opera's 2007-2008 season schedule.
The season announced Monday by general director David Gockley also will include the West Coast premiere of "The Little Prince" by Rachel Portman and company debuts of singers Angela Gheorghiu, Natalie Dessay and Ewa Podles.
— Read more at MercuryNews.com

Renowned tenor Placido Domingo will sing a baritone role for the first time since 1959 in a 2009 production of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra.
The Spanish singer, 66, said in April 2005 that he had a final ambition to sing the baritone role in Boccanegra.
— Read more at CBC.ca

Cincinnati Opera artistic director Evans Mirageas has accepted a position as director of artistic planning for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
The newly created post, announced Tuesday in Atlanta, will be in addition to his job in Cincinnati.
— Read more at The Cincinnati Post

The Mozart Year brought us many things, including a renewed appreciation for La Clemenza di Tito. This year Ionarts has reviewed the re-release of the Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production on DVD, heard a live production at Washington National Opera, gave high honors to a new CD recording by Charles Mackerras, and reviewed two new DVDs of the opera.
— Read more at Charles T. Downey - ionarts

ONE of the grandest and most popular of Verdi's operas is to play in Carlisle.
Ellen Kent and Opera International delighted fans with their recent production of Die Fledermaus at the Sands Centre and are set to return on Sunday, March 11 with a performance of Aida.
Verdi's opera, set in ancient Egypt, 3,000 years before the birth of Christ, tells the story of the beautiful Egyptian slave girl Aida, and her love for the Egyptian hero, Radames.
— Read more at News & Star

We hadn't really opened last year's Christmas gift yet: when David Gockley became general director of the San Francisco opera a year ago, we did not really know what was in the box. The second half of the 2006 season, and the 2006-2007 season operas were already booked by his predecessor. He was not the one who chose this rather uninspired selection of yet another Carmen, yet another The Barber of Seville (Il barbiere di Siviglia), yet another Rigoletto.
— Read more at sfist.com

Metropolitan Opera productions directed by Julie Taymor, Bartlett Sher and Jack O'Brien will be featured in the new opera series "Great Performances at the Met," a joint project of the Met and PBS, which premieres Jan. 24 with Taymor's The Magic Flute.
The series of six live performances is the most complete coverage of Met operas ever presented by PBS in one season.
— Read more at Playbill News

In January 1994, an array of singers assembled in Carnegie Hall to celebrate Marilyn Horne's 60th birthday. Though any opera house would have envied the talent on hand, these musicians didn't sing opera - they sang songs. Ms. Horne's brilliant career as a mezzo-soprano was far from over, but she had embarked on a new crusade: the song recital. Ms. Horne had recognized a decline in its popularity, and she resolved to do something about it.
— Read more at The New York Sun

David Gockley unveiled a different sound and look for the San Francisco Opera on Monday, announcing a season -- the first he's planned as general director -- that is stocked with new productions and a significant complement of debuting artists.
In addition to the world premiere of "Appomattox," commissioned from composer Philip Glass and librettist Christopher Hampton, the 2007-08 season -- which runs from Sept. 7 through July 6, 2008 -- will include the company premiere of Handel's "Ariodante," the first local installment of the director Francesca Zambello's American-themed production of Wagner's "Ring" Cycle, and familiar fare by Mozart, Puccini, Verdi, Donizetti and more.
— Read more at sfgate.com

SOLD OUT.
How often do those words show up in Charlotte in connection with the performing arts?
There they were, next to "The First Emperor" -- the latest in the movie-theater showings beamed from the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
Tan Dun's opera hardly seemed like a candidate for a sellout. It had premiered a mere month before. The reviews in New York were lukewarm.
— Read more at Charlotte Observer

LOS ANGELES OPERA will move on to the national stage this May and will feature 10 works in its 2007-2008 season, presented in 69 performances beginning with a gala weekend Sept. 8 and 9 in Los Angeles.
The season, which was announced by L.A. Opera general director Placido Domingo in a press conference at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Thursday, will feature two company premieres (Janacek's "Jenufa" and Alexander Zemlinsky's "Der Zwerg (The Dwarf)"), a U.S. premiere (Viktor Ullmann's "Der Zerbrochene Krug"), productions of several of opera's greatest works and a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of composer Giacomo Puccini with presentations of three of his operas, including the rarely heard "La rondine."
— Read more at Press-Telegram

Dicapo Opera Theatre will present the New York premiere of Tobias Picker's third opera, Thérèse Raquin, in six Dicapo performances beginning Friday, February 16 through Sunday, February 25. With a libretto by Gene Scheer, the opera is based on Emile Zola's scandalous novel of adultery, murder, guilt, and ghostly revenge in 19th-century Paris. It stars soprano mezzo-soprano Audrey Babcock and Beverly Thiele as Thérèse; baritones David Adam Moore and Zeffin Quinn Hollis as Thérèse's lover Laurent; and tenors Brian Stucki and Peter Furlong as Thérèse's cuckolded husband Camille. Steven Osgood, artistic director of American Opera Projects, conducts. The production is by Michael Capasso, general director of Dicapo, with set design is by John Farrell, costume design by Angela Huff, and lighting by Susan Roth.
Tickets are $47.50 and are available at the Dicapo Opera Theatre box office (184 East 76th Street and Lexington Avenue) or by calling 212-288-9438, Ext. 10.
— Learn more at dicapo.com/

The state capital of Texas takes great pride in a live music scene that cherishes tradition while also valuing innovation. The city is a hotbed of both roots music and experimental rock; classical music, by comparison, claims a considerably smaller share of attention. Austin Lyric Opera has long been overshadowed by older, larger, better-financed companies in Dallas and Houston.
But in recent years the company has begun to carve a niche by presenting contemporary works new to Texas, including Jake Heggie's "Dead Man Walking" and André Previn's "A Streetcar Named Desire." On Friday night, Austin Lyric Opera offered its first American premiere, "Waiting for the Barbarians" by Philip Glass, in Bass Concert Hall on the University of Texas campus.
— Read more at New York Times

The Boston Conservatory Opera Division, under the direction of Sanford Sylvan, presents Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia, Feb. 1?3, at 8 p.m. and Feb. 4 at 2 p.m. at The Boston Conservatory Theater, 31 Hemenway St., Boston. Kirsten Z. Cairns directs. Karl Paulnack conducts. Tickets are $16 general admission and $5 for students and senior citizens. Box Office: 617- 912-9222.
— Read more at bostonconservatory.edu

A most untraditional sound came out of the speakers of The Metropolitan Opera Friday night. Just as music director/conductor Andrew Lippa lifted his arms to cue the 11-piece orchestra to begin the evening's program he was interrupted by the rhythmic chords of an organ playing the type of energizing vamp more typical for a ballpark than an opera house. After a hearty "da-da-da-dat-da-da? charge!" the evening's soloist dashed out wearing a New York Mets jersey and cap, gleefully waving a pennant and asking if anyone knows where the hot dog stand is.
— Read more at BroadwayWorld.com

The internationally renowned Royal Opera House in London's Covent Garden is launching a special exhibition to celebrate the Royal Opera's 60th anniversary at the venue.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

he San Francisco Opera, in its first full season programmed by General Director David Gockley, will stage the world premiere of Philip Glass's "Appomattox" and begin a multiyear production of Wagner's "Ring" cycle.
The 2007-08 season will present 11 operas, four conducted by Music Director Donald Runnicles and the rest by guests, the company announced today at a news conference in San Francisco.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

The musicologist Joseph Kerman famously derided Giacomo Puccini's "Tosca" as a "shabby little shocker." The phrase applies even more acutely to Richard Strauss's "Salome," a one-act opera that so horrified early 20th-century audiences that it was banned in several cities. Even today, this gathering of some of the most unpleasant people ever cast forth upon a stage -- whether the wild-eyed zealot Jokanaan or the murderous nymphet Salome -- evokes a palpable revulsion, like a stranger's nicotine-stained finger in the back of your throat.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

IT was an embarrassing moment for the director of Toronto's Canadian Opera Company earlier this week.
At a press conference trumpeting the company's 2007-08 season, COC general director Richard Bradshaw had to admit that of the seven productions he will be staging, none will be -- wait for it -- Canadian.
"I can't just do anything Canadian," he was quoted in the Globe & Mail.
— Read more at The Winnipeg Free Press

Contrary to popular belief, people who travel to Sarasota don't just come for the beaches, chic restaurants and theaters; they come to experience the opera, too.
Actually, for some, the Sarasota Opera House is the sole reason they come. But artistic director Victor DeRenzi wants those who have never been exposed to opera to get a dose of the dramatic art. He hopes to entice them with an assortment of popular and rare opera productions during the company's upcoming 48th season.
— Read more at Bradenton Herald

If Lyric Opera's upcoming season lineup looks familiar, it is. Four of the eight works announced Thursday are revivals, including the standard-rep favorites of Verdi's "La traviata" and "Falstaff"; Puccini's "La boheme," and Rossini's "Barber of Seville."
What, some Lyric subscribers might wonder sarcastically, there wasn't room for "The Magic Flute" or "Marriage of Figaro," which regularly get dusted off at the Civic Opera House? Especially troubling is "La boheme," whose old-style, Pier Luigi Pizzi-designed production dates to 1972 and is receiving its ninth remounting.
— Read more at CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

From returning favorites (Voigt, Fleming, Flórez) to important debutantes (diDonato, Frittoli, Brewer), a great retired diva as stage director, and the company's first-ever female conductor, 2007-08 will be a season of stars at Lyric Opera of Chicago.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The Los Angeles Opera confirmed long-rumored renovations for the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion during a news conference Thursday announcing the company's 2007-08 season. Highlighting the season will be the staging of two works that continue music director James Conlon's mission to showcase composers whose careers were affected by the Nazi regime: the company premiere of Alexander Zemlinsky's "Der Zwerg (The Dwarf)" (The Dwarf) and the U.S. premiere of Viktor Ullman's "Der zerbrochene Krug" (The Broken Jug).
— Read more at calendarlive.com

Opera stars often hit a peak early on, and spend the rest of their careers trying not to disappoint a world that witnessed it. So when Deborah Voigt delivers one performance after another that her fans didn't dare anticipate a decade ago, you see why she's adored unceasingly, and rarely more than at Thursday's concert performance of Strauss' Salome with the National Symphony Orchestra here
— Read more at Philadelphia Inquirer

Seeking an escape from the at-long-last cold front? You need head no farther south than Washington, where the National Symphony Orchestra is offering a sizzling concert version of Richard Strauss' Salome.
Thursday night's performance at the Kennedy Center easily added up to one of the season's hottest events, and the repeats today and Monday have "don't miss" written all over them.
— Read more at baltimoresun.com

Riding up the escalator at the downtown Paramount movie complex feels like a funhouse ride, with its padded walls, neon lights and big views of Queen St. W. rooftops.
But anyone walking through the double doors to the No. 1 screening room last Saturday afternoon was immediately whisked into another world - one not familiar with jumbo popcorn bags and cheese-drenched nachos.
— Read more at TheStar.com

The talented and resourceful composer/conductor, Victoria Bond, will be giving pre-concert lectures before the New York Philharmonic concerts conducted by Riccardo Muti. She will be discussing the following program.
* Martucci: Piano Concerto in b-flat
* Verdi: Ballet Music from "Macbeth"
* Respighi: "Feste romane"
January 25, 6:30 pm - January 26, 7:00 pm - January 27, 7:00 pm. There is a $5.00 fee for the pre-concert lecture.
— Tickets: nyphil.org

Here's something different: Performing opera without a net. American Opera Theater, the ensemble formerly known as Ignoti Dei Opera, has taken Handel's Acis and Galatea from 1718 and placed it under a big top.
Instead of a nymph and shepherd at the center of the story, there will be an aerial artist and a mime. Instead of a mythological monster disturbing the Arcadian domain, a circus clown will become the protagonist.
— Read more at baltimoresun.com

The ENO leads this year's Laurence Olivier Award nominations for opera, scooping three out of four in the Best New Opera Production category. The Royal Opera, on the other hand, was only nominated once, in the Outstanding Achievement in Opera category.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Tuesday night's concert in Avery Fisher Hall had a headline: "A Tribute to Arturo Toscanini." It also had a description: "A Joint Gala Benefit Concert by the Symphonica Toscanini and the New York Philharmonic." Toscanini, perhaps the most fabled conductor of the 20th century, died on January 16, 1957 ? and this event was held 50 years later, to the day. It was a most satisfying evening, too.
— Read more at The New York Sun

Lyric Opera of Chicago's 2007-08 season will feature seventy-nine performances of eight operas, two of which will mark the company's first performances of the works, while four operas will play in productions new to the Lyric stage, general director William Mason announced today.
Running from September 29 until March 30, the Lyric season will include the company premieres of Giulio Cesare - in David McVicar's acclaimed Glyndebourne Festival production - and Peter Sellars' staging of John Adams' Doctor Atomic, in a co-production with San Francisco Opera and the Netherlands Opera. Strauss's Die Frau Ohne Schatten will take the stage in a new production featuring Deborah Voigt, and the company will present Dmitri Hvorostovsky as Eugene Onegin in the Metropolitan Opera's production of Tchaikovsky's opera. Slated for company revivals are productions of La Traviata, La Bohème, Falstaff and Il Barbiere di Siviglia.
— Read more at Opera News

Lyric Opera announced their 2007-2008 slate of eight operas last night, or, at least, I got the press release stamped EMBARGOED UNTIL 6 AM, JAN. 18, 2007! last night, and, I've got to say, Lyric's going out on a limb next year. They're bringing in a production of Handel's Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar) from England's Glyndebourne Festival Opera, John Adams's Dr. Atomic, which premiered two years ago, as well as two impressive sopranos for Verdi's La traviata. There are a few operas guaranteed to fill seats, but the risks might just prove as popular. Marc Geelhoed - Time Out Chicago

Tuesday marked the beginning of French professor David Wetsel's new class, Opera and Literature.
"This class is unique because it is a hybrid between music and literature," Wetsel said. "We read great texts the operas are based upon, something my colleagues can [say] has never been done anywhere they can think of."
The class covers 10 operas and the literary texts that inspired them. Most of these operas were additionally written in different European languages.
— Read more at statepress.com

As a little girl, Russian soprano Anna Netrebko dreamed of becoming a princess. When Netrebko left her small hometown in southern Russia at age 16, she never expected to end up at New York's Metropolitan Opera. While she was ambitious enough to enroll at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, she also took a job at the city's famous Mariinsky Theater, washing the floors. Conductor Valery Gergiev still recalls his surprise when the cleaning lady turned up at one of his auditions.
— Read more at minnesota.publicradio.org

The Canadian Opera Company's 2007-08 season, expanded from previous years, will feature two new stagings - one by a Broadway veteran and one by a renowned Russian experimenter - plus appearances by hot young conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya and singers including Isabel Bayrakdarian, Ying Huang, Adrianne Pieczonka, Giselle Allen, Alan Opie, Daniil Shtoda and Rodion Pogossov.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Love. Infidelity. Heartbreak. Thirst for revenge. Where would opera be without them?
Opera Carolina brings them back Jan. 25, 27 and 28 in an incarnation that's a century old, yet new to Charlotte: the company's first opera in Spanish, Manuel de Falla's "La Vida Breve."
The title translates into English as "the short life." You guessed it: Two-timing results in a character's untimely death.
— Read more at Charlotte Observer

In a Dec. 27 review review of the film "Notes on a Scandal," New York Times critic Manohla Dargis wrote, "The composer for this film, doodle-doodle-doodle, is Philip Glass."
So with a few dismissive clicks of her keyboard does Dargis evaluate the work of the man who is arguably the most successful living non-pop composer of our time.
Truth be told, Dargis is not alone in her opinion. Some composers have denied that Glass is even a composer. Radio stations that play his works - even 25 years after his breakthrough with the "Koyaanisqatsi" soundtrack - are guaranteed to receive calls telling them "the CD is stuck."
— Read more at austin360.com

[The slimmed-down soprano now has a compliant physique at the command of her flexible voice.]
Like a character in a Mozart or Strauss opera, Deborah Voigt has undergone a transformation. She's lost weight and added glamour. At her Los Angeles Opera recital Sunday evening in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, she was a walking, talking, flirting, singing advertisement for gastric bypass surgery.
— Read more at calendarlive.com

Angela Gheorghiu's misfortune turned out to be Nicole Cabell's triumph. Cabell stepped in to sing the lead role in a concert performance of Gounod's Roméo et Juliette at Berlin's Deutsche Oper with just a few hours notice last month when the Romanian superstar was too sick to perform. Angela Gheorghiu's misfortune turned out to be Nicole Cabell's triumph. Cabell stepped in to sing the lead role in a concert performance of Gounod's Roméo et Juliette at Berlin's Deutsche Oper with just a few hours notice last month when the Romanian superstar was too sick to perform.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

With Richard Strauss' "Ariadne auf Naxos," Utah Opera has a sure-fire hit. First-rate casting, excellent direction, intelligent conducting and wonderful playing by the orchestra mark this staging, making it one of the best productions by this company in years.
"Ariadne" isn't frequently performed, yet it sparkles with some of Strauss' wittiest music, and also some of his most profound and expressive writing for the stage.
— Read more at deseretnews.com

Turmoil continued Monday at the leading opera company in the Cleveland area with the resignation of its second artistic director in 14 months.
But this time around, Opera Cleveland artistic director Leon Major has agreed to stay in his position for a year after tendering his resignation, seeing the 2007 season, which won't even start for another three months, through to completion next December.
— Read more at cleveland.com

Glimmerglass Opera will present operas inspired by the myth of Orpheus, as well as Orpheus-inspired concert performances, films and seminars, during its 2007 summer season.
Four new productions - Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, the Gluck/Berlioz Orphée et Eurydice, Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld and Philip Glass's Orphée - will run from July 7 through August 28 at the Alice Busch Opera Theater in Cooperstown, New York.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Fifty years ago today, Arturo Toscanini died. The Italian conductor had loomed over the operatic and orchestral worlds for the better part of seven decades, shaping tastes, forcing people to take sides (musical and otherwise).
He generated enormous respect and devotion during his lifetime, something close to idolatry afterward. But he also drew his share of critical attacks throughout a long career that included historic work with the most important opera centers (La Scala, the Metropolitan and Bayreuth among them), and with several excellent orchestras (notably the New York Philharmonic and his own NBC Symphony).
— Read more at baltimoresun.com

James Schwabacher, who died in July at 86, was the best friend an opera company ever had. As a patron and supporter of such enterprises as the Merola Opera Program he was both generous and discriminating, and the legacy he left under his name, the Schwabacher Debut Recitals, exemplifies all that was finest about his benevolence.
— Read more at sfgate.com

The hip Lizard Lounge near Harvard Square would seem to be no place for opera. But don't tell that to Carol Charnow, the general director of Opera Boston. "We're part of a movement that's bringing opera to where people like to go and inviting them to realize that opera is for them," said Charnow. "If people aren't going to come to the opera house, let?s take it to them."
— Read more at southofboston.com

[Deborah Voigt Shed 150 Pounds, but Not Her Oversize Voice Or Grand Plans]
Deborah Voigt, a reigning American diva, is sitting in a corner couch in her Manhattan pied-a-terre, enjoying what she jokingly calls "lunch." Actually, it's a Starbucks-only repast -- one of those soaring caramel, whipped-cream-laden creations -- and it's a well-deserved indulgence for an artist who daringly laid her career on the line to wage a final battle against her weight and came out the resounding victor.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

In the two years since Miami Lyric Opera was launched by Raffaele Cardone, the fledgling company's productions have been notable more for admirable intentions than artistic results. Cardone, a vocal coach and once an accomplished tenor himself, is a dedicated opera lover with a gift for finding young or overlooked journeyman voices. But MLO's past shows have been hobbled by shoestring budgets and low-rent musical values.
— Read more at MiamiHerald.com

[ Passion, conflict, drama... and that's before the curtain rises. After six magnificent and stormy decades, the Royal Opera still hits the high notes.]
The house lights dim, the atmosphere subsides into an expectant hush. A crackle of applause, a flowering of sound from the orchestra and the red velvet curtain swishes aside. That moment never loses its magic: you're transported from the crimson shadows straight to Seville or Valhalla, St Petersburg or Paris. Opera at its finest brings together more arts than any other medium: music, live performance, design, drama, sometimes dancing and even film. And once the opera bug has bitten you, nothing can compete with a night at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
— Read more at Independent Online

The only competition on DVD for the evergreen Glyndebourne production of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream is this 2006 release from Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu (filmed by François Roussillon in 2005), a revival of the colorful, strange staging Robert Carsen did in 1995 for the Aix-en-Provence Festival. (The production has also been seen, more than once, at English National Opera.) Carsen places the action in a dreamworld, quite literally: the entire stage looks like a large bed, with bright green covers and two enormous white pillows. Oberon (David Daniels) and Tytania (Ofelia Sala) are costumed for bed -- Oberon in green pajamas and robe and Tytania in a blue silk nightie. Their hair matches the color of their costumes.
— Read more at Charles T. Downey - ionarts

The Washington National Opera announced its 2007 / 2008 Season on Wednesday at a press conference that was styled as an "event" (including baroque-ish costume-wearing ushers), taking place at the Library of Congress' Coolidge Auditorium. It wasn't quite enough as to merit the presence of the WNO?s own music director (which is perhaps also a sign of how important that role is at a small company) or the Washington Post's critic. Although Tim Page might have been interested in hearing that Kenneth Feinberg thought that the WNO is Plàcido Domingo! Despite the great importance of Domingo for the WNO, Feinberg was either selling the company well short, or, should he be correct, revealed that the company is in a lot more trouble than we could possibly imagine. After all, Washington opera lovers should like to see the WNO last a little longer than Mr. Domingo's tenure.
— Read more at ionarts

WHAT makes you laugh? Two very different kinds of comedy come face to face this week: the macabre, Dante-inspired wit of Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, the final short opera in a trilogy he wrote during the First World War; and the racy Gallic innuendos of Ravel's L'Heure Espagnol, premiered slightly earlier, in 1911. The place: an ambitious operatic double bill by students of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD).
— Read more at Scotsman.com

Famed soprano Renee Fleming has cancelled her performance in Tuesday's tribute to late Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini due to illness, the New York Philharmonic announced on Saturday.
Fleming will be replaced by bass Rene Pape for A Tribute to Toscanini, to be put on by the New York Philharmonic and Symphonica Toscanini at New York's Avery Fisher Hall to mark the 50th anniversary of the composer's death at age 89.
— Read more at CBC.ca

THE gambler's game is one of steely nerves, patience and sometimes sleight of hand. Watch a gambler at the card table, and you might never notice anything out of the ordinary, apart from freakish runs of good fortune. But let a card sharp explain his work, and a different game is revealed.
Robert Ashley, the influential progenitor of a distinctive mode of electronic chamber opera based on American vernacular speech, has known two professional gamblers during his long, eventful life, and both turn up in "Concrete," his latest work, which opens at La MaMa E.T.C. Annex on Wednesday evening.
— Read more at New York Times

At the moment, there are several outstanding Violettas in the world: Anna Netrebko, Angela Gheorghiu, Renée Fleming. These are sopranos who can fill the title role of Verdi's opera "La Traviata." (That word, "traviata," describes a woman who has gone astray, as Violetta has.) None of the aforementioned stars sang the part when "Traviata" returned to the Metropolitan Opera on Wednesday night, in Franco Zeffirelli's 1998 production.
— Read more at The New York Sun

[The 'First Emperor' seemed more like a first draft in its Met debut, but maybe the opera can still be saved.]
Opening night is a finale of sorts for a new opera. Once the curtain comes down, critics' judgments quickly harden into print, the score gels into an official version and the staging remains fluid only around the edges. The audience has the sense that the work of creation is done. It's not. Newsday.com

TAN DUN is to music what Yao Ming is to basketball. He is China's towering ambassador to the world, demonstrating the prowess of the Middle Kingdom on a playing field once considered the exclusive preserve of the West. Here in America, Tan is best known as the Oscar-winning composer of the score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
— Read more at weeklystandard.com

Joseph Haydn composed Orlando Paladino for the theater at Esterháza, in honor of the expected visit of dignitaries from Russia in 1782. The guests never showed up, but the opera was performed on the name day of Haydn's employer, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy. The rediscovery of Haydn the opera composer led to a modest revival, and while certainly not common, recordings and productions are occurring. This live recording's only competition is the version conducted by Antal Dorati, now available only as part of a box set of the complete Haydn operas, a legendary series of 1970s recordings that first brought attention to Haydn's operas. Nikolaus Harnoncourt's reading has several advantages, including the experience of the past 30 years of the HIP movement. It is also nice to be able to purchase only one opera instead of a four-opera set, although the Dorati set does reduce the cost of each opera slightly.
— Read more at Charles T. Downey - ionarts

Things have come on a little in the 40 years since Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti strutted their ample stuff in the last Royal Opera staging of Donizetti's Frenchified charmer.
In another 40 years someone will be talking about the night their successors - Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Florez - showed everyone how the piece should really be done. It's hard to imagine how this adorable, pint-sized, pairing could ever be bettered. But the same goes for the entire cast - as good as you could now muster from anywhere on the planet.
— Read more at Independent Online Edition

In a way, last weekend's movie-theater showing of "I Puritani" -- the second of New York's Metropolitan Opera high-tech broadcasts -- was another beginning.
The Met beamed "The Magic Flute" on Dec. 30 in an abridged version with no breaks. "Puritani," a love story and voicefest set among the Puritans, was full-length: about 3 1/2 hours, including two intermissions. This was the real thing. The Met, which offers "The First Emperor" Saturday at the Stadium Stonecrest 22, had to fill the time during breaks. And it had to keep an all-afternoon stay at the multiplex from feeling like a marathon.
— Read more at Charlotte Observer

Nine-time Grammy Award winner Placido Domingo took his legendary voice to the silver screen yesterday when the Metropolitan Opera broadcast a live performance to 100 movie theaters in the U.S., Canada and Norway.
Tickets for the Saturday matinee simulcast of Tan Dun's "The First Emperor" sold out within weeks of going on sale in November at the Regal Union Square Stadium 14 - and opera buffs and first-timers alike applauded the concept.
— Read more at New York Daily News

The Metropolitan Opera has unveiled a dazzling lineup of Wagnerian singers for its new production of the "Ring" cycle in 2012, headed by Deborah Voigt, Bryn Terfel, Ben Heppner and Jonas Kaufmann.
Voigt is to sing the soprano role of Bruennhilde, bass-baritone Terfel will portray Wotan and tenor Kaufmann has agreed to be Siegmund, the Met said Thursday. Heldentenor Heppner has been asked to sing the notoriously difficult role of Siegfried.
— Read more at International Herald Tribune

If you are wondering what mysterious something seems to be missing from your life this winter, it could be opera. While we wait for the Washington National Opera's spring season to start in late March, there are a few operas on the schedule to tide us over, presented by visiting companies like the Kirov Opera and the smaller Washington companies like Opera Lafayette and Virginia Opera. Still, opera addicts will not be satisfied until WNO finally kicks back into gear.
— Read more at DCist.com

Opera Quad Cities is celebrating its fifth birthday by graduating to the lavish and grand Adler Theatre in Davenport for its newest production.
Though it sponsored a visiting opera company at the Adler for "Rigoletto" in 2003 and "La Traviata" in 2004, this weekend's "Carmen" at the larger, newly renovated stage is Opera Quad Cities? first production in the 2,300-seat venue.
— Read more at Quad-Cities Online

Washington National Opera's 52nd season will include such favorites as Mozart's Don Giovanni and Puccini's La Boheme, along with the local premiere of a major contemporary opera and Placido Domingo's first U.S. appearance in a Handel work.
— Read more at baltimoresun.com

It all began on Christmas Day 1931, when Humperdinck's "Hansel and Gretel" was broadcast complete, live from the Metropolitan Opera, for the first time, on American radio stations.
The Metropolitan Opera's Saturday afternoon broadcasts quickly became one of this country's great cultural institutions -- recently endangered when Texaco withdrew its longtime sponsorship, but saved by Toll Brothers, which took over support in 2005. These broadcasts are carried locally by WQED-FM.
— Read more at post-gazette.com

Symphonica Toscanini, an orchestra of young musicians established just last spring in Rome, begins the American leg of its international tour tonight with a concert at the Italian Embassy in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. portion of the tour (which concludes January 28) follows the route of the tours which Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) made in 1920 with the Orchestra Arturo Toscanini and in 1950 (aged 83) with the NBC Symphony Orchestra.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

"I just felt it was really too soon."
With those words, Deborah Voigt revealed that she had pulled out of what would have been her first Brünnhildes in a complete Wagner Ring, in a new production to be staged by the Vienna State Opera between 2007 and 2009. While she will honor her commitment to sing the role in Vienna's Siegfried in April and May of 2008, she no longer plans to sing the entire cycle there.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Speight Jenkins will celebrate Seattle Opera's 2007-08 season, his 25th as general director of the company, with new stagings of Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride and Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer, revivals of Pagliacci and Tosca, and the Seattle premiere of Bellini's I Puritani.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

[Baritone Russell Braun hits his stride in New York.]
There are voices that grab hold of listeners as sound, almost independently of the personality behind them: Think of Jessye Norman's chthonic swells and purrs, or Birgit Nilsson's icy walls of tone. And then there are voices that seem less remarkable at first hearing, but stay with you for the sense of humanity they convey - the feeling of an open heart, of a soul that encompasses the many aches and joys to which our species is in thrall. One such voice belongs to Canadian baritone Russell Braun, famed for his gorgeously mellow timbre and patrician musicianship.
— Read more at Time Out New York

A new production of Puccini's "La Boheme" will open the 2007-08 season of the Washington National Opera and will be simulcast for the public on the National Mall, general director Placido Domingo announced Wednesday.
— Read more at mercurynews.com

Seattle Opera's 2007-08 season will give opera lovers two big local firsts ? Bellini's "I Puritani" and a previously announced co-production with the Metropolitan Opera of Gluck's "Iphigenia in Tauris." And those novelties will be balanced by two well-known favorites: Puccini's "Tosca" and Leoncavallo's "I Pagliacci."
And for Wagner fans, although there's no "Ring" this season, there's a Wagnerian hors d'oeuvre in "The Flying Dutchman." The cast includes two veterans of Seattle Opera's acclaimed "Ring": soprano Jane Eaglen and baritone Greer Grimsley.
— Read more at The Seattle Times

Playing at a multiplex more or less near you: monarchs, scoundrels, illicit lovers and the occasional fighter. And every one of them is singing.
Welcome to opera in the 21st century, which you can now enjoy while munching from vats of buttered popcorn and slurping oversized soft drinks.
For 75 years, the Metropolitan Opera has extended its reach with live radio broadcasts of Saturday-afternoon performances. Late last month, the company went a giant step further by introducing high-definition, surround-sound satellite simulcasts of select matinees to movie houses throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and, by delayed transmission, Japan.
— Read more at baltimoresun.com

The Metropolitan Opera's new Ring cycle, which will be directed by pioneering Canadian theater director Robert Lepage, is to feature American soprano Deborah Voigt singing her first Brünnhildes, tenor Ben Heppner performing the demanding role of Siegfried and Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel as Wotan, the company's general manager, Peter Gelb, revealed on Friday evening at a New York Times panel discussion.
The 2010-11 season - the second season that Gelb will have planned in its entirety - will present the first opera in Lepage's Ring cycle; a full performance-cycle of Wagner's tetralogy is slated for the following, 2011-12, season. The Met's music director James Levine is scheduled to conduct.
— Read more at Opera News

Eric Crozier, a friend and librettist of Benjamin Britten, suggested the story of Lucretia to the composer for his first chamber opera, The Rape of Lucretia, premiered at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1946. Britten approached Ronald Duncan about the libretto, and Duncan agreed to use as his main source a modern French play, André Obey's Le Viol de Lucrèce (adapted separately in English by Thornton Wilder). Obey certainly knew the Shakespeare poem on the story, The Rape of Lucrece, and the ultimate source, the first book of Livy's Ab urbe condita. It is an inherently operatic story, set by Handel in an extraordinary cantata, La Lucrezia, recorded superlatively by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.
— Read more at Charles T. Downey - ionarts

Concerts, exhibitions and movie showings are among the events planned worldwide to remember Arturo Toscanini, 50 years after the death of the celebrated Italian conductor.
Commemorations will take place throughout 2007, mostly organized by countries and musical institutions that were touched by Toscanini's work as an artist and by his political stance as a staunch opponent of fascism and Nazism.
— Read more at calendarlive.com

The San Francisco Opera has named Nicola Luisotti, 45, as its next music director. The Italian conductor will assume the post at the start of the 2009-10 season, replacing outgoing music director Donald Runnicles.
Luisotti's appointment, which was announced Tuesday at the War Memorial Opera House by general director David Gockley and chairman Franklin "Pitch" Johnson, puts to rest months of speculation that started last September, when Runnicles announced he would step down at the end of the 2008/09 season. The resignation was described as a "mutual decision" between Runnicles and Gockley.
— Read more at ContraCostaTimes.com

[Soprano Deborah Voigt has downsized since a famous firing. Her voice? Plush. And she's got that job back.]
In his office at London's Covent Garden, Peter Mario Katona keeps a thick file of hate mail. The Royal Opera's director of casting even framed one particularly unquotable letter and hung it on his wall.
His sin? Firing American soprano Deborah Voigt before she could sing her signature title role in Strauss' "Ariadne auf Naxos" in 2004.
— Read more at calendarlive.com

With Ohio State University in the national championship, could "I Puritani" distract a city from college football? Yes, indeed ? at least for the crowd of about 150 that attended the opera broadcast at the Georgesville Regal, in a suburb of Columbus.
— Read more at The New York Sun

The emperor is in a royal snit over just about everything. Nothing less than the Great Wall of China is in the midst of being built. Then the once-lame princess miraculously begins to walk after losing her virginity.
It's business as usual at the Metropolitan Opera, where epic stories unfold on a near-nightly basis, told as emphatically as possible by voices like Placido Domingo's. But even though Tan Dun's new opera, The First Emperor, contained all of those events (and will be seen in a Met simulcast Jan. 13 at area movie theaters), I don't see it settling into the company's repertoire alongside Aida for long.
— Read more at Philadelphia Inquirer

It looks as if the Metropolitan Opera's first-ever live high-definition simulcasts into movie theaters are as much of a success in suburban Chicago venues as they are proving to be nationally and worldwide.
The first opera in the six-opera series, Mozart's "The Magic Flute," drew 91 percent of capacity throughout the United States on Dec. 30, when it was beamed into 60 venues across the country, including theaters in suburban Lincolnshire and Woodridge, according to Met spokeswoman Sommer Hixson.
— Read more at Chicago Tribune

[In these marketing-driven times, Elizabeth Futral is a rarity - a glamorous singer who is adamant about staying just this side of the spotlight. BARRY SINGER talks to the soprano, who sings Princess Yueyang in this month's broadcast of Tan Dun's The First Emperor.]
There probably isn't a little black cocktail dress in all of opera that Elizabeth Futral couldn't comfortably slip into. Blessed with a shapely coloratura soprano that she regularly wraps around an impressive variety of roles - most recently the Emperor's Daughter, Princess Yueyang, in last month's Metropolitan Opera world premiere of Tan Dun's The First Emperor - Futral continues to tackle an admirable mix of the very new (Philip Glass, André Previn, Ricky Ian Gordon), the traditionally old (Mozart, Donizetti, Rossini, Bellini, Verdi) and the veritably prehistoric, freshly excavated (Vivaldi, Handel). She also has quite a figure. Moreover, she can act. This rare combination of vocal and dramatic ability, an adventuress's spirit and, oh yes, looks, would seem to qualify her for a spot on opera's glamour team of telegenic, heavily-hyped, pin-up divas.
— Read more at Opera News

Hard on the heels of the success of the Julie Taymor Magic Flute, the Metropolitan Opera chose Bellini?s I Puritani as the second instalment in its Met at the Movies project. Given that most theatres were sold-out last week and people had to be turned away, Cineplex wisely added an extra theatre at the Sheppard Grande in Toronto. While there was a sprinkling of young children for Magic Flute a week ago, the audience this time around was your typical opera-going crowd and just about zero popcorn munching. Judging by their reaction during and after the show, the Met's I Puritani was a hit.
— Read more at scena.org

At 6, his piping voice sang solos in the church choir in Bari, in the south of Italy. At 18, he was studying at the world's most famous opera venue, Milan's Teatro alla Scala.
At 71, after a tenor's career on stage and in teaching studios around the world, he came to Miami, decided it lacked opportunities for young singers, and founded the Miami Lyric Opera.
— Read more at MiamiHerald.com

Peter Gelb, the new general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, revealed some juicy casting information to New York Times chief classical music critic Anthony Tommasini during a TimesTalks event last Saturday (January 5).
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Dreams are goals to Alpine Bank and its founder and chair, Bob Young. And he has dreamed and achieved great things for Colorado Mountain College.
CMC will honor Young and Alpine Bank with a Jan. 12 opera concert at 7 p.m. at CMC's Spring Valley theater.
— Read more at Glenwood Springs Post Independent

The Metropolitan Opera's first high-definition simulcast to movie theaters drew 91 percent capacity in the United States last weekend.
The company said Friday that final figures showed 60 venues carried a live transmission of Mozart's "The Magic Flute," and that total U.S. capacity was about 14,500.
— Read more at Newsday.com

On January 28, at a gala dinner at the Pierre in Manhattan, OPERA NEWS will once again recognize the distinguished achievements of five extraordinary artists with the presentation of the OPERA NEWS Awards. Each of this year's honorees - Ben Heppner, James Levine, René Pape, Renata Scotto and Deborah Voigt - has created a legacy of great work in the world of opera. From critic Daniel Cook's perceptive La Scala report of some forty-six years ago - "Perhaps the chief delight of the [Hänsel und Gretel] performance was Renata Scotto's Gretel, beautifully sung and acted with a charm and naïveté that were utterly appealing" - to Mark Thomas Ketterson's review of Deborah Voigt's Lyric Opera of Chicago triumph as Salome in the current issue (see p. 58), OPERA NEWS has been enriched by the presence of these artists within its pages.
— Read more at Opera News

Tan Dun should sound familiar by now. He scored the blockbuster movie, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." He wrote the much-praised oratorio, "Water Passion," and seems to have commissions all over the concert-music world.
His new opera, "The First Emperor," is spectacular, dramatic and musically inventive. Metropolitan Opera regulars, who are not receptive to new/contemporary work, seem delighted and mystified simultaneously.
— Read more at silive.com

Even with dozens of singers onstage, with the Great Wall of China itself represented among the sets at the Metropolitan Opera, Placido Domingo's entrance immediately makes him seem like the biggest, loudest thing up there.
— Read more at theledger.com

In Leonard Bernstein's clever one-act opera "Trouble in Tahiti," the heroine describes a gaudy movie musical as so much "Technicolor twaddle." If Tan Dun's new work "The First Emperor" (heard at the Metropolitan Opera on December 29) can hardly be dismissed as twaddle, it never attains the epic status to which it aspires.
— Read more at GayCityNews

[Bottom Line: East meets West in this ambitious but unfortunately static historical opera by Oscar-winning composer Tan Dun.]
There's a genuine sense of event status inherent in the Metropolitan Opera's world-premiere presentation of "The First Emperor," the new work by Oscar-winning composer Tan Dun, who scored "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."
— Read more at The Hollywood Reporter

The A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute of the N.C. School of the Arts will present the Southeastern premiere of Ned Rorem's and J.D. McClatchy's Our Town, a new American opera, beginning Feb. 2 in the Stevens Center.
— Read more at journalnow.com

[ Transatlantic Mozart]
Last Saturday, the Metropolitan Opera of New York inaugurated a series of live satellite relays to 94 cinemas in North America and Europe with Julie Taymor's 100-minute version of The Magic Flute. In the Clapham Picture House, twentysomethings rubbed shoulders with the greying acolytes of high art. Chocolate wrappers rustled, ice softly clinked in plastic cups; then, in the cosiest and least pretentious auditorium of my opera-going career, there was a collective gasp of excitement as the orchestra appeared on screen, tuning up over 2,000 miles away.
— Read more at Independent Online Edition

[International team brings Tan Dun's world premiere opera to a movie theater near you]
Composer-conductor Tan Dun likes to say of his new opera, "The First Emperor": "The loudest sound can be heard only in silence." Now that the press has pronounced judgment on his work, commissioned by New York's Metropolitan Opera, observers must wonder if he would like to recast that epigram. Perhaps something along the lines of "silence the loudest sounds."
— Read more at CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

[Tan Dun's "The First Emperor" at the Met.]
Scenes of the Near and Far East have unfolded thousands of times on the Metropolitan Opera stage, courtesy of "Madama Butterfly," "Turandot," "Aida," and other masterpieces of Orientalism. This season, with the première performances of Tan Dun's "The First Emperor," the company is finally letting a non-Western composer describe his world. Tan grew up in a village in the Hunan province of China, during the Cultural Revolution.
— Read more at Alex Ross - The New Yorker

A leading Bollywood director known for his lavish operatic sets and musicals has been signed by famed French opera house Theater du Chatelet to create a stage production, an Indian newspaper reported on Thursday.
Sanjay Leela Bhansali's last period film "Devdas," a story of a Bengali aristocrat doomed in love, was replete with grandiose sets and theatrical music, and the filmmaker said it was this movie that prompted the French company to approach him.
— Read more at Yahoo! News

2006 was a great year for opera in London, and the good news is that 2007 promises to be just as exciting.
The Royal Opera's three complete cycles of Wagner's Ring sold out within four hours and look to be the big thing of the next twelve months.
— Read more at musicomh.com

To David DiChiera's title of general director of Michigan Opera Theatre might now be added the distinction of composer in residence.
After 36 years as the company's founder and guiding spirit, DiChiera takes a still larger place in the spotlight next season when MOT presents the world premiere of his newly completed opera, "Cyrano."
— Read more at The Detroit News Online

"Whither thou goest, I shall go; where thou lodgest, I shall lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God."
For Steve Richards those were more than just pretty words from the Bible. They were the inspiration for an opera. And now, the retired Walnut Creek cantor is sharing the whole megillah. The megillah, in this case, is the Book of Ruth, and the opera is Richards' "The Ballad of Ruth," recorded last summer in Tel Aviv with the Israel Philharmonic.
— Read more at jewishsf.com

It may be the heart of winter, but the Ohio Light Opera has summer on its mind. Based at the College of Wooster, the OLO has announced a slate of shows for its 2007 season, ranging from two Gilbert and Sullivan operettas to two OLO premieres.
— Read more at toledoblade.com

It wasn't your typical matinee movie crowd. These people were mostly much older than that - and as they rode up the massive escalator on Saturday afternoon in Toronto's Paramount Theatre, they looked like they weren't quite sure where they were going.
But then this wasn't your typical matinee movie. This was the Metropolitan Opera, live from Lincoln Center in New York. Thanks to the wonders of instantaneous satellite transmission, 88 theatres in North America, including 28 in Canada, put Rocky, Borat and those dancing penguins back in the can for an afternoon and instead screened Mozart's Magic Flute.
— Read more at globeandmail.com

The Opera Company of Philadelphia will coproduce and present a newly minted opera in the 2007-08 season by an opera administrator who has never written an opera before.
Cyrano will be the first opera by David DiChiera, 71, the founder and general director of the Michigan Opera Theatre, with whom the Philadelphia troupe worked on last year's production of Margaret Garner.
— Read more at Philadelphia Inquirer

[A Vatican composer is to stage an opera based on Dante's Divine Comedy, with visions of heaven, hell and purgatory.]
The lavish production is reported to include 200 performers and musicians, six projectors and a huge stage.
The composer, Monsignor Marco Frisina, has said it will contain a variety of musical styles, with hell illustrated with rock, punk and rave.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

Judging by the masses of smiling children who streamed out onto Lincoln Center Plaza after a family-friendly, shortened version of Mozart's "The Magic Flute," opera may have just gotten an influx of younger fans.
Starting last week, the Metropolitan Opera began presenting an English-language performance of "The Magic Flute," trimmed to about 100 minutes, aimed at attracting families. Saturday's performance was beamed from Lincoln Center in high-definition simulcast to about 100 movie theaters around the world. (According to the Met's Web site, the opera was shown at the Framingham 15 theater, and was sold out.)
— Read more at Worcester Telegram & Gazette News

At 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 6, Coro Lirico, will present "Opera Americana," a concert featuring the music of American opera composers, Gershwin, Bernstein and Copland.
Coro Lirico music director Jason Tramm of Summit conducts.
Soloists are Russell Stern and Thomas Cuffari, piano; Kenneth Overton, bass; Melanie Campbell, soprano; and Nancy Mion, soprano. Drew University hosts the concert in its Dorothy Young Center for the Performing Arts on the Madison campus. Call 973-887-6336.
— Read more at nj.com

The palm trees, chain restaurants and multiplex movie theater at Hacienda Crossings in Dublin wouldn't put anyone in mind of New York's Lincoln Center, 3,000 miles away. But on Saturday morning, when opera lovers and curious novices converged on this East Bay shopping center complex for the Metropolitan Opera's first-ever live, high-definition (HD) simulcast of a production, a technology-driven connection between the two places was forged.
— Read more at sfgate.com

[We offer our favorites of the CDs and DVDs we reviewed in 2006.]
Our top ten full-length opera recordings from 2006 were a highly theatrical Porgy and Bess, led by John Mauceri (Decca); the recording debut of Philip Glass's The Voyage, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies (Orange Mountain Music); Radamisto, led by Alan Curtis (Virgin); Offenbach's zany La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, paced by Marc Minkowski (Virgin); an English-language Love for Three Oranges, conducted by Richard Hickox (Chandos); Christophe Rousset's crisp traversal of Salieri's La Grotta di Trofonio (Ambroisie); Aulis Sallinen's quirky The King Goes Forth to France, illuminated by conductor Okko Kamu (Ondine); Alessandro Ciccolini's daring reconstruction of Vivaldi's Motezuma, led by Alan Curtis (Archiv); Christian Thielemann's Parsifal, starring the indefatigable Plácido Domingo (DG); and Donald Runnicles's uncommonly lyrical reading of Tristan und Isolde (Warner).
— Read more at Opera News

The 2007 Spoleto Festival USA will feature a number of American premieres, including the modern-day US debut of a rare comic opera by Gluck, a new song cycle by Philip Glass, and the first appearances in this country of the new national ballet company of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, an ensemble founded and headed by American Ballet Theater star Nina Ananiashvili.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

An Italian priest has turned Dante's voyage through the underworld into an ambitious opera, setting the medieval poetry of "The Divine Comedy" to rock rhythms, Gregorian chants and Italian melodies.
Producers of "The Divine Comedy: The Opera" plan the debut in Rome in autumn, then take the work to Milan and abroad, said Monsignor Marco Frisina, a musician and composer who wrote the music and part of the opera's libretto.
— Read more at International Herald Tribune

['International star' could take over the operations of the company.]
The Sorg Opera company may have a chance at rebirth. The company hasn't performed since April 2005, but Marilyn Johnson, a long-time supporter and board member, says there's a chance that Sorg could sing again.
— Read more at Sorg Opera could sing again

In movie theaters across the United States on Saturday, people did an odd thing during the main attraction: They clapped. They clapped between scenes and when certain characters left the screen.
"I did at the beginning too," said Walter Perron, 88, a retired chemist who was at the Walter Reade Theater in Manhattan. "And then I thought: Who am I clapping for?"
— Read more at New York Times

Classical music organizations are not typically on the cutting edge of technology - but more and more of them, with an eye on long-term survival, have heartily embraced new opportunities.
Orchestras are figuring out how to make concerts downloadable in various formats, for example, in an effort to avoid the difficulties (and huge expenses) of making commercial recordings the old-fashioned way.
— Read more at baltimoresun.com

La Scala, Italy's most famous opera house, is in the news again after the cancellation of a production of Voltaire's Candide that is drawing rave reviews in Paris. The show was to open in June.
A spokesman for the Milanese theatre said the cancellation, which will cost La Scala more than ?1.2m (£800,000), had nothing to do with the scene in which an actor wearing a Silvio Berlusconi mask dances drunkenly on a mattress dressed only in red, white and green striped underpants.
— Read more at Independent Online Edition

This list is not systematic and certainly not complete. It contains productions that interest me, especially premieres and recent operas, in the next several months. I will try to provide review round-ups for as many as possible. Please use the comments section to make suggestions.
— Read more at Charles T. Downey - ionarts

[Starting her career in the box office of the Florida Grand Opera, Elizabeth Caballero has risen far. This month the soprano will perform the leading role.]
To rise to the top of the world of opera requires more than a good set of lungs and a well-trained voice.
For Elizabeth Caballero, it also required the determination to diet.
Caballero, 32, is a promising young soprano who will be performing this year with the Metropolitan Opera and Met in the Parks in New York City and next year in Seattle. Working with the Florida Grand Opera, she will play the leading role this month in Manon Lescaut, and then next year she will star in La Bohme.
— Read more at MiamiHerald.com

[The life of the man who put words to Mozart.]
Lorenzo Da Ponte, who wrote the librettos for "The Marriage of Figaro," "Don Giovanni," and "Così Fan Tutte," has been a troubling item for Mozart scholars. Almost everyone agrees that Da Ponte supplied Mozart with better texts than the composer had ever worked with, and that the operas the two men produced together are among the greatest in the international repertory.
— Read more at The New Yorker : critics : books

Televised opera has had some successes over the years, but seldom at the level on display this weekend at the CineMark 20 theater in Moosic.
Saturday afternoon, the Metropolitan Opera televised live and in high definition the first of six operas that will be shown through late April in movie theaters across the country.
— Read more at The Times-Tribune

Opera has broadcast radio performances for generations. Saturday, the Met beamed a live performance in high definition to movie theaters around the world. As Frank Browning of member station KCUR reports, the Met is trying to take advantage of technology to reach a broader audience.
— Read/Hear more at NPR

Even before the Metropolitan Opera?s Saturday matinee of Mozart's "Magic Flute" began, this family-friendly version of Julie Taymor's 2004 production looked to be a huge success. Children were everywhere, a rare sight at the venerable institution. They were having pictures taken in front of the house, dashing up and down the stairs of the Grand Promenade and, before long, sitting up in their seats all over the auditorium.
— Read more at New York Times

One of my greatest lessons about live opera took place years ago when I saw two performances of Verdi's "Don Carlo" in three days.
The lesson was not about endurance. Opera lovers are generally glad to sit through as many performances of a favorite opera with a strong cast as they can get tickets to. Two measly performances of even a four-hour opera like "Don Carlo" is nothing compared with, say, four hearings of Wagner's "Lohengrin," to which I happily subjected myself in my college years.
— Read more at New York Times

As someone who has performed with leading opera lights Jessye Norman and Placido Domingo, why would Carlos Cesar Rodriguez be so excited about performing with the tiny company with the lower-case name, fresh young dynamic opera?
— Read more at Burlington Free Press

The current "it" girl of the opera world returned to the Met on Wednesday night, to star in a Bellini opera. She was Anna Netrebko, and the opera was "I Puritani." This work has long been a showcase for bel canto sopranos. In recent memory, we have had Callas, Sutherland, Sills, Caballé, Gruberova. Ms. Netrebko has her problems as a bel canto artist - who doesn't, huh? - but the world loves her, and rightly so.
— Read more at The New York Sun

Placido Domingo says he has a dream. He's in Vienna at 2 a.m. and his yearning to see the performance taking place at the Metropolitan Opera in New York is instantly fulfilled by switching on a television.
The renowned Spanish tenor's dream may not be far from reality in the digital age.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

In tenor terms, he is a true dramatic. His large, powerful voice suits opera's meatier, emotionally strenuous roles. Yet, it's convincingly lyrical in the love scenes.
He was back in South Florida early this month, starring in a tailor-made role and escaping the chill of Milan. Or so he thought.
— Read more at palmbeachpost.com

[Noted soprano Deborah Voigt expands her repertoire even as she sheds her once-noted weight. Having tackled Salome in October, she now embarks on a new recital tour for 2007.]
Even if you've never ventured inside an opera house, you probably know of Deborah Voigt. Since she underwent gastric bypass surgery that resulted in the loss of almost 150 pounds, America's foremost dramatic soprano has been profiled far beyond the media usually available to classical music performers: People magazine, even 60 Minutes.
— Read more at Floridian

Judging by the masses of smiling children who streamed out onto Lincoln Center Plaza after a family-friendly, shortened version of Mozart's "The Magic Flute," opera may have just gotten an influx of younger fans.
Starting Friday, the Metropolitan Opera began presenting an English-language performance of "The Magic Flute," trimmed to about 100 minutes, aimed at attracting families. Saturday's performance was beamed from Lincoln Center in high-definition simulcast to about 100 movie theaters around the world.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

An opera production featuring actors depicting U.S. President George W. Bush and other world leaders dancing around in their underwear has been nixed from next summer's lineup at La Scala.
— Read more at CBC.ca

On Saturday, the Metropolitan Opera begins live broadcasts of select matinee performances into highdefinition movie screens across the country. The first broadcast will be of an abridged version of Mozart's "The Magic Flute," sung in English and directed by Julie Taymor. But the real ticket frenzy will most likely be for next week's showing of Bellini's "I Puritani." Though it clocks in at more than three hours, the opera has one thing going for it: Anna Netrebko, the queen bee of a new era of opera heartthrobs.
— Read more at The New York Sun

Portland Opera General Director Christopher Mattaliano announced that the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation has awarded Portland Opera a $2.1 million grant. The grant?the largest ever received by the Opera?is provided for general operating support over three years.
— Read more at Huliq.com