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

Opera in America itself seems to becoming an opera, and a pretty grand one at that.
So who will take the final curtain call and last bow "the No. 1 top slot" in "Great Moments at The Met: Viewer's Choice," hosted by superstar soprano Renee Fleming on "Great Performances at the Met" special on PBS?
— Read more at madison.com

San Francisco Opera general director David Gockley has appointed Jessica Koplos as director of electronic media, a new position in the company reporting directly to the general director. Under the direction of Gockley, San Francisco Opera has made major strides in the electronic media field with the recent launch of the Koret-Taube Media Suite and the company?s successful simulcasts.
— Read more at livedesignonline.com

After 15 years of creating theater and sharing it with people across the country, the time came for composer Jackie Dempsey and artist Steve O'Hearn to do the inverse.
About a year and a half ago, the Pittsburgh-based Squonk Opera artistic directors decided to let the people they perform for and the places they go to shape the next show.
— Read more at baltimoresun.com

Four finalists have been named for the J. Ralph Corbett Distinguished Chair in Opera at University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, vacant since former chair Sandra Bernhard left last summer to take a position with Houston Grand Opera.
— Read more at The Cincinnati Post

The Mariinsky Theater has taken its zany production of Rossini's Il Viaggio a Reims around the world. We have written about it when it was in Paris at the Théâtre du Châtelet, at the Kennedy Center here in Washington, as well as in St. Petersburg. Opus Arte recently released a DVD produced during that Paris run of the production, featuring the Mariinsky Theater Academy of Young Singers, compiled from four performances at the Châtelet.
— Read more at Charles T. Downey - Ionarts

Gudrun Wagner, who as the wife of Wolfgang Wagner, the director of the Bayreuth Festival, played a major behind-the-scenes role in guiding the event, the world's pre-eminent Wagner opera festival, died yesterday in Bayreuth, Germany. She was 63.
— Read more at New York Times

Following recent troubles, Russell Watson is still going ahead with the release of new album Outside In, as he believes he owes it to his fans.
Outside In features forthcoming single La Califfa (released 19th November, as well as guest appearances from the legendary Jocelyn Brown as well as the star of the musical Rent, Denise Van Outen, who performs the classic Unforgettable and the cheeky 'Baby it's Cold Outside'. Russell is also joined by new singing sensation Hayley Westenra on the beautiful Time To Say Goodbye.

It took 90 years, but Gluck's "Iphigénie en Tauride" has finally returned to the Metropolitan Opera. On Tuesday night the Met unveiled a grimly effective production of this work, one of the greatest of all operas, staged by Stephen Wadsworth and vibrantly conducted by Louis Langrée in his company debut. The opera's previous history at the Met amounted to just five performances, with the original French libretto translated into German, during the 1916-17 season.
— Read more at New York Times

The Metropolitan Opera Guild will launch tomorrow a new series titled "Met Legends" with a tribute to Marilyn Horne at Hunter College's Kaye Playhouse in New York City.
The mezzo-soprano will appear to discuss her life and career as rare film and video footage of her performances is presented. Clips to be shown include excerpts from her various engagements in Europe, at the Metropolitan Opera, Live from Lincoln Center concerts and her appearances on The Tonight Show and The Carol Burnett Show. Surprise guests will be among those honoring Horne as well.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Milan's La Scala opera house will probably open its 2007-08 season on schedule on December 7 thanks to the culture ministry's intervention in the face of a threatened strike, a union leader said Wednesday.
— Read more at AFP

With Richard Strauss' "Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow)," Lyric Opera of Chicago has both a notable new production and a stunning house debut.
The debut is by St. Louis-based soprano Christine Brewer, whose golden voice is well-known to opera lovers here. Brewer makes a strong impression in a difficult role. The complex production, with sets and costumes designed by Kevin Knight and direction by Paul Curran, helps to clarify a sometimes problematically intellectual fairy tale.
— Read more at STLtoday .com

In celebration of 30 years of Metropolitan Opera telecasts on PBS, this month the network's Great Performances series is presenting a special program titled Great Moments at the Met: Viewer's Choice. Soprano Renée Fleming hosts this countdown show of scenes from Met-PBS broadcasts selected by audience vote.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The Metropolitan Opera and In Demand Networks have inked a deal to bring all eight new performances from the Met's second season of "Metropolitan Opera: Live in High Definition" to on-demand subscribers in the U.S.
— Read more at Reuters

Two stars of the American opera scene have died - Frank Guarrera of the Metropolitan Opera in New York and Andrew Foldi of the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
— Read more at CBC.ca

Henri Dutilleux is a great composer. James Levine is a great conductor. Renee Fleming is a great soprano. The combination of all three should make for a terrific collaboration when Fleming sings and Levine conducts Dutilleux's "Le Temps l'Horloge" with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, part of an all-French program Thursday, Friday and Saturday at Symphony Hall (and also on Monday in New York's Carnegie Hall).
— Read more at BostonHerald.com

English National Opera has launched a regular series of free podcasts, featuring information, interviews and musical samples. Hosted by Edward Seckerson, music critic for The Independent of London, the downloadable audio features will be prepared for each production ENO presents.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Strikes that have forced the cancellation of performances at Milan's La Scala and other Italian opera houses were called off Tuesday after talks with the country's culture minister, a union leader said.
— Read more at The Associated Press

Growing up in the small Georgia town of Lincolnton, Leah Partridge never saw herself as an opera singer.
"I had this concept of opera with the big women and horns coming out of their heads," she said. "It wasn't me."
— Read more at publicbroadcasting.net

A new Pinkerton has joined the second cast of the Madama Butterfly revival opening this weekend at San Francisco Opera. James Valenti, a 29-year-old tenor with a rapidly rising career in Europe, will sing the Dec. 6 and 8 (evening) performances of the Puccini favorite; he replaces Alfredo Portilla, who is, according to a statement released by the company yesterday, withdrawing so as to focus on his Macduff in the current San Francisco run of Verdi's Macbeth.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Retired Lyric Opera of Chicago singer Andrew Foldi has died, the company said Tuesday. He was 81.
Foldi, who sang in more than 20 roles at Lyric Opera from 1954 to 1993, died last week in Federal Way, Wash., following a stroke, according to a statement released Tuesday.
— Read more at nwsource.com

Nearly a year after the New York City Opera gave up on the idea of leaving Lincoln Center to build its own home, the opera and the New York City Ballet have agreed on making changes to the New York State Theater, which they share at the center. The changes include a modular acoustical system that can be moved in for the opera and out for the ballet.
— Read more at New York Times

Every society has its central myth, its defining metaphor, and ours is Hollywood. After nearly a century of keeping one eye fixed on Tinseltown and its tidy moral fables - from the rise of Lana Turner to the fall of Lindsay Lohan - it sometimes feels as though Americans have no other vehicle for understanding the world and its ways.
That, at least, is the impression left by director Robert Lepage's inventive but self-limiting new production of "The Rake's Progress," which opened Friday night at the San Francisco Opera.
— Read more at sfgate.com

Top government officials are demanding some answers from the builders of Oslo's new Opera House, after learning that its brand-new white Italian marble has started turning yellow even before the country's new landmark opens.
— Read more at Aftenposten.no

WORLD famous opera star Bryn Terfel is urging more young men to take part in concerts and operatic workshops at a venue in his home town.
Terfel is honorary president of Canolfan Gerdd William Mathias in Caernarfon.
He is now backing the centre's search for more men to take part in their events.
— Read more at icWales

Shortly after 7:30 Saturday night, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion curtain rose. Leporello, the droll, put-upon servant of the dastardly Don Giovanni, tapped his foot to the music and fiddled with a giant hourglass, that heavy-handed symbol for time passing and maybe a woman's figure. A masked dancer in an exaggerated white hoop skirt was, I suppose, mysterious death. The Don's tomb rose upon a geometric stage.
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

AS an encore at her recitals Susan Graham often sings the song "Sexy Lady." Written for her by the composer and lyricist Ben Moore, it's the comic complaint of a star mezzo-soprano trapped in an endless round of trouser roles: lovesick adolescents in operas by Mozart and Strauss, dysfunctional knights in Handel.
— Read more at New York Times

Diana Damrau thought about her last staged performances of the Queen of the Night and laughed.
"It's sports. It's like you want to make the world record in a 50-meter race 200 times a year," the 36-year-old coloratura soprano commented about the notoriously difficult-but-short role in Mozart's "Der Zauberfloete."
After Saturday's performance of "Magic Flute" at the Metropolitan Opera, she will retire the part from her repertoire.
— Read more at The Associated Press

As I was loosening the spine of the new English translation of Birgit Nilsson's autobiography, I chanced on this unforgettable confession: "That was the first and last time I went on stage without underwear."
— Read more at Chron.com

Social critic and writer Christopher Lasch once said, "nothing succeeds like the appearance of success." This certainly applies to the Virginia Opera's Virginia premiere of Wagner's monumental "Tristan and Isolde."
— Read more at VAGazette.com

Verdi's MACBETH is not among the greatest operas ever written nor is it on the list of Top Ten Verdi Favorites. Second ring? Also-ran? Not important. Nevertheless, this production, currently owned by SF Opera and available through December 2nd, offers illustrious baritone THOMAS HAMPSON in the title role.
— Read more at San Francisco Sentinel

Wichita Grand Opera is not known for thinking small.
For the 2007-2008 season that begins this week, it offers two big stars of the opera world: Kansas-born Samuel Ramey (in his signature role as Mephistopheles in "Faust") and tenor Marcello Giordani as Rodolfo in "La Bohème."
— Read more at kansascity.com

Ever wondered what opera is all about?
Over the past 10 years, over 2,700 Toronto kids between the ages of seven and 12 have taken part in the Canadian Opera Company's After School Opera Program.
— Read more at TheStar.com

In Los Angeles Opera's latest revival of "Don Giovanni," which opened a nine-performance run at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Saturday, Mozart's masterpiece is treated as a director's conceit. As director's conceits go, this one has its virtues I suppose, but after a while I felt trapped by it and just wanted it to go away. Director Mariusz Trelinski puts himself very much front and center, and though he cannot quite elbow poor Mozart out of the limelight, he does manage a great deal of distraction.
— Read more at OCRegister.com

Boston Lyric Opera. Chicago Opera Theater. Houston Grand Opera. Michigan Opera Theatre. Minnesota Opera. Opera Theatre of St. Louis. San Francisco Opera.
Not only are these among the largest and most important opera companies in the country, they also happen to be the kind of heady company in which Opera Colorado has found itself with its recent co-productions.
— Read more at The Denver Post

The early influences on Katherine Jenkins explain almost everything. There was Maria Callas, obviously, but there was also, right at the other end of the range, Marilyn Monroe. To be charitable to her, she was a film star who, as Noël Coward said of himself, couldn't really sing but knew how to. The lack of virtuosity hardly mattered. Glamour was what she brought to the party and this she did in truckloads. Down in the old South Wales steel town of Neath, the young woman who is now its most famous daughter saw her on TV singing Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend, and was hooked.
— Read more at Times Online

The outcome of the landmark collaboration between the National Gallery of Art, the Clarice Smith Center, and the University of Maryland School of Music in the commission of an opera from the John Musto-Mark Campbell composer-librettist team is remarkable. Later the Same Evening is inspired by five paintings of Edward Hopper: Room in New York (1932), Hotel Window (1955), Hotel Room (1931), Two on the Aisle (1927), and Automat (1927). The set features the five paintings in a row with each painting highlighted with increased lighting for its respective scene.
— Read more at Ionarts

A new opera playing Paris this week will reaffirm a surge in popularity for classical countertenors -- able to reproduce roles written for ancient "castrati" performers, castrated before puberty so their voices remained pure and high.
Not yet 30, Philippe Jaroussky takes the lead role in a baroque production of a 17th century Italian opera "Il Sant' Alessio" opening at the prestigious Theatre des Champs-Elysees after playing in London and New York before going on to Geneva.
— Read more at AFP

For 13-year-old Lucas Stilianos of Lynnfield, it's the third time he has played the title role in the Young Opera Company of New England's "Amahl and the Night Visitors," which takes the stage Saturday night at Andover High School. Unfortunately, it might also be his last - he is growing up, after all.
— Read more at EagleTribune.com

Already deemed an artistic success by many in the opera world, the Canadian Opera Company's inaugural season was a financial one as well, COC officials announced at its annual general meeting Tuesday night.
The 2006-2007 season ended with a surplus of $49,000 - the company's fifth consecutive surplus, COC president David Ferguson revealed Tuesday.
— Read more at CBC.ca

Janice Mancini Del Sesto, whose 15-year tenure at Boston Lyric Opera has been marked by significant institutional growth but mixed critical reviews, will step down as general director of the company when her contract expires in 2009.
— Read more at The Boston Globe

Pulitzer Prize winning composer Ned Rorem and librettist and poet J.D. McClatchy have been commissioned by Sarasota Opera to write a full-length opera for the Sarasota Youth Opera program. The work will premiere in May 2009 at the Sarasota Opera House.
The opera will be based on Winsor McCay's seminal comic strip "Little Nemo in Slumberland" which ran in the New York Herald and New York American newspapers from 1905 through 1913.
— Read more at PR.com

Peter Mattei, the Swedish baritone who mightily impressed audiences in New York (and, on screen, all over the world) in the Metropolitan Opera's Barber of Seville last season, has withdrawn from the upcoming revival of Verdi's Falstaff at Lyric Opera of Chicago.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

"Opera lovers never have enough opera," says Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb. So he and his company - who have excited opera fans on four continents with such new media ventures as the high-definition broadcasts in movie theaters and the Metropolitan Opera channel on Sirius Satellite Radio - have announced another electronic endeavor to satisfy our hunger for great opera.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Ron Luchsinger is in only his second season as artistic director of Commonwealth Opera, based in Florence, but he already has a long-range vision for the company: Get even bigger; get even better.
To that end, this year he has taken the helm of a production of Giuseppe Verdi's "Rigoletto," the first in a trilogy of masterpieces written by Verdi between 1851 and 1853 that include "La traviata" and "Il Trovetore."
— Read more at Amherst Bulletin

The Metropolitan Opera and Rhapsody launched an on-demand digital music service Tuesday in which 100 operas from 1937-2006 are available for purchase.
The operas include performances by sopranos Maria Callas, Beverly Sills, Birgit Nilsson and Renata Tebaldi, and tenors Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Franco Corelli and Richard Tucker. They can be accessed from TiVo set-top boxes, in-home digital audio players, personal computers and portable media players.
— Read more at The Associated Press

The Metropolitan Opera has tripled the number of movie theaters presenting high-definition broadcasts of performances during the 2007-08 season after the dramatic success of its debut series of live opera transmissions last season. It also has increased the number of operas to eight from six.
— Read more at chicagotribune.com

Lawyers for La Scala's management told the Italian culture ministry the opera house wanted to directly negotiate a salary dispute with theatre workers in order to stop the second day of strikes, a statement said.
— Read more at Yahoo! News

For the final performance of his football career at Harvard, the senior Noah Van Niel can picture the perfect closing scene.
He will stand with his teammates in their mud-soaked uniforms after a victory over Yale on Saturday and sing "Ten Thousand Men of Harvard." Their families, friends and classmates in the stands will join in for the sweetest of off-key melodies.
— Read more at New York Times

[Harvard FB Noah Van Niel discusses his double life]
For almost 90 years, the post-game celebration after every Harvard football victory has been the same. After shaking hands with opposing players and coaches, it's a rush to the locker room. Not for an inspiration speech from the coach or the awarding of a game ball, but rather to sing. That's right -- after every win, the Crimson sing.
— Read more at SI.com

Noted composer and conductor, Victoria Bond, will conduct "Amahl and the Night Visitors" in Chicago. The production will be directed by Francis Menotti, the composer's son.
Friday, November 30, 2007, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, December 1, 2:00 p.m.
Sunday, December 2, 2:00 p.m.
— Learn more at chamberoperachicago.org

Los Angeles Opera will celebrate the 40th anniversary of Plácido Domingo's Los Angeles debut in a gala concert at Walt Disney Hall on April 18. The tenor sang the title role in Alberto Ginastera's Don Rodrigo during a 1967 tour with the New York City Opera at the then-new Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

It's the kind of improbable event that usually happens only in 1930s musicals.
...
That storybook scenario actually happened last month when the Lyric Opera of Chicago sacked Angela Gheorghiu for unprofessional diva-from-hell behavior while the company was in rehearsal for Puccini's La Boheme. Her 27-year-old understudy, Miami's Elaine Alvarez, took the stage in the role of the consumptive heroine Mimi and became the toast of Chicago overnight. The fact that Alvarez also happens to be a major talent makes the story complete.
— Read more at MiamiHerald.com

The Santa Fe Opera has appointed a Santa Fe native as general director to replace Richard Gaddes, who is retiring.
Charles MacKay, general director of the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, will be the third general director in the history of the Santa Fe Opera. Gaddes hired MacKay in St. Louis 23 years ago when Gaddes was general director there. MacKay grew up in Santa Fe and graduated from Santa Fe High School, then attended the University of Minnesota.
— Read more at New Mexico Business Weekly:

The 2007-2008 season of Lyric Opera of Chicago seems as if it were programmed by a pendulum. "La traviata" and "La boheme" are critic- and even cast-proof Italian evergreens. Then came a much-belated Lyric premiere of Handel's baroque and lengthy "Giulio Cesare" with a style arcane to many listeners. And next month it will unveil a contemporary American work, "Doctor Atomic," which tells the story of the creation of the atom bomb at Los Alamos.
— Read more at CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

There's a trio of excellent reasons why you should run, not walk, to the Civic Opera House to catch Lyric Opera of Chicago's new production of "Die Frau ohne Schatten."
— Read more at chicagotribune.com

Orlando Opera began its 50th season Friday evening at the Carr Performing Arts Centre in fine style with an excellent performance of Mozart's masterpiece Don Giovanni.
— Read more at OrlandoSentinel.com

[Susan Graham sings the title role in the Met's new production of Iphigénie en Tauride (opening Nov. 27) - but she's not the only strong heroine at the house this month. ]
A Greek princess, a Parisian courtesan, a Druid priestess, and a princess-turned-slave in ancient Egypt. This month, four extraordinary female characters take center stage at the Met. Their stories, spread out over continents and millennia and told by three of opera's greatest composers, are among the most dramatic and passionate in the opera house. Gluck's Iphigénie, Bellini's Norma, and Verdi's Violetta and Aida are vulnerable women - but they are also powerful. They are victims, yet they take their destinies into their own hands.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

[Angela Gheorghiu and Misha Didyk sparkle as Puccini's star-crossed lovers]
Puccini's 1917 sort-of Viennese operetta La rondine ("The Swallow") spread butter on the composer's bread, pure and simple. Over in England, dryer loaves were being rationed. "It's crummy!" cried RICORDI, publishers of Puccini's previous hits, "Madama Butterfly" and "The Girl of the Golden West".
— Read more at San Francisco Sentinel

Generally regarded as lesser Puccini and not programmed often, "La rondine" (The Swallow) showcases the Italian composer's gift for lightness and understatement. Some critics wish he had explored those qualities more fully before he died in 1924.
— Read more at The Reporter

Robert Aldridge and Herschel Garfein's new opera Elmer Gantry explores the complex, often conflicted role that religion plays in American life. After spending years developing their work, the authors found a willing partner in Nashville Opera, which staged the world premiere performance Friday at Tennessee Performing Arts Center.
— Read more at Tennessean.com

Fever in the morning! Fever all through the night.
I'm not quoting Peggy Lee for nothing. Fever is what Jules Massenet's "Werther" is all about. Unfortunately, it's also what was in short supply Saturday at the California Theatre as Opera San Jose opened its new production of Massenet's Goth-and-gloom fest, which is supposed to itch and burn with the fever of love.
— Read more at San Jose Mercury News

For more than a decade, it seemed as if opera's popular image was inextricably linked to tenors: tenors in groups of three, "pop opera" tenors, and tenors with matinee-idol looks. But even before the death in September of the world's most famous tenor, Luciano Pavarotti, audiences and the media had begun turning their attention to sopranos.
— Read more at WSJ.com

The great German soprano Lotte Lehmann, who created Dyer's Wife in the 1919 Vienna premiere of Richard Strauss' "Die Frau ohne Schatten" ("The Woman Without a Shadow"), once said: "I must confess frankly that I've never been very fond of the tortuously elaborate libretto. People have told me they found the music divine, but what in heaven's name is the story about?"
— Read more at chicagotribune.com

Alek Shrader, a young tenor, has sung in New York on at least three occasions this year: in Rossini's "Signor Bruschino" at the Gotham Chamber Opera; as a winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions Grand Finals; and, starting on Wednesday night, in Rossini's "Comte Ory" with the Juilliard Opera Center, of which he is a member.
— Read more at New York Times

The popular soprano Aprile Millo was scheduled to appear in Italo Montemezzi's "Incantesimo," the second of two one-act operas on fortune-telling themes performed in concert at Avery Fisher Hall on Tuesday evening, but it was apparently not in the cards. Along with Franco Leoni's "Oracolo," it was presented, without Ms. Millo, by Teatro Grattacielo, which specializes in rare verismo operas.
— Read more at New York Times

A strike by 800 workers of La Scala opera house has forced the cancellation of a second performance of Verdi's "Requiem" conducted by principal visiting conductor Daniel Barenboim, officials said Thursday.
— Read more at International Herald Tribune

There's good news and bad news with the San Francisco Opera's new production of "Macbeth," which opened Wednesday evening at the War Memorial Opera House. The good news is that company general director David Gockley, who promised big stars this season, has delivered a stellar talent with Thomas Hampson in the title role.
— Read more at San Jose Mercury News

Donizetti's comedy "L'Elisir d'Amore" (The Elixir of Love) is in the style of opera known as "bel canto," which means "beautiful singing." In a new production at the Royal Opera in London, some beautiful acting might have helped too.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

Speaking to Michigan Opera Theatre's opening night audience for "The Marriage of Figaro," General Director David DiChiera got a big laugh when he said that after weathering the stress of his own "Cyrano" in the season opener, he could relax with the opera at hand. "I'm not worried about Mozart," he said.
— Read more at detnews.com

A diva lives for the stage, but a true diva carries the stage with her wherever she goes.
When the Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu walks into a room, even just the restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, you can't help looking around for the drop curtain. She transforms whatever space she occupies into a miniature theater, and there's no doubt about who the star is.
— Read more at sfgate.com

[Soprano Deborah Voigt finds that less is more at the opera house]
As she makes a grand entrance into an eighth floor conference room up in the Lyric Opera office complex, soprano Deborah Voigt is a mere shadow of her former self, literally. Her sparkling and intense crystal blue eyes and her smooth facial features, which have always been radiant, are more pronounced, her blonde hair down and straddling a more defined head.
— Read more at NEWCITYCHICAGO.COM

The average museumgoer would not look at a series of paintings about loneliness and think "live theatrical adaptation."
Leon Major, artistic director of the Maryland Opera Studio for the University of Maryland, is not the average museumgoer, and according to his colleagues, his directorial work could not be further from this description.
...
The result is Later the Same Evening, an opera inspired by five Hopper paintings. This joint project of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, National Gallery of Art and UM School of Music makes its world premiere tonight through Sunday at the performing arts center and the D.C. gallery.
— Read more at baltimoresun.com

"La rondine" (The Swallow) is one of opera's oddest birds. Puccini's rarely staged 1917 opera about a courtesan torn between love and security will never replace masterworks such as "La Boheme" in the hearts of opera lovers. But neither can it be dismissed -- especially when Angela Gheorghiu's in the title role.
— Read more at ContraCostaTimes.com

If you were to cross "La traviata" with "Die Fledermaus" and sprinkle it liberally with snippets from "La Bohème," "Tosca" and "Madama Butterfly," you would come up with something very like Puccini's "La rondine" ("The Swallow"). Then your only challenge would be to get an opera company to stage the darn thing.
— Read more at

It's somewhat of a mystery why Puccini's 1917 "La rondine" ("The Swallow") is such a neglected, rarely-performed opera. With simple, repetitious but ravishing melodies, this updated story of "La traviata" (good-hearted courtesan finds and loses true - if impecunious - love) is almost as rare as hen's teeth.
In fact, the San Francisco Opera production is only the second time it's been seen in the War Memorial Opera House. There was a single performance in 1934 (and Spring Opera Theater productions elsewhere in The City).
— Read more at Examiner.com

A relatively small group of stars at the pinnacle of the opera world, including Placido Domingo, Renée Fleming and Cecilia Bartoli, tend to head marquees and grab the headlines.
But right below them is a stratum of superbly talented singers who might not have the same widespread name recognition but are highly respected in the field and kept every bit as busy as their better-known peers.
— Read more at The Denver Post

Opera typically is the most expensive art form to stage. It calls for singers, sets, costumes and a classical orchestra.
It?s also a performance form not many people know much about.
Peter Gelb, new general director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, knows this and is working to expand the audience for opera. And so is Ellen Douglas Schlaefer, head of opera studies at the USC School of Music.
— Read more at The State

Andrea Bocelli made it to the Metropolitan Opera - to test out the acoustics.
The blind tenor, who is friends with Met general manager Peter Gelb, sang some Italian art songs on the main stage on Nov. 2, Met assistant manager Elena Park said Friday. While the Met isn't looking to cast Bocelli in an opera, he could sing an out-of-season piano recital, Park said.
— Read more at The Associated Press

Opera teems with women who wait: Puccini's Madame Butterfly, for example, who waits in vain for the caddish Lieutenant Pinkerton to return to her. One of the earliest operas, Monteverdi's "Return of Ulysses," depicts the faithful Penelope at the end of a 20-year wait for her man. Wily and skeptical, she demands hard proof of her husband's identity before welcoming him back to their home and bed.
— Read more at Newsday.com

[Powerful stories of immigrants finding haven here will explode in voice, revealing their heart-wrenching struggle to freedom]
...
The Refuge, with music by Christopher Theofanidis and libretto by Leah Lax, will sketch the often-heart-wrenching stories of seven groups of immigrants, sometimes individually, sometimes collectively. It premieres Saturday as part of Houston Grand Opera's ongoing outreach program, The Song of Houston.
— Read more at Chron.com

The illusion that happiness can be found in a bottle provides the fulcrum for shenanigans in the romantic comedy "The Elixir of Love," which Pittsburgh Opera presents starting Saturday night at the Benedum Center.
Gaetano Donizetti's tuneful opera was an immediate hit at its premiere in Milan, Italy, in 1832 and retained its popularity even when other great operas of the "bel canto" period were neglected.
— Read more at Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Since her Minnesota Opera debut in Rossini's "La Cenerentola" nine years ago, Alaska-born mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux has been a Twin Cities favorite.
Genaux, whose dusky, muscular but amazingly agile voice is as distinctive as any in classical music, was in the Cities in June for a Schubert Club recital, and she's been seen in three other productions at the Ordway since '98.
— Read more at Postbulletin.com

I lost my operatic virginity last Saturday. I'd gotten some foreplay from culture specials on TV before, but I'd never experienced the real thing. Like most first times, it was exciting but awkward, and I didn't know what to do with my hands. I took my cues from my neighbours: I clapped before the performance started, I chatted with my friend when the velvet curtain went down for set changes - it was a five-act show - and I emitted a polite "bravo" when the leads took their final bows.
— Read more at The McGill Daily

[He was the King of the High Cs - and the face of opera for millions of fans all over the world. PETER G. DAVIS remembers the singular life and legacy of the great tenor.]
How would posterity remember Luciano Pavarotti, one wonders, if he had merely pursued a conventional opera career instead of crossing over big-time into the popular culture?
— Read more at Opera News

It's opera season at St. John's School, and that means colorful kimonos, spotlights and a lead character named Yum-yum, as the school prepares to open "The Mikado."
Anyone interested in getting the kids interested in musical arts may find this comedic opera to be the perfect introduction.
— Read more at Pacific Daily News

Friends University will present Rossini's comedic opera "The Marriage Contract" this Friday and Saturday night, Nov. 9-10, in Sebits Auditorium.
Opera is a relatively new medium for Friends.
"When I first came here in '89, opera was not uncommon," said director Charles Parker. But Friends hadn't performed an opera in years until last year's popular "Marriage of Figaro" during the Mozart Festival.
— Read more at Crimson Chronicle

Opera New Jersey, New Jersey's premier opera company, will launch its 2008 season with concert-staged performances of Verdi's Rigoletto at three different renowned venues in New Jersey in February. The performances will be held on February 1 at Community Theatre at Mayo Center for the Performing Arts (Morristown), February 8 at the McCarter Theatre Center (Princeton) and February 10 at the State Theatre (New Brunswick).
— Learn more at njot.org

On Saturday, December 8, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, December 9, at 4 p.m., Dicapo Opera Theatre will present two comic one-act operas showcasing the company's resident artists - Mozart's The Impresario and Wargo's The Music Shop.
— Learn more at

Like disparate streams forming one river, they converged in Houston from Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America.
They clambered onto airlifts, trekked through forests, and waded through water. They came seeking refuge and reinvention and transformed this city into one of the country's most diverse metropolitan areas.
Now, the immigrants and refugees who remade Houston have inspired an ambitious and unusual new work by the Houston Grand Opera.
Their stories form the backbone of "The Refuge," an oratorio based on the experiences of newcomers from El Salvador, Mexico, Vietnam, Pakistan, India, the former Soviet Union and Africa.
— Read more at Chron.com

The year 1902 had no CDs or DVDs, but it did have arrangers. Into them music publishers poured symphonies, operas, string quartets and oratorios, all to be ground to a consistency suitable for parlor piano. Monday night's parlor was the tiny performing space at the Austrian Cultural Forum, where Dennis Russell Davies and Maki Namekawa played Alexander Zemlinsky's four-hand version of Beethoven's "Fidelio."
— Read more at New York Times

A master of the obvious once pointed out that reality has a habit of intruding on even the most elegant of theoretical constructs. So just when you figure that you have a seen a need and created a market to address that need - and have neatly cornered that market - globalization intrudes to ruin the party.
It is almost enough to cause even the most jaded observer to manifest a slight bit of sympathy for Peter Gelb, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
— Read more at The Huffington Post

New York's Metropolitan Opera has tripled the number of venues to which it will beam its live, high-definition opera broadcasts this season, officials announced, along with the upcoming lineup.
— Read more at CBC.ca

This weekend will see history made: The Madison Opera will break the $100-a-seat threshold for a performance at the Overture Center for the Arts.
The historic event will occur with Puccini's beloved opera about starving artists, "La Boheme," which will be performed Friday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m.
— Read more at madison.com

The second season of Metropolitan Opera: Live in High Definition kicks off worldwide on Saturday, December 15 at 1PM (EST) with the first of the Met's eight live opera transmissions: Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, starring Anna Netrebko and Roberto Alagna, conducted by Plácido Domingo.
— Read more at BroadwayWorld.com

Opera Naples is going into its third season on a high note.
Pre-season ticket sales are up 400 percent for the professional opera company, says founding director Steffanie Pearce. And more corporate sponsors are showing interest in supporting its shows.
— Read more at The News-Press

In the opera world, there are singers, and there are Divas. When Angela Gheorghiu walks into the room, there's no question as to which category she occupies.
With her richly colored, lustrous voice and raven-haired good looks, Gheorghiu, who makes her long-awaited San Francisco Opera debut tomorrow in the title role of Puccini's "La Rondine," is one of the opera world's most gifted and glamorous stars. She has also, along with her husband, tenor Roberto Alagna, gained a reputation as one of the most temperamental.
— Read more at ContraCostaTimes.com

"La traviata" returned to the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday afternoon. When a Franco Zeffirelli production is on the boards, competition is in the air. Who will win? Verdi's beloved music, the people who sing it, or will both be swamped under the force of opera's premier interior decorator?
— Read more at New York Times

Once in a while an opera company presents a new production that prompts a re-evaluation of a misunderstood work. That's what happened on Sunday when New York City Opera unveiled its staging of Samuel Barber's "Vanessa."
— Read more at New York Times

Big opera galas have much in common with sporting events: Fans gather to watch, and compare, feats of physical prowess. This parallel is always particularly clear at the annual gala of the Richard Tucker Music Foundation, held this year on Sunday at Avery Fisher Hall.
Every year - perhaps inevitably in an event involving so many singers - illness plays havoc with the rotation. By the end of Sunday's performance, the changes had left the printed program as filled with excised names and emendations as a manager's lineup card in the ninth inning. (For starters: Dolora Zajick, Susan Graham and Bryn Terfel were out; Luciana D'Intino, Joyce DiDonato and Andrzej Dobber were in.)
— Read more at New York Times

The Richard Tucker Gala is a big event on the operatic calendar. Every year, the foundation named after the late, great tenor gives out a major award to an upand-coming singer. And this fundraising gala is held, presenting a parade of stars - many of them past Tucker winners themselves.
— Read more at The New York Sun

With the Metropolitan Opera's Saturday afternoon movie theater broadcasts having been such a success so far, other major companies have been exploring similar projects. Milan's celebrated Teatro alla Scala is now set to offer high-definition screenings of seven operas over the course of this season, beginning next month with last December's headline-making Aida.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Renée Fleming isn't getting any worse, is she? Consider her recent performances at the Metropolitan Opera. Last season, she gave a near-perfect Tatiana (in Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin"). And on Saturday afternoon, she gave a near-perfect Violetta (Verdi's "Traviata"). The American soprano is enlarging what will later be her legend.
You know what a great Fleming performance is: I don't have to tell you much about it. She had supreme confidence, completely justified. The technique was secure; she could concentrate on the musical and dramatic. Her top notes were free and affecting; and, among sopranos, she has one of the great bottoms (pardon the expression).
— Read more at The New York Sun

Opera Colorado was born in 1983 and, against all odds, enjoyed a relatively happy childhood within the circular peculiarities of Boettcher Hall. Now 25, on Friday the company opens its third season in the posh Ellie Caulkins Opera House with a sense of accomplishment - and more than a few new challenges.
— Read more at Rocky Mountain News

The Toledo Opera's new production of Carmen, which opened Saturday night in the Valentine Theatre, is the largest and most complex production the company has tackled under her leadership, says Renay Conlin, general and artistic director.
— Read more at toledoblade.com

Painstakingly forged over three years, the Royal Opera's new production of Richard Wagner's epic "Ring" cycle seemed in danger of shattering like Siegmund's sword when its star, Bryn Terfel, pulled out at the last minute.
But in a reversal of Wagner's plot that depicts an aging god giving way to a young superhero, the project was saved by a veteran singer old enough to be Terfel's father, Sir John Tomlinson.
— Read more at The Associated Press

Hesston College graduate Tami Jantzi, internationally-acclaimed concert artist and opera singer, will be featured in Amahl and the Night Visitors presented November 22 and 24 (Thursday and Saturday evenings) during Thanksgiving Weekend festivities at the college.
— Read more at Hesston College News

WHILE rummaging through the secondhand department of a Viennese music store many years ago I came across an unusual copy of Samuel Barber's four-act opera "Vanessa": one of those rough photocopies used by singers when they are learning their roles for a new work. There were light pencil marks here and there, mostly in the title character's part. "Hmm," I thought. "Sena Jurinac must have been cleaning out her closets."
— Read more at New York Times

It was an evening of firsts Friday at Lyric Opera of Chicago as Julius Caesar came, sang, and conquered - and was conquered, in turn, by a most beguiling Cleopatra.
It was the first Lyric performance of George Frideric Handel's classic "Giulio Cesare," and the first U.S. outing of the famed production created in 2005 by stage director David McVickar for Britain's Glyndebourne Festival. It was also the first Lyric cast to feature three (count 'em) countertenors.
— Read more at bnd.com

More than three decades after he unveiled his startling landmark opera "Einstein on the Beach" in 1976, one might think that Philip Glass had run out of surprises. A glance at the fall schedule suggests otherwise. The acclaimed American composer appears to be at the peak of his career: still imagining, still writing and still creating new works.
— Read more at chicagotribune.com

[Opera as drama? You'd better believe it, when Stephen Wadsworth is in charge. JAMES C. WHITSON talks to the director, whose production of Iphigénie en Tauride arrives at the Met this month.] I'm so over the easy way out!" Stephen Wadsworth is repeating himself. His wife, actress and author Francesca Faridany, is repeating herself, too: our interview is threatening their dinner reservations, and we have been warned once, but his energetic performance keeps me in my seat.
— Read more at Opera News

[The legendary RENATA SCOTTO is living a sweet life indeed, directing a beloved opera and imparting diva wisdom on opera's rising stars]
'Do people actually sit up there?" The Italian diva is looking down from the WFMT radio broadcast booth at the upper balcony seats of the mammoth Civic Opera House.
— Read more at CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

Daniel Okulitch can sing his way out of and into most things. But portraying a human bug in the operatic adaptation of David Cronenberg's The Fly next summer will be his biggest challenge.
The 31-year-old bass-baritone from Ottawa has been picked to sing the title role in The Fly, which premieres next June in Paris, France. Cronenberg will direct, while the music will be composed by fellow Canadian Howard Shore, Oscar-winner for his music for The Lord of the Rings.
— Read more at .canada.com

A few months ago, he [Paul Potts] was a mobile phone salesman in a small town in Wales.
Before that, he stacked shelves in a supermarket.
He was bullied as a schoolkid, laid low by a devastating bicycle accident in 2003, and ended up so broke he and his wife were using credit cards to buy food.
— Read more at CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

Mary Zimmerman's new production of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, which opened the Metropolitan Opera's season earlier this fall, will not be traveling to San Francisco Opera this coming summer as previously planned.
In a statement released this week, the company explained that presenting the Tony Award-winning director's staging would not be feasible due to technical issues: "the physical dimensions of the production and extensive rebuilding required to adapt the sets for the War Memorial Opera House."
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Over the course of her remarkable 16-year career at the Met, Renée Fleming has sung 18 different roles at the house, but just two Verdi heroines: Violetta in La traviata and Desdemona in Otello. She'll recreate both characters this season, starting as Violetta opposite Matthew Polenzani on November 3. "I'm proud to be first and foremost a Strauss specialist," the soprano says. "But as a lyric soprano not afraid to learn new roles, the possibilities are endless. I really love the music I sing."
— Read more at PlaybillArts

"There's only one place that I long to be," sings Rodolpho, an illegal Italian immigrant who unknowingly stirs up the tragic emotions that drive William Bolcom's A View from the Bridge, "and that's New York, and the New York lights."
Rodolpho's innocent delight in the big city - or at least the Red Hook neighborhood of 1950s Brooklyn, where the action takes place - is shattered in the course of this big, powerful opera based on the classic Arthur Miller play.
— Read more at baltimoresun.com

Everyone knows the unflattering American catchphrase, "It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings."
But nowadays several overweight opera singers are nervously eyeing a rising crop who are garnering more publicity (and more importantly, more work) based upon their amazing looks and acting abilities in addition to their singing skills.
— Read more at Daily Herald

In February 1834, Gaetano Donizetti, whom the premiere of his Anna Bolena four years earlier had made a star of the Italian opera world, accepted with joy an invitation by Rossini to compose an opera for the Théâtre-Italien in Paris. As the vehicle for his entrée into the Parisian music world, the composer cannily chose an adaptation of a popular French play about a murdered Venetian doge; and yet the run of Marin Faliero, as the new opera was called, was both unspectacular and short, closing after five performances.
— Read more at The New York Review of Books

Opera singer Russell Watson said yesterday that he was "happy to be alive" as he was discharged from hospital on his daughter's birthday following an operation on a brain tumour.
Watson, 40, spoke a few emotional words to waiting media as he left the Alexandra Hospital in Cheadle, Cheshire.
— Read more at Yorkshire Post

"Did you hear about Britney's performance on the VMAs? Did you see it?"
You wouldn't think a lackluster comeback performance by tarnished pop singer Britney Spears on the "MTV Video Music Awards" would concern an up-and-coming opera singer. But soprano Danielle de Niese proved me wrong when she asked.
— Read more at Daily Herald

It's one of the legendary American success stories: The star of a production falls ill, walks out or gets fired, and a hungry, untested newcomer steps in to save the day. Sixty-four years ago, Leonard Bernstein made his reputation when he took over a national radio broadcast of the New York Philharmonic for an ailing Bruno Walter; in 2002, the tenor Salvatore Licitra won his Metropolitan Opera debut when Luciano Pavarotti (who died in September) bowed out of some scheduled performances of "Tosca."
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

In the wake of the resignation of general director Mark Weinstein, the Pittsburgh Opera has the luxury of taking its time to decide its future leadership, says board co-chair Michele Fabrizi.
— Read more at Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Scottish-born conductor Donald Runnicles will become the musical director at Berlin's Deutsche Oper in 2009, the city government said Wednesday.
Runnicles, currently music director at the San Francisco Opera, will succeed Italian conductor Renato Palumbo in Berlin.
— Read more at The Associated Press

Mark Weinstein, who helped build Pittsburgh Opera into one of the most admired mid-level companies in the United States, will join Washington National Opera as executive director on Feb. 1, WNO announced yesterday. He will report to Placido Domingo, WNO's general director.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

The newly formed London Festival Opera will perform its first large scale London production at the Rose Opera Extravaganza in the City of London on Wednesday 28th November.
The charity gala evening, sponsored by Cheviot Asset Management, is in support of Alexandra Rose Day and Grooms-Shaftesbury. This sparkling occasion, the first of its kind at the Drapers' Hall, will transform the already magnificent Livery rooms into the setting for a sumptuous Victorian Soirée. A champagne reception will be followed by a three-course banquet with familiar favourites performed including arias from Carmen, La Traviata and Tosca performed by the London Festival Opera.
— Learn more at alexandraroseday.org.uk

The Paris Opera cancelled two more performances on Tuesday, Verdi's "Traviata" and Puccini's "Tosca", the fourth day of a strike expected to cause losses of 2.2 million euros (3.1 million dollars).
— Read more at afp.google.com

Opera New Jersey is partnering with the PHS Senior Living Foundation to present ENCORE Opera!, a series of concerts featuring popular opera and musical theater highlights. The series, open to the public, is being presented at senior living centers throughout the state. ENCORE Opera! brings live performances to those who might not otherwise be able to attend. The first concert will take place on Saturday, November 3, 2007 at Meadow Lakes in East Windsor. Three additional concerts will be performed in November with more planned for 2008.
— Learn more at njot.org