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Philip Glass has been commissioned by the New York City Opera to compose an opera that imagines the final months in the life of Walt Disney.
The opera, "The Perfect American," is based on a recent novel by the American-born writer Peter Stephan Jungk in which a fictional Austrian cartoonist who worked for Disney in the 1940s-50s recounts the story of the legendary founder of the Walt Disney Company.
— Read more at Newsday.com

When Karita Mattila does "Salome" at the Metropolitan Opera, she goes all the way - that is, she appears stark naked (briefly) at the end of the Dance of the Seven Veils. The former general manager of the Met, Joseph Volpe, put a photo of this moment in his memoirs. Ms. Mattila's striptease is known throughout the operagoing world. Chances are, there are more pairs of binoculars than usual at the Met when she performs "Salome."
— Read more at The New York Sun

Exuding flair and finesse, Frederica "Flicka" von Stade provided the ultimate adornment to Opera Colorado's gilded season opener and fundraiser for its artistic and education programs.
At 63, this darling of the opera world easily charmed her audience at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House on Friday night. Alongside Jake Heggie, her longtime friend and pianist - as well as a gifted composer and arranger - she effortlessly delivered a program of popular standards, some newer works and a smattering of opera arias, including an alluring rendition of "Habanera" from Georges Bizet's "Carmen."
— Read more at The Denver Post

Joyce DiDonato has graced opera stages in Paris, Amsterdam, New York, Barcelona and Tokyo. She's even been a cover girl for "Opera News," the popular journal that reports on singers and opera in the US and abroad.
And on Friday night, the mezzo-soprano joined the Kansas City Symphony for the opening concert of the orchestra's Classical Series in the Lyric Theater.
— Read more at kansascity.com

When Renata Scotto took the title role in Lyric Opera of Chicago's last production of Jules Massenet's 1884/1891 Parisian melodrama "Manon" 25 years ago a friend remarked, "It says 'Manon,' but it sure smells like 'Tosca.'" CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

Placido Domingo and Woody Allen didn't exactly sing a duet on the stage of the Met.
But the two did dine together under the Metropolitan Opera spotlights Sunday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the tenor's debut here. Allen is fresh from making his own successful debut as an opera director at the Los Angeles Opera, where Domingo is general director.
— Read more at The Associated Press

It takes a lot of meticulous preparation and a great deal of rigorous work by a larger number of people for one person to become invisible. At least, that's how director Stanley M. Garner describes staging an opera.
"I think I'm the most successful at what I do when what happens on stage during a performance seems to the audience to be inevitable and spontaneous," Garner said. "Even though the way things on stage are done and how they look were my ideas, to the audience it should look like the characters' ideas. And that's when I sort of disappear."
— Read more at tulsaworld.com

The year has been tough for Opera Vista. It had to cancel its spring festival of new works when it lost rehearsal space due to double-booking. This week, the company scrambled to find space that had electricity as it prepared for Saturday's performance of Leonard Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti at Bayou Bend. Singers and staff should feel the effort was worthwhile. They have a winning idea. As in last year's show at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston facility, the outdoor event was a delight, pockmarks and all.
— Read more at Houston Chronicle

Composer Jake Heggie - perhaps best known for his milestone piece Dead Man Walking - is currently hard at work on Moby Dick, which is set to premiere at Dallas Opera in 2010 with Ben Heppner slated to star as Captain Ahab. Heggie recently took a moment to contribute to our newest Q&A series.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

At age 63, Frederica von Stade knows the most fertile part of her career is behind her, and the celebrated mezzo-soprano could hardly be less concerned.
"I'm at the stage in my career of just thinking, 'Gosh, are they really still inviting me to go places? I can't believe it. Well, if they think I can do it, I'll go,' " she said from her home in the San Francisco Bay Area.
— Read more at The Denver Post

American soprano Deborah Voigt has had an up-and-down career over the last decade. Although some of her appearances at the Metropolitan Opera House have been powerful, especially her Sieglinde under both maestros Gergiev and Maazel, she has also disappointed as Elisabeth in "Tannhaeuser" and especially as Floria in "Tosca," where her rendition of Vissi d'arte on opening night was remarkably unmoving. At this point, she needs to prove herself at every appearance.
— Read more at The New York Sun

Since then, the world has been watching the Met, both the boxes and the stage. It is a theater of social and artistic ambition, and under general manager Peter Gelb, it seems to be at its most ambitious yet.
— Read more at The New York Sun

A Finnish soprano returning to the scene of her greatest triumph. A Polish contralto back at the Met after 24 years. A Uruguayan bass bringing his trademark role to the house for the first time.
These were the highlights last week as the Metropolitan Opera got down to regular repertory after opening its 125th season Monday with a gala featuring Renee Fleming in four designer gowns and three acts of different works.
— Read more at The Associated Press

Alan Held never planned to be one of the most in-demand Wagnerian singers in the world.
He never even planned to be an opera singer. He was set to become a band director or a choir teacher. In his dreams, he'd become a basketball star.
— Read more at Kansas.com

There was a moment last summer during a performance of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" at Covent Garden when the charismatic Uruguayan bass Erwin Schrott, singing the title role, nearly stopped the show. And not in the typical meaning of that phrase.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

You don't have to tell an opera fan that less isn't more: More is more. After 41/2 hours of the Metropolitan Opera gala Monday night - most of the broadcast splendid, only a little of it silly - I was tired but also ready to sign up for the whole third season of 10 Live in HD (high-definition) broadcasts. From the applause and comments I heard around me at Montrose Movies, I know I wasn't alone.
— Read more at Ohio.com

The premiere of Richard Strauss's Salome, starring bass-baritone Juha Uusitalo and soprano Karita Mattila at the Metropolitan Opera on September 23rd was a huge success for the Finns, even though the conducting début of Mikko Franck, the Finnish National Opera's General Music Director, had to be cancelled because of illness.
— Read more at Helsingin Sanomat

[David Alden 's Calisto has been sexed up at the expense of romance, says Rupert Christiansen]
Anyone coming to the Royal Opera version of Cavalli's La Calisto with fond memories of the famous 1960s Glyndebourne production is in for a shock.
— Read more at Telegraph.co.uk

Two years ago the return of Ponchielli's "Gioconda" to the Metropolitan Opera after 16 years in mothballs was a story. Even during the hubbub surrounding Peter Gelb's arrival as general manager and Anthony Minghella's elegant new production of "Madama Butterfly," the event deserved attention, and got it.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

People disagree about many things, but there are few veins more divisive or unpredictable in the arts than surrealism - or, to call it by its drearier name, "listening to someone else tell you their dreams."
Erich Wolfgang Korngold's 1920 opera "Die Tote Stadt," which opened at the San Francisco Opera for the first time Tuesday night, is an extended demonstration of that very point.
— Read more at sfgate.com

Is the necrophilic protagonist a spoiled, sensuous virgin fatally corrupted by a degenerate society? The composer, silly man, seemed to think so. Or is the Princess of Judea a blowsy, boozy floozy who evokes Jean Harlow and Marlene Dietrich, sings sweetly when she can yet screams under pressure? That was the case on Tuesday night.
— Read more at FT.com - Martin Bernheimer

On the opera stage, barrel-chested bassos and sylph-like sopranos have one thing in common: big hair. Up top, just above the source of the ringing notes, sits a lacquered, powdered, teased or pouffed wig, styled within an inch of its life.
For more than 30 years, Nina Lawson ran the wig department at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, tending the elaborate hairpieces - and the egos - of legendary singers such as Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi. Not once did her creations topple.
— Read more at The Denver Post

Now in its third season, the Gelb-inspired, wildly successful Metropolitan Opera in HD opened Monday night with a starry gala consisting of one act each from three operas featuring America's reigning diva, soprano Renee Fleming. The live simulcasts of 14 operas the past two seasons have attracted 1.3 million viewers, a staggering figure when you consider the Met, humongous as opera houses go, has a capacity of only 4,100 including standing room.
— Read more at La Scena Musicale

Despite declaring last week that for the first time in 20 years he wouldn't be at the opening night gala of the Metropolitan Opera, Oscar de la Renta was in the Opera House Tuesday. But what of his protests that Karl Lagerfeld, John Galliano and Christian Lacroix had all been tapped to design ensembles for diva Renée Fleming while no American designer was asked to participate? Not only had de la Renta threatened to boycott the evening, but he told his office not to send his usual donation to the organization.
— Read more at WWD.com

Legendary performances at the Metropolitan Opera of "La Boheme" with Luciano Pavarotti and "Otello" with Placido Domingo will soon be available over the Internet for the first time.
— Read more at The Associated Press

At the 60th Primetime Emmy Awards on Saturday, September 13, 2008 at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles, California., New York City Opera was announced as winner of a Creative Arts category of Outstanding Special Class-Classical Music and Dance Programs for the Live From Lincoln Center telecast of Puccini's Madama Butterfly from the New York State Theater.
— Learn more at NYC Opera

Opening night at the Metropolitan Opera: The costumes! The singing! The costumes. The costumes. And so it went as the Met staged a gala evening for Renee Fleming to launch its 125th season Monday night.
— Read more at The Associated Press

Alex Ross, The New Yorker's classical music critic since 1996, can explain complex theories in the simplest terms while still enlightening the most knowledgeable reader. In The New York Times Book Review, Geoff Dyer called his book, The Rest Is Noise, "a work of immense scope and ambition... a great achievement," and others have given similar praise to his work. Now Ross has another line to add to his resume: genius.
Ross is one of 25 recipients of the 2008 MacArthur Foundations Genius Fellowships, a no-string attached prize of $500,000. The writer took some time off from seeing a Stockhausen performance by the Berlin Philharmonic to give FBNY the scoop about screening the call from the MacArthur people because he thought his cats were being repossessed, the new nickname he'll never live down and his plans for the money.
— Read more at mediabistro.com: FishbowlNY

Last night's Fleming fest at the Metropolitan Opera was fun, weird, enchanting, annoying, even ravishing. Broadcast live in HD to 600 theaters in North and South America, the company's 125th opening night starred Renee Fleming in three acts from three operas -- the first opening night in Met history devoted to a single soprano. Only Placido Domingo, we were told, enjoyed a similar honor.
— Read more at The Oregonian

Opera fans will be able to watch the whole of Mozart's Don Giovanni online from next month after a major redesign of the Royal Opera House website.
A performance of the masterpiece, filmed at London's Covent Garden earlier this month, will be put on the Royal Opera's new site on 5 October.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

I attended the opening of the Metropolitan Opera last night at Lincoln Center. Dr. Ettinger, my dentist, from whose office I have just come, saw it in a movie theater in high definition TV on an enormous screen with high grade sound. We both had a great time.
— Read more at NY Daily News

A year ago, Elaine Alvarez was a gifted young singer with a promising future. Then she replaced noted soprano Angela Gheorghiu as Mimi in Lyric Opera of Chicago's production of Puccini's "La Boheme." Alvarez's world changed forever.
— Read more at Cleveland.com

Pittsburgh Opera, one of America's leading opera companies, has strengthened its senior management team as it begins its 70th season. "Pittsburgh Opera is entering a new era," noted General Director Christopher Hahn. "We have been fortunate to attract some of the best and brightest executives in arts management. I am delighted that they have chosen to move to Pittsburgh to help direct our ever-growing opera company. Additionally, we have made some management changes to allow us to offer even better programming."
— Learn more at pittsburghopera.org

The Metropolitan Opera opened its 125th-anniversary season on Monday evening with a gala Renée Fleming showcase. Everything about the three-part evening was fashioned, quite literally, for Ms. Fleming.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

The Kansas City Symphony's ambitious and wide-ranging 2008-2009 season kicks off next weekend with a program featuring Kansas City native and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato.
Later concerts include a world premiere piano concerto, guest appearances from some of classical music's most sought-after rising stars and concerts away from the Symphony's usual haunts.
— Read more at kansascity.com

Opera and the cinema might seem perverse bedfellows, but film directors from Luchino Visconti to Anthony Minghella have found success in the opera house, and the art form continues to fascinate masters of the silver screen. Only two weekends ago, Woody Allen became the latest film-maker to cross over to the lyric theatre, in a production of Puccini's anarchic, mercurial comedy Gianni Schicchi, for Los Angeles Opera. Initial reports suggest a triumph
— Read more at Times Online

Opera Boston opens its 2008-09 season with three performances of Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz, Oct. 17-21, 2008. Considered the first important German Romantic opera, and a profound influence on Wagner, Der Freischütz is based on a German folk legend, and tells the story of a marksman who makes a pact with the dark side to win a contest and the hand of his beloved.
— Learn more at operaboston.org

Paul, the obsessive widower in Erich Wolfgang Korngold's opera "Die Tote Stadt" ("The Dead City"), lives a solitary life amid a homemade shrine filled with relics of his dead wife. He calls it the Temple of the Past.
In addition to its role in the drama, that shrine offers a poignant emblem of the composer's own life and career.
— Read more at sfgate.com

If you think blending 18th-century opera arias with rock music is a sketchy proposition, you're not the only one. "It sounds like a terrible idea," said Tyley Ross, co-founder of East Village Opera Company. "I thought it was a terrible idea."
But he and keyboardist Peter Kiesewalter kept with it, found success and are bringing their unique mash-up to Logan's Cache Valley Center tonight and Sept. 23.
— Read more at Salt Lake Tribune

Hundreds of celebrities will walk the red carpet at Lincoln Center on Monday, helping to kick off the Metropolitan Opera season at a gala concert that features soprano Renée Fleming. Last year's gala drew a couture-draped crowd that included such luminaries as Uma Thurman, Jude Law, Meg Ryan, David Bowie and Mikhail Baryshnikov, and about 4,000 other people who packed the glittering theater for a show that many consider the start of the New York social season.
— Read more at NOLA.com

Opera is often considered high and mighty, but it can succumb to baser instincts. There's a bit of a cat fight in Ponchielli's "La Gioconda," as the street singer of the title confronts a politician's wife, her rival for another man.
At the Metropolitan Opera this week, the two singers going at it are strong personalities: American soprano Deborah Voigt (as Gioconda, the street singer) and Russian mezzo Olga Borodina (as Laura, her rival). There's another top female voice in the mix, too: Polish contralto Ewa Podles (as Gioconda's mother). Beyond the dramatic confrontation, an inevitable professional competition adds to the spectacle.
— Read more at NJ.com

Everybody who follows her performances with any regularity waits for the Natalie Dessay Moment.
For me that moment came last year in the famed mad scene in Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor," a new production at the Metropolitan Opera staged by Chicago director Mary Zimmerman. In the middle of Lucia's emotional meltdown Dessay stood stock still and simply screamed. It was enough to freeze your marrow. A woman behind me turned to her companion and murmured, "Now, that's scary."
— Read more at chicagotribune.com

Who could have foreseen that merging a 400-year-old musical form with 21st-century technology would ignite a worldwide sensation? Certainly no one at the Metropolitan Opera.
"It blew our expectations out of the water, because we didn't know what the appetite was going to be for this medium, and we found out it was very fierce," said Julie Borchard- Young, the Met's director of worldwide HD distribution.
— Read more at The Denver Post

James Levine, the Metropolitan Opera and Boston Symphony Orchestra maestro, said on Friday that his recent brush with cancer brought a glimpse of mortality that will inevitably color his work.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Lyric Opera of Chicago's first Discovery Series podcast of the 2008-09 season - featuring Manon star Natalie Dessay - is now available for download.
— Read more at This edition of the hour-long online series - described as "informative and thought-provoking sessions with singers, directors, and conductors" - sees Dessay joined in discussion by co-star Jonas Kaufmann, conductor Emmanuel Villaume, and Lyric Opera dramaturg Roger Pines.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

In memory of Luciano Pavarotti, who died just over a year ago at 71, the Metropolitan Opera presented a special performance of Verdi's Requiem on Thursday afternoon, four days before the season opens. James Levine conducted - his first performance since undergoing surgery to remove a cancerous kidney two months ago. And you can bet that Pavarotti would have loved every aspect of this event.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

It had to happen. Nudity is coming to opera.
In recent years, with all the talk from general managers, stage directors and go-for-broke singers about making opera as dramatically visceral an art form as theater, film and modern dance, traditional boundaries of decorum have been broken. Opera productions have increasingly showcased risk-taking and good-looking singers in bold, sexy and explicit productions.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

"The Bonesetter's Daughter," which had its world premiere Saturday night at War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, is a spectacle you won't forget: flying acrobats, floor-to-ceiling video projections, incredible colors. The massive stage and sets in the production from San Francisco Opera are drenched in psychedelic images ? a Bill Graham light show ratcheted up by several decades of technology. Forget about the singing (which is excellent); this is a big-money opera production, with an emphasis on visual impact.
— Read more at San Jose Mercury News

The "first semester" of the 2008-09 classical-music season is loaded with opera. I will give my sense of the highlights. They will not include anything from City Opera, as that company is somewhat sidelined this year. They are transitioning. What they're transitioning to, we can't be quite sure. But we can hope for the best.
— Read more at The New York Sun

Denyce Graves, the mezzo soprano whom The Washington Post called "almost too good to be true," ushers in the new 2008-09 season at The Performing Arts Center, Purchase College with a concert and gala celebration on Saturday evening, Sept. 27. She will be accompanied by pianist Brian Zeger.
— Read more at Westchester.com

Julian Schnabel paints portraits the way the old masters did, starting with a dark background and then layering on light and color. Where the masters varnished their pictures, Mr. Schnabel sometimes coats his with resin. The main difference is that the old masters took weeks or even months to complete a portrait, and Mr. Schnabel can finish one in several hours, which, even allowing for several centuries? worth of inflation, makes for a much sweeter payday.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

The silver anniversary season of Opera San Jose was launched last weekend with a highly competent rendition of "Eugene Onegin," arguably Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky's greatest opera. Critics have long opined that his acknowledged talents did not seem to include operatic writing.
— Read more at The Milpitas Post Online

Scottish Opera is delighted to reveal the new crop of opera-makers who will create a brand-new set of original short operas for the company?s innovative project, Five:15 Operas Made in Scotland.
Tickets for the production, which opens in February 2009, go on sale tomorrow (WED). With an exciting line-up of Scottish-based creative talent on board, Five:15 looks certain to repeat the overwhelming success of last year, which saw the entire run sell out well in advance.
— Read more at allmediascotland

A year after his death, Luciano Pavarotti's legacy of generosity lives on in a tribute charity concert and memorial ceremony to be held in Petra, Jordan on 11 and 12 October. Under the patronage of HRH Princess Haya Bint al Hussein of Jordan, a UN Messenger of Peace, the concert at the renowned archeological site at Petra will generate funds for projects in Afghanistan by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP).
— Read more at Reuters AlertNet

FROM the leading Scottish novelist Louise Welsh, to the Glasgow doctor and blogger Margaret McCartney, the next ten names to write five new operas were unveiled yesterday.
Scottish Opera announced the line-up for its second production of five brand-new 15-minute operas.
— Read more at Scotsman.com

Washington National Opera opened its fall season on Saturday night, with an ultra-conventional but visually lavish production of Giuseppe Verdi's classic La Traviata. One of the so-called Big Three from the ground-breaking middle of Verdi's operatic career, the opera's libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, a poet so compliant that he became a sort of punching bag for the composer, is a miracle of dramatic concision.
— Read more at DCist.com

Depicting the unimaginable on a theater stage is a daunting prospect. In the original production of the opera "Doctor Atomic," the director Peter Sellars and the composer John Adams represented the detonation of the first nuclear bomb with an ominous countdown, a flash of light and a profound silence. For some viewers this solution was a striking evocation of an event literally too overwhelming for the human mind to process. Others found it a disappointing cop-out.
Something similar happens in "Calling: An Opera of Forgiveness," a new work based on "A Mother's Essays From Ground Zero," written by Wickham Boyle after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Ms. Boyle, a writer, director and producer, created "Calling" with the composer Douglas Geers, who writes for acoustic instruments and electronics. The work received its first complete staging on Friday night at La MaMa E.T.C. in the East Village, where Ms. Boyle was once the executive director.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

To some, there may be a touch of irony: the man who presided over some of the Royal Opera House's darkest hours has produced a self-help book aimed at pulling failing arts organisations out of trouble. Michael Kaiser's The Art of the Turnaround offers 10 basic rules on how to save failing arts organisations, some of which were learned the hard way in London.
— Read more at The Guardian

"The Bonesetter's Daughter," which had its world premiere Saturday night at the San Francisco Opera, explodes onto the stage in a burst of circus extravagance: acrobats flying through the air, the nasal squawk of Chinese reed instruments from the balcony, elaborate visuals centered around elemental images of fire and water.
— Read more at sfgate.com

The operas of Giacomo Puccini resound with luxuriant melodies, but the Lyric Opera of Kansas City's new production of Puccini's "La Boheme" offers audiences much more: an abundance of opportunities to laugh and to cry.
— Read more at kansascity.com

During the press conference to announce the 2008-09 season, it was made clear that this was to be a year for reinvigorating the repertoire. So we're getting unknown Rossini, the first ROH staging of Hansel and Gretel in over half a century, Korngold's Die tote Stadt, and, most curious of all, Cavalli's La Calisto, which opens next week.
— Read more at MusicalCriticism.com

Two years ago, New Jersey State Opera set the seal on an illustrious if sometimes rocky past, saying good-bye to its late founder-conductor, Alfredo Silipigni, in a memorial concert in Newark. On Sunday, the company kick-started what could be a bright future with a rebirth concert at the Great Auditorium in Ocean Grove.
— Read more at NJ.com

[The Metropolitan Opera Guild's "Met Legends" series will continue Sept. 25 with a rare public appearance by the legendary soprano Teresa Stratas, who will talk about her remarkable career and discuss video clips of some of her great performances.]
Following the debut last season of its new "Met Legends" series, which paid tribute to Marilyn Horne, the Metropolitan Opera Guild now turns the spotlight on another indisputably legendary singer: Teresa Stratas.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

A POWERFUL new wave of opera combining Chinese and Western music and drama and written by Chinese composers, many of whom have immigrated to the U.S., has swept much of America, as well as parts of Europe and Asia, in the last 15 years. That it has mostly bypassed the major opera companies on our coast may be evidence of nothing more than a collective Pacific Rim ho-hum at a mix that appears old news in these parts. Even so, Stewart Wallace's "The Bonesetter's Daughter," based on Amy Tan's bestselling novel and given its premiere by San Francisco Opera on Saturday night, brought a welcome dose of operatic chinoiserie to the West Coast.
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

Opera beamed into a ballpark has a distinctly different vibe than a concert-hall experience: It's T-shirts vs. tuxedos, baseball caps vs. opera glasses, chicken tenders vs. champagne, D.C. heat and humidity vs. central air.
It's Saturday night, and about 15,000 people have come to Nationals Park to see a winning performance. The anticipation is palpable. Across town, decked-out folks sit in the red-velvet womb of the Kennedy Center Opera House, awaiting the live performance of Verdi's "La Traviata." Here, though, everyone from the teething to the tattooed has pulled up a chair or a patch of grass for the Washington National Opera's first live simulcast into the stadium.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

[Interview with Peter Sellars]
Pet peeve about opera: It's usually musically so poor. It's so often generalized and dull when what you want is sharp, wild and dangerous.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

In his 11 years at the Miller Theater, George R. Steel has made creative programming an art form in itself and has constantly raised the bar. When he planned this season, his goal was to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the renovation of Columbia University?s old McMillan Theater and its reopening as the Miller Theater. As it turns out, it is also Mr. Steel's valedictory season, though most of it will be in absentia. (He takes over the Dallas Opera on Oct. 1.) And he found a spectacular way to begin it: with the American premiere of Iannis Xenakis's sharp-edged, otherworldly opera "Oresteia," which opened on Saturday evening.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

The board chairman for the San Francisco Opera says he and his wife are giving $40 million to the musical organization.
Chairman John A. Gunn and his wife Cynthia said their donation is a reflection of their dedication to the opera group and its general director, David Gockley, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Saturday.
— Read more at UPI.com

Opera is a form of total theater, so writing and producing one is always a collaborative process. But "The Bonesetter's Daughter," by the composer Stewart Wallace, with a libretto by Amy Tan, based on her best-selling 2001 novel, may set a new standard for operatic collaboration.
Mr. Wallace and Ms. Tan essentially wrote the piece in tandem, scene by scene. Their work involved several trips to China over three years, immersing themselves in the music of ethnic minorities and observing village funerals and weddings. The concept of the opera took on a more mythical dimension when the Chinese-born director and choreographer Chen Shi-Zheng became involved. And David Gockley, general director of the San Francisco Opera, who commissioned the work, also had a hand in shaping it.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Whether you hear it on eTalk or at work, the word "diva" gets thrown around much too often - and for all the wrong reasons.
"It's funny how it's been absorbed into popular culture, definitely" says soprano Renée Fleming. "It literally means 'goddess.' To be divine."
— Read more at SEE Magazine

Since 1997, in his position as executive director of the Miller Theater at Columbia University, George R. Steel has done more than turn the place into a hotbed of adventurous programming. He has made the Miller an exemplar of audience outreach and dynamic commitment to contemporary music. Critics who respect Mr. Steel's programming, I among them, have used the modest 680-seat Miller Theater as a stick to prod stodgy major orchestras and opera companies into waking up.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

He has performed at some of the most prestigious opera and recital houses in the world - La Scala, Carnegie Hall, The Met - but this month Ben Heppner has taken his show on a different sort of road: to venues that include a college in Fort McMurray, Alta., and a high school in Yorkton, Sask.
— Read more at globeandmail.com

What a nice month for nice singers. This weekend, Dawn Upshaw graces the Boettcher Hall stage in season-opening concerts with the Colorado Symphony. On Sept. 26, Frederica von Stade graces the stage of the Ellie Caulkins Opera House.
That tired old diva myth just doesn't apply to these two beloved American artists. They're real, earthbound people, sharing life's ups and downs like the rest of us.
— Read more at The Rocky Mountain News

Vancouver Opera has announced its plans to present the Canadian premiere of John Corigliano's opera Ghosts of Versailles in the 2011-12 season.
This is a development that says good things for the company's willingness to direct itself toward the fresh material of the 20th and 21st centuries.
— Read more at canada.com

In the 1950s and '60s, long before opera composers began trawling the evening news, horror films, television talk shows and even spam e-mail messages for their subjects, quite a few looked to recent plays for inspiration. That was a time when serious drama was plentiful, before playwrights began recycling film comedies for the stage or staking their reputations on effects-laden high-tech extravaganzas.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

The San Francisco Opera announced Friday that longtime opera supporters John A. Gunn and Cynthia Gunn of Palo Alto have made a $40 million donation commitment.
The donation is believed to be the largest single gift ever received by an American opera company.
— Read more at San Mateo Daily News

[Veteran filmmaker Woody Allen is wowing audiences in his debut as an opera director. Rupert Christiansen reports from Los Angeles]
Importing a celebrated film director to stage an opera always looks good on glossy paper. Press interest is guaranteed, and the curiosity of audiences beyond the usual pale will be provoked.
— Read more at Telegraph.co.uk

Given its location, it makes sense for Los Angeles Opera, of all companies, to recruit creative talents from the film industry to try their hands at energizing opera. This has certainly been a priority for Plácido Domingo as the company's general director.
The latest manifestation of that effort came on Sunday afternoon, when Los Angeles Opera presented the American premiere of "The Fly" by the Oscar-winning composer Howard Shore, best known for his scores for the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. With a libretto by the playwright David Henry Hwang, the opera is based on the director David Cronenberg's 1986 film, for which Mr. Shore wrote the music. Mr. Cronenberg, working closely with Mr. Shore, directed this opera, a co-production with the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, where the work had its world premiere in July.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

The Royal Opera's big social experiment - offering reduced first night tickets exclusively to readers of The Sun - certainly produced a packed house. Despite a lingering suspicion it was largely made up of regular ROH-goers who'd just bought the paper for cheap tickets, the crowd was noticeably younger and buzzier.
— Read more at Metro.co.uk

When the Royal Opera House announced it was doing a deal with The Sun to bring in a new kind of audience for the opening night of the autumn season, there was much sneering in some quarters, with accusations that it was being "patronising" and "slumming it" being bandied about. That it was simultaneously going to broadcast the event live to a hundred cinemas just compounded the crime. What, piping Don Giovanni to the proles? Pearls before swine!
— Read more at The Independent

On Friday, October 3 and Saturday, October 4, 2008 at 8:00PM, AMERICAN OPERA PROJECTS' (AOP) Composers & the Voice Series presents Six Scenes,concert readings from six operas-in-development. Performances will be held in the Great Room at South Oxford Space in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, the home of American Opera Projects. Tickets are $20 ($15 for students/seniors).
— Learn more at operaprojects.org

Two of opera's leading sopranos - both acclaimed for their dramatic and vocal skills - sing the demanding title role in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor for the first time at the Met this season. In the opening performance, October 3, 2008, Diana Damrau - who last season became the first soprano to achieve the feat of singing both leading soprano roles in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, Pamina and the Queen of the Night, in the same Met season - sings the role of Lucia for the first time in her career. Polish tenor Piotr Beczala is her beloved Edgardo in his Met role debut. Anna Netrebko returns to the Met for the first time since giving birth in September, singing the title role in the season's final four performances opposite tenor Rolando Villazón as Edgardo, who makes his first appearance at the Met in nearly two years. Marco Armiliato conducts all 11 performances.
— Read more at BroadwayWorld.com

Woody Allen, the New York movie director best known for his comedies, earned high praise Monday from music critics after his debut at the weekend as the director of a classical opera.
Allen, 73, had been wooed by famed tenor Placido Domingo, the general manager of the Los Angeles opera, to direct the romantic comedy "Gianni Schicchi," the third piece in Giacomo Puccini's "Trittico" of one-act operas.
— Read more at Yahoo! News

Two years ago, a bass-baritone covered in gook stalked the stage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. That was the medieval monster in Elliot Goldenthal's "Grendel," commissioned by Los Angeles Opera. Sunday afternoon, a baritone covered in gook again stalked the Chandler stage. This time it was Brundle, the scientist hero transmogrified into a Musca domestica in Howard Shore's "The Fly," inspired by the 1986 David Cronenberg horror film -- the latest opera commissioned by the company.
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

[Readers of The Sun newspaper turned out in force for the opening night of the Royal Opera House's new season.]
Tickets for Mozart's masterpiece Don Giovanni were only made available to readers of the paper.
In reaching out to new audiences, the Opera House invited people to enter a ballot to buy tickets for the performance at London's Covent Garden.
— Read more at BBC

PATIENT, persistent Plácido Domingo long ago decided that he wanted Woody Allen for Los Angeles Opera. The company came up with any number of cockamamie proposals -- such as commissioning Allen to write the libretto for a new opera by John Williams, commissioning someone else to write an opera based on an Allen short story or having the filmmaker direct this or that opera -- that went nowhere.
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

[The Royal Opera's music director Antonio Pappano says he has finally bonded with his orchestra. He talks to Rupert Christiansen]
Tonight sees the opening of the Royal Opera's 2008-9 season - a performance of Don Giovanni for which the audience will consist of readers of the Sun who have bought tickets at knock-down prices, subsidised by the Helen Hamlyn Foundation.
— Read more at Telegraph

If you were expecting just a quiet night of lovely music at soprano Angela Gheorghiu's Bay Area recital debut on Saturday, boy were you in for a surprise. The red-flag event that unfurled to wild applause in Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall was equal parts theatrics, exquisite vocal pyrotechnics, grand orchestral showcase and flagrantly vampy fashion show.
— Read more at ContraCostaTimes.com

Soprano Angela Gheorghiu arrived in UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall on Saturday night for a recital co-sponsored by the San Francisco Opera and Cal Performances. The audience couldn't get enough of her.
— Read more at sfgate.com

If you didn't know something odd was going on at the Royal Opera House, the big red open-top bus parked outside and plastered with the logo of the nation's top-selling newspaper might have given you a clue. Apart from a few toffee-nosed opera critics, yours truly included, every member of the audience for this show - the opening night of the Royal Opera's new season - was supposedly a reader of The Sun.
— Read more at Times Online

Let's not mince words. That's always the best way. Just rip the bandage off quickly. Howard Shore's "The Fly," which was given its U.S. premiere Sunday afternoon courtesy of Los Angeles Opera, is the worst opera I've ever seen. Wait, let me mince. I'll say "possibly the worst" since my memory's not what it used to be. Be afraid, be very afraid, if you've already got tickets to "The Fly." It's three hours that you'll never get back, not counting the drive.
— Read more at OCRegister.com

Was Woody Allen trying to lower expectations for his directorial debut in opera? Or was he just being Woody?
For weeks, when asked how things were going with the new production of Puccini's "Gianni Schicchi" that he was directing for the Los Angeles Opera, he talked down his suitability for the job. "I have no idea what I'm doing," he told The Los Angeles Times. But "incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm," he added.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

For half its length, Bay Area author Amy Tan's 2001 novel "The Bonesetter's Daughter" thrums along in a quiet, self-reflective way, its narrative driven by the estrogen-drenched domestic angst that entangles mothers and daughters in so many of her books.
In Part Two, on a particular page with a single spectacular incident, however, the whole thing explodes, going unmistakably, irretrievably, over-the-top operatic with such force that it casts everything that has gone before in a bold new light.
— Read more at ContraCostaTimes.com

Over the last 30 years, David Cronenberg, director of such films as Scanners (1981), Dead Ringers (1988) and A History of Violence (2005), has been called the "King of Venereal Horror" and the "Baron of Blood." But more and more, he's being recognized as something else: a thinking man's filmmaker. A diehard existentialist, Cronenberg has infused philosophy into his films over the years; some critics even called his 1986 blockbuster The Fly an inspired allegory for the AIDS epidemic. And if anyone still doubted his high-culture credibility, now Cronenberg is tackling the medium of Mozart.
— Read more at TIME.com

In director David Cronenberg's 1986 movie "The Fly," scientist Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) commits a fatal error when he combines his own genes with those of a common housefly.
At Los Angeles Opera, another dicey blending of species is taking place: Film directors are mutating into opera directors -- with, it's hoped, less alarming results.
— Read more at The Courier-Journal

In the ongoing quest to broaden opera's appeal, contemporary opera is one arrow in a sparely filled quiver. New operas are based on world events, current movies, popular books. Their music is written by funky living composers. And yet, earnest, thoughtful and filled with worthy music though they be, they seldom find the same resonance as art films, or literary fiction. In fact, people who go to see an opera based on a book they liked often come away disappointed.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

Last night's opening was a warm-up act, a rehearsal for the audience before the Big One, the show that we're all waiting for, the world premiere of the Bonesetter's Daughter, next Saturday. Among the other season kick-off festivities, you can attend the free Opera in the Park concert tomorrow at 1:30pm. You know the shtick: bring sunscreen, cold cuts and chardonnay, and enjoy some darn fine singing on the lawn.
— Read more at SFist.com

THERE is nothing quite like the satisfaction of seeing a promising young artist emerge as a bona fide star. For Joyce DiDonato, a charismatic mezzo-soprano from Kansas City, Mo., that kind of breakthrough has occurred in the last few seasons.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

THE big news in classical music this fall is what won?t be: a real season for New York City Opera.
The company is essentially shutting down during renovations to its New York State Theater home, offering two unstaged performances of "Antony and Cleopatra" at Carnegie Hall in January and several fistfuls of orchestra concerts and lectures.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

When Erwin Schrott took on the title role in Mozart's Don Giovanni last year at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, The New York Times wrote: "The surprise was the riveting Giovanni: the seductively handsome young Uruguayan bass Erwin Schrott, who boasts a strong, dusky voice and chiseled physique. Exuding charisma, he galvanized the audience with his unabashedly narcissistic portrayal."
Now Schrott, who sang the role when the Met toured Japan in 2006, is bringing his portrayal to the Met stage for the first time beginning Saturday, September 27.
— Read more at BroadwayWorld.com

"Well I hear the transporter making a big noise like a giant coffee percolator which is apt because a lot of things have been percolating since we first joined forces to create this opera," says writer-director David Cronenberg of the film version of 'The Fly' in 1986. Cronenberg sits in front of an elaborate laboratory set at The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles as final rehearsals are underway for the U. S. Premiere of L.A. Opera's 'The Fly' on September 7, 2008.
— Read more at Hollywood Today

In 1988, the Netherlands Opera appointed as its new head a 30-year-old Lebanese-born theater director with no background or experience in traditional opera. His passions were avant-garde music, theater, and visual art. The opera world was aghast. One prominent New York opera administrator I spoke with at the time said that Pierre Audi would be lucky to last three years and that the Netherlands Opera would be lucky to survive him. Not that anyone outside Holland was likely to notice or care, so provincial was the company.
— Read more at The Boston Globe

Metropolitan Opera on SIRIUS Satellite Radio channel 78 launches its regular live broadcasts of the company?s 2008-09 season with the Opening Night Gala starring Renée Fleming, which airs on Monday, September 22, 2008 at 6:30 p.m. The third season of Met Opera Radio on SIRIUS features four live broadcasts weekly as the Met celebrates its 125th anniversary with six new productions, including the company premiere of John Adams's Doctor Atomic, 18 revivals, and the season grand finale of Wagner?s epic Ring cycle, conducted by Music Director James Levine. The Opening Night Gala program features Fleming in some of her most acclaimed roles, beginning with Act II of Verdi's La Traviata, and continuing with Act III of Massenet's Manon, and the final scene of Richard Strauss's one act opera, Capriccio. Levine conducts the act from La Traviata, Marco Armiliato the Manon act, and Patrick Summers the Capriccio excerpt.
— Read more at BroadwayWorld.com

[This season at the Met, Renée Fleming will sing two of her favorite roles - Thaïs and Rusalka - and star in the company's opening-night gala. America's favorite soprano talks to F. PAUL DRISCOLL about the year she calls "one of the high points of my career."]
When OPERA NEWS visited Renée Fleming at her Manhattan home in early May, she looked cool and relaxed despite the demands of a schedule that would fell most of the rest of us: her previous ten days had been crammed with recording sessions in Munich, singing "Over the Rainbow" at a party at Buckingham Palace hosted by Prince Charles and headlining a gala in Montreal.
— Read more at Opera News

DEEP IN the womb of the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House, a famous novelist is giving a world-class mezzo-soprano a piece of her mind. Dressed in loose-fitting black pants and a matching T-shirt, lots of heavy, silver jewelry and eccentric-looking orthotic sneakers, Amy Tan makes explosive, diagonal slicing movements with her arms. "My mother used to do this," says Tan, tapping into her past. "Now you try."
Charged with playing the role of the mother figure, LuLing Liu Young, in San Francisco Opera's adaptation of Tan's 2001 novel "The Bonesetter's Daughter," which will have its world premiere here Saturday, the glamorous Chinese opera singer Ning Liang nods her head.
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

In his New York City apartment, Placido Domingo keeps a small embroidered pillow that proclaims: "If I rest I rust." It certainly is the right motto for the globe-trotting tenor's nonstop lifestyle.
One moment Domingo was in Beijing performing before thousands at the closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games. Seemingly the next, even before the torch had time to cool, he was onstage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to discuss the opening of Los Angeles Opera's 23rd season.
— Read more at Press-Telegram

Deborah Voigt takes on the title role in Ponchielli's grand, passionate drama, La Gioconda, for the first time in the United States and only the second time in her career. She is joined by Olga Borodina as her rival, Laura, and, in the role of La Cieca, Polish contralto Ewa Podles, who returns to the Met for the first time since 1984. The cast also includes Aquiles Machado as Enzo, Carlo Guelfi as Barnaba, and, in his Met debut, Orlin Anastassov as Alvise. Conductor Daniele Callegari makes his Met debut. Performances run from September 24 through October 9, 2009.
— Read more at BroadwayWorld.com

Renée Fleming will will be joined by Ramón Vargas, Thomas Hampson, Dwayne Croft and others for the Sept. 22 Opening Night Gala that kicks off the Met's 125th Anniversary Season.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Soprano Karita Mattila, who electrified Met audiences in the title role of Richard Strauss's Salome in 2004, returns as the voluptuous Judean princess this season, beginning September 23. Two of her fellow Finns are making their company debuts: Juha Uusitalo as Jochanaan (John the Baptist) and Mikko Franck, who will conduct. The cast also includes Ildikó Komlósi as Herodias, Kim Begley in the role of Herod and Joseph Kaiser as Narraboth. Performances run through October 16. The matinee on Saturday, October 11, will be transmitted live worldwide as part of the The Met: Live in HD series.
— Read more at BroadwayWorld.com

For those who mourned the demise of the Washington National Opera's opening-night simulcast on the Mall, the company has come through with a walk-off home run.
On Sept. 13 at 7 p.m., a live broadcast of "La Traviata" will be screened not to the Mall, but to Nationals Park. When the stadium opened in late March, much was made of the state-of-the-art Jumbotron; now, that screen will be used to air Violetta's death. If only they could use instant replay.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

[This season, superstar soprano Renée Fleming claims the city as her own, rocking the Met and appearing on the side of a bus near you.]
Taking Renée Fleming for granted is far too easy. We should know; we've been doing it for years. A prominent lyric soprano for more than two decades, Fleming, 49, has been a creative force at the Metropolitan Opera since the mid-'90s. She is without question the reigning American opera singer worldwide, and one of the few to attain a broader general appeal. At a time when the memory of Beverly Sills guest-hosting The Tonight Show verges on the surreal, Fleming sings on Letterman, and Daniel Boulud has named a dessert after her.
— Read more at Time Out New York

The Washington National Opera naturally wants to increase the audience for opera in the nation's capital. To that end, its last couple seasons have featured a free simulcast of one of its productions via an immense screen on the National Mall. Large crowds have shown up, with better or worse results depending on the weather. This year, the company has just announced, it will slightly modify this program, by offering its free broadcast to crowds in Nationals Park, in imitation of a similar initiative at San Francisco Opera.
— Read more at DCist.com

"The Fly is an opera for the 21st century," says composer Howard Shore, referring to his newest work, which has its American premiere Sept. 7 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion as part of LA Opera's 2008-2009 season.
Shore spoke from Paris, where LA Opera's partner, Theatre du Chatelet, debuted the two-hour work on July 2. He is now in Los Angeles, working alongside conductor Placido Domingo and director David Cronenberg to rehearse The Fly for its six performances
— Read more at filmmusicsociety.org

[No honking and screaming for Lawrence Brownlee, who has forged a major career by singing with consummate ease. JAMES C. WHITSON visits with the bel canto stylist extraordinaire.]
As I recall a recent "shock and awe" assault on the role of Cavaradossi, Lawrence Brownlee shakes his head. My impersonation of the tenor bracing for a great bellowing "Vittoria!" draws a chuckle. "He was amping up," he ruefully observes.
— Read more at Opera News

The guard has changed in Valhalla.
Two half-sisters, great-granddaughters of Richard Wagner, will jointly take the reins of the Bayreuth Festival dedicated to his music, officials announced on Monday, dashing an effort by a rival family branch working in concert with Gerard Mortier, the general director of New York City Opera.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

A little more than 15 years ago, Maestro Raymond Harvey got a call from a friend who asked him to conduct an opera for a small company in El Paso.
A California resident at the time, he tried to find information about the company only to learn there were no listings for it anywhere.
— Read more at El Paso Times

OPERA fans won't have to travel to London for the opening night of the Royal Opera House's 2008/2009 season because the Vue Cinema in Plymouth will be screening the production live from Covent Garden.
It's the first live opera presentation from Vue Entertainment, and the Barbican Leisure Park venue is one of 25 Vue cinemas in the UK to screen Don Giovanni live next Monday, September 8, at 6.45pm.
— Read more at thisisplymouth.co.uk

ON a steamy evening in early July six musicians - four Beijing opera percussionists, a player of the double-reed instrument called the suona and a rock singer who also plays suona - paused while rehearsing in a studio at the China National Beijing Opera Company here.
The music for "The Bonesetter's Daughter," a new opera based on Amy Tan's best-selling 2001 novel, lay open before them, but the composer, Stewart Wallace, was cheerfully encouraging the musicians to deviate from the score.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

[Wolfgang Wagner has bid farewell to the Bayreuth opera festival in Germany after 57 years at the helm.]
The 88-year-old blinked back tears as the annual music festival, founded by his grandfather - composer Richard Wagner, came to a close on Thursday.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

Rufus Wainwright's first opera, Prima Donna, will not be performed at the Metropolitan Opera as expected. The New York opera company had commissioned Wainwright to create a work that would "appeal to the largest possible American audience," reports the Los Angeles Times. Prima Donna, however, is completely in French.
— Read more at Advocate.com

The Bayreuth Festival's ruling body was to pick Monday which of Richard Wagner's descendants will run the annual summer fest devoted to his music in the latest act of a bitter, decades-long family saga.
The festival was founded by the composer in 1876, and for the past 57 years it has been run with an iron fist by his grandson Wolfgang Wagner, 42 of them in sole charge.
— Read more at AFP

Japan's Kazushi Ono on Monday officially took up his new position as principal conductor of the Opera de Lyon, the opera house in the southeastern French city said.
— Read more at AFP

The Opera Company of North Carolina has hired Timothy Myers to serve as its principal conductor and artistic advisor.
Myers will spend 14 weeks in Raleigh during the 2008-09 performance season and will conduct the Opera Company's productions of I Pagliacci, Cenerentola and Rigoletto.
— Read more at Philanthropy Journal

At first glance the stylized movements of the group of adults and teenagers attached to one another's wrists with long crepe ribbons seemed to be some kind of avant-garde twilight tai chi. But these exercises on the Red Hook Marine Terminal docks in Brooklyn, against a striking backdrop of Governors Island and the Manhattan skyline, were part of preparations last week for the Vertical Player Repertory production of Offenbach's "Tales of Hoffmann." It opens on Friday in this picturesque outdoor spot.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

The Metropolitan Opera opens its 2008-09 season on September 22 with a gala performance that kicks off its 125th anniversary, starring Renée Fleming in three fully-staged scenes, including some of her most acclaimed portrayals. Costumes for Fleming have been specially created for each of the scenes in the Opening Night Gala by three of the world's legendary fashion designers: John Galliano, Christian Lacroix, and Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel.
— Read more at BroadwayWorld.com

Cleveland Museum of Art is going operatic.
It will screen five admired opera films in September, starting with Ingmar Bergman's seminal 1975 version of Mozart's "The Magic Flute."
— Read more at Cleveland.com

The other glittery slipper will drop when glamour diva Angela Gheorghiu makes her Bay Area recital debut at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley on Sept. 6.
The superstar soprano, 42, first stepped foot onstage here last fall, making her local operatic debut as Magda in San Francisco Opera's production of Puccini's "La Rondine." While the production itself was not the highlight of the S.F. Opera season, Gheorghiu's performance itself drew loud shouts of "Brava!" from audiences and a string of superlatives ("radiant," "lustrous," "flawless") from critics.
— Read more at ContraCostaTimes.com

FORTY-THREE YEARS ago, an opera company was born in Westfield, N.J. Dedicated to grand opera, the group quickly became designated the official New Jersey opera company by the state legislature.
For four decades, Alfredo Silipigni led the New Jersey State Opera, winning international accolades and speeding the careers of young stars, including Placido Domingo.
— Read more at Asbury Park Press