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

This was the Christmas that Handel stole. The year my Advent candle became "the Handel candle", burning down the days of an epic musical challenge: to listen to all of George Frideric Handel's 42 operas. In three weeks. Was it humanly possible? Or would it be the nightmare before, during and after Christmas?
— Read more at Times Online

You know it's going to be bad news. It has to be.
This is the year, after all, when the "R" word became "Recession," when every newscast tells you this is the worst year, financially, since the Great Depression.
— Read more at Press-Telegram

PARSONS DANCE presents a World Premiere collaboration with the lead vocalists and music of the Grammy Award-nominated EAST VILLAGE OPERA COMPANY The Joyce Theater, January 6 - 18, 2009.
— Read more at broadwayworld.com

Two local musicians play starring roles in Lyric Opera Northwest's first production of the new year, one of the most beloved operas of all time ? "Le nozze di Figaro, Ossia la Folle Giornata" ("The Marriage of Figaro," or "The Day of Madness")."The Marriage of Figaro" is a comic opera in four acts composed in 1786 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte and based on a play by Pierre Beaumarchais.
— Read more at The Issaquah Press

The American composer John Adams is credited with inventing a new genre: CNN opera.
Curiously, he seems to be its only practitioner, having fashioned works based on real people and events - Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, etc.
— Read more at The Rocky Mountain News

While government bailouts are being offered or considered for financial institutions, the auto industry, homeowners, and so many other needy and worthy sectors, one group is quickly and rather quietly falling apart: our nation's arts organizations. In the past few months, dozens of opera companies, theater companies, dance organizations, museums and symphonies have either closed or suffered major cash crises.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

More than rehearsals are going on as Phoenix Opera gets ready to launch its production of "Aida" Jan. 30.
The young nonprofit, which made its debut last year with the production of "La Boheme," had a vision of sets depicting a colorful, thriving ancient Egypt during the days of the Pharaohs for its upcoming opera by Giuseppe Verde.
— Read more at Phoenix Business Journal:

Opera singer Dorothy Sarnoff, who earned a strong reputation as an image consultant, has died in New York at the age of 94, a friend says.
Jean Schoonover said Sarnoff, who appeared in 1951's original "The King and I" Broadway production, enjoyed a successful second career helping others find optimism in their lives and careers, The New York Times (NYSE:NYT) reported Sunday.
— Read more at UPI.com

[Joyce DiDonato, Kansas City's favorite mezzo-soprano, returns to the Harriman-Jewell Series with friends.]
DiDonato and the Paris-based ensemble Les Talens Lyriques, led by Christophe Rousset, will perform a collection of arias and orchestral pieces from Handel's operas.
— Read more at Kansas City infoZine News

Comic book curmudgeon and occasional television talk show guest Harvey Pekar will soon be able to add jazz opera composer to his resume.
Pekar and former Cleveland Heights jazz saxophonist Dan Plonsey will premiere "Leave Me Alone!" on Jan. 31 at Oberlin College's Finney Chapel. The performance will be webcast.
— Read more at cleveland.com

After an absence of 82 years, Puccini's bittersweet romance La Rondine returns to the Met in a new production with a gala premiere performance on New Year's Eve. La Rondine stars Angela Gheorghiu as Magda, the Parisian socialite, and Roberto Alagna as Ruggero, her lover. Lisette Oropesa, Marius Brenciu, in his Met debut, and Samuel Ramey are the other principal singers. Marco Armiliato conducts.
— Read more at broadwayworld.com

Katherine Jenkins arrived at Harrods to a chorus of boos as dozens of anti-fur campaigners protested against the Welsh singer's decision to open the store's winter sale.
Protesters chanted "shame on Catherine" as the mezzo soprano arrived at the historic Knightsbridge store by horse-drawn carriage. The boos were eventually drowned out by claps and cheers from bargain hunters queuing outside as Jenkins - wearing a black dress with white detail - was ushered into the store by chairman Mohamed al Fayed.
— Read more at The Press Association

Opera lovers are poised for a grand, near-death drama in Italy this winter. Close to a billion dollars in government cultural funds are expected to disappear in the next three years, and the Italian opera world is spinning in alarm at its prospects.
"At this moment, everything is uncertain," said Gianni Tangucci, artistic director of Teatro San Carlo in Naples, whose past artistic directors include Rossini and Donizetti. "We play every day by the moment?and by the ear."
— Read more at chicagotribune.com

The San Francisco Opera finished its 2007-08 fiscal year with a tiny surplus of $141,377 on an annual operating budget of $72,531,193. The results, announced this week, were spurred by a 6.2 percent rise in ticket revenue and an increase in donations.
"We got out of there with our pants on," said General Director David Gockley. He said the forecast for the current year also looked reasonable.
— Read more at sfgate.com

Talking excitedly the second he blows through the door, the tall man with the British accent grabs one end of the upright piano and begins single-handedly tugging it into position while his singers assemble at the back of the room.
"This is going to be a bit of a hodge-podge," the man, Robert Ainsley, assistant director and chorus master for the Portland Opera, confides to a handful of people already seated, as other audience members -- some in business suits, others in hiking jackets -- filter in, a few with sack lunches in hand.
— Read more at OregonLive.com

Richard Van Allan, a British bass-baritone who was a commanding presence on the world?s opera stages, died on Dec. 4 in London. He was 73.
The National Opera Studio, which Mr. Van Allan directed from 1986 to 2001, announced his death. He learned he had lung cancer two years ago, The Guardian of London reported.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

German theatre director Juergen Flimm assured Austrians Wednesday that he will still organise the Salzburg Festival following his appointment as artistic director of the Berlin State Opera (Staatsoper) from 2010.
— Read more at Yahoo! News

As Christmas approaches, concertgoers who bought tickets for the now-bankrupt Baltimore Opera Company won't be left out in the cold. A group of area arts companies will honor any nonrefundable tickets for productions of "Porgy and Bess" and "The Barber of Seville" planned by the Baltimore Opera Company, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this month.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Jürgen Flimm, the German theater and opera director, has been named the artistic director of Deutsche Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, and will take over the position on Sept. 1, 2010, Agence-France Presse reported.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

How ironic that the one Puccini opera left unfinished at his death should end (or so it was deemed by those responsible for the finishing touches) with what has become the greatest of his hits - "Nessun dorma".
— Read more at The Independent

The Met has been playing "Tristan und Isolde" again; as last year, the marathon title roles have gone through several throats as illness and exhaustion struck. Still, the big news remains the company bow of Daniel Barenboim, who mobilized a re-seated orchestra into a mesmerizing ensemble. Clarity and structure seemed his priorities rather than sweeping emotion, but it was nonetheless a moving display of the power of a great conductor leading the right score.
— Read more at GayCityNews.com

George Steel, the general manager of the Dallas Opera, said he isn't interested in the top job at New York City Opera -- the 65-year-old company that's homeless, leaderless and short of money.
Steel said while he?s had discussions with board member Mary Sharp Cronson about the opera, they weren't formal negotiations. Incoming impresario Gerard Mortier quit City Opera last month, nine months before he was scheduled to take over fulltime.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

In a generous act perfectly suited to the holiday season, four major arts organizations - the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Washington National Opera, Centerstage and the Hippodrome - will offer a gift of free tickets to patrons of the Baltimore Opera Company, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Dec. 4 and canceled the remainder of its 2008-2009 season.
— Read more at baltimoresun.com

The rich, velvety tones of Eric Owens' bass-baritone voice have made him a rising star in the opera world.
Owens made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in October. Tonight, he opens in the Met's production of Mozart's The Magic Flute.
— Read more at NPR Music

When Michael Capasso, the general director of Dicapo Opera Theatre, appeared on the stage of the Rose Theater on Monday night to introduce his modest company's ambitious Puccini gala, he knew the mood in the hall might be tense.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

[Satirist Armando Iannucci and composer David Sawer tell Jasper Rees why they wrote an opera about plastic surgery. ]
Opera is known as the art form in which the drama is not over till the fat lady sings. In recent years, however, there have been more and more instances of the fat lady coming down several sizes thanks to the intervention of a stomach-stapling procedure.
— Read more at Telegraph.co.uk

New York City Opera -- the 65-year- old company that's homeless, leaderless and short of money -- is in talks to hire George Steel from the Dallas Opera as general manager.
Steel confirmed the negotiations today through a spokeswoman. "I have talked to a few people but nothing's changed and no offer has been made," Steel said through the spokeswoman, Aleba Gartner.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

German director Juergen Flimm was chosen Monday to become the general manager of Berlin's Staatsoper opera house in 2010.
Flimm, currently artistic director of the prestigious Salzburg Festival in Austria, will replace Peter Mussbach, who left the Staatsoper in May due to differences over programming.
— Read more at The Associated Press

Sopranos Natalie Dessay, Renee Fleming, Angela Gheorghiu and Deborah Voigt are among the stars who will perform at the Metropolitan Opera's 125th anniversary gala on March 15. Tenors Placido Domingo, Juan Diego Florez, Marcello Giordani and Ben Heppner also will perform on a night that also celebrates the 40th anniversary season of Domingo's Met debut, the company said Tuesday.
— Read more at The Canadian Press

DiCapo Opera Theatre said it had been hit by a small storm of cancellations for its Puccini 150th anniversary gala concert, a fundraiser, scheduled for Monday night. On its Web site, of the five singers singled out as taking part only one, Fabio Armiliato, was expected to appear, said the company's general director, Michael Capasso.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

IN his book "This Is Your Brain on Music," Daniel J. Levitin writes that "the thrills, chills and tears we experience from music are the result of having our expectations artfully manipulated by a skilled composer and the musicians who interpret that music."
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Now that Kentucky Opera has completed its fall 2008 season, this seems a good time to reflect on the company's concluding production: Massenet's "Werther." Here was an old work made new again for nearly everyone who attended performances at the Kentucky Center's Whitney Hall. The experience had to be different -- and very likely potent -- for patrons used to utterly mainstream fare by the likes of Mozart, Verdi and Puccini. Suddenly, and without unnecessary fanfare, Kentucky Opera gave the lie to the notion that veering away from the center will scare off their followers.
— Read more at The Courier-Journal

[Highlights from the upcoming summer Festival will include several Verdi favorites, a new production of Lohengrin starring Jonas Kaufmann, and concert performances by such names as Angela Gheorghiu, Diana Damrau and Waltraud Meier.]
The annual Munich Opera Festival is one of the oldest of its kind, with roots reaching as far back as 1875.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Opera Boston presents the New England premiere of Dmitri Shostakovich's satirical first opera, The Nose, February 27 through March 3 at the Cutler Majestic Theatre. It will be conducted by Opera Boston Music Director Gil Rose, Grammy Award-nominated interpreter of twentieth and twenty-first century repertory, and directed by the internationally-acclaimed Julia Pevzner in her Opera Boston debut.
— Read more at operaboston.org

Members of the ULM Opera Studio have been invited to Washington D.C. on Jan. 9, to present the premiere of a children's opera about the environment titled, "The Greenest Story Ever Told."
The presentation in the nation's capital will be made at the national convention of the National Opera Association.
— Read more at The News Star

In February of 2009, in honor of the bicentennial of Joseph Haydn's death, Gotham Chamber Opera will present the New York City stage premiere of L'isola disabitata (Desert Island) in a new production staged by Mark Morris at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College.
— Read more at broadwayworld.com

Centuries ago, when opera was developed, there were frequently debates about which element was more important, the music or the text. Today, the most crucial question is: Do you want butter with your popcorn?
Thanks to the Metropolitan Opera, which introduced the concept of digitally transmitted performances to movie theaters a couple years ago, people all over the country and abroad are heading to the local cineplex to get their fix of Verdi, Puccini and Wagner. Locally, big movie theaters in Abingdon and Columbia signed on quickly to the Met's live simulcasts with subtitles.
— Read more at baltimoresun.com

From "Met" operas to Elton John to theatre, the performing arts are drumming up new revenue and widening audiences by taking live acts to screens worldwide.
Leader in the field was New York's famed Metropolitan Opera, which for its 2006-2007 season launched an ambitious scheme offering "live" high definition transmissions at the cinema of some of its best nights at the opera.
— Read more at AFP

By all accounts, the first two productions of the first opera company in Polk County have been artistic successes, but a difficult economic situation has left the Opera Theater of Lakeland struggling to meet its obligations.
— Read more at The Ledger

[A new opera being performed this weekend in Minneapolis has a lofty goal: to portray all Americans - past, present, and future. "The Making of Americans" is an adaptation of Gertrude Stein's novel of the same name. It gets its world premiere tonight at the Walker Art Center. ]
Published in 1925, Gertrude Stein's "The Making of Americans" was described as a cubist novel.
It embraced the ideas of cubist painters, most notably Stein's friend Pablo Picasso. Cubists would paint images of objects disassembled into their component parts and then re-imagined them from several perspectives at once.
— Read more at MPR

[Cosmetic surgery goes under the satirical microscope in Armando Iannucci's opera 'Skin Deep'. Lynne Walker reports on a funny show with a serious message]
It is advertised as "a satirical opera-tion" and I'm willing to bet that it's the first time that penis extensions have featured in the opera corpus. But Skin Deep, a new operetta about cosmetic surgery, revealing the ugly truth about beauty, is cutting a new line in opera chic.
— Read more at The Independent

Portraits of happy marriages are rare in opera. Think of the squabbles between Wotan and Fricka in Wagner's "Ring" and the 11 children he fathers in two extramarital affairs. When Richard Strauss had the idea of a domestic comedy about himself and his wife Pauline, he knew his regular librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal would want no part of it and ended up writing the text himself. The resulting "Intermezzo" has indeed taken a place among the more obscure of Strauss's mature operas, but then, as the Theater an der Wien's new production engagingly reveals, it is hardly a work that cultivates broad-brush operatic appeal.
— Read more at International Herald Tribune

[Opera North did it with a six-piece band, and an audience of squirming 9-year-olds. The Royal Opera production was all about luxury casting and a sublime orchestral sound. Yet it was Opera North that won hands down]
On Monday afternoon, I went to Opera North's new Howard Assembly Rooms in Leeds to watch a performance of Humperdinck's dark and funny opera Hansel and Gretel. It was a tiny production, with a cast of six and a six-piece orchestra. It's been doing the tounds in Kendal, Bridlington, Newark and Stockton-on-Tees. Glamorous? Not really.
— Read more at guardian.co.uk

It's a story as old as marriage, and it was told delightfully Saturday in a new production of Richard Strauss' "Intermezzo."
Praise to the composer first for squeezing 2 1/2 hours of entertainment from a plot that appears too thin for substantive opera.
— Read more at Yahoo! News

Daniel Barenboim, 66, was busy last week, even by tireless-polymath standards. He ventured a new Elliott Carter concerto and joined James Levine for piano duets in Boston and New York. He gave a recital in Philadelphia. He conducted Wagner's Tristan at the Met and prepared a concert with his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra for the United Nations. He also found time for interviews, in which he mentioned that he was suffering a painful bout of gout.
— Read more at Martin Bernheimer - FT.com

Edward Hopper's cityscapes evoke many possible narratives of loneliness and solitude, some of which are imaginatively brought to life by "Later the Same Evening," a one-act opera inspired by five of his paintings.
A joint production of the University of Maryland and the National Gallery of Art in Washington (which hosted a Hopper exhibition last year), the work, which has a score by John Musto, received its New York premiere last week at the Manhattan School of Music.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Before Handel frenzy sweeps through the composer's adopted city next year as London celebrates the 250th anniversary of his death, the Barbican invited the French period-instrument ensemble Les Talens Lyriques and the mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato to present a prologue in the form of an evening of Furore: Handel's Scenes of Madness.
— Read more at Times Online

The legendary mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade starred in the latest production of the San Francisco Opera, Three Decembers by Jake Heggie. Von Stade played the role of Maddy, who proclaims that her life has been simply grand: "I'm awfully glad I showed up for it." These same words sum up the audience's sentiment about Jake Heggie's newest opera.
— Read more at Epoch Times

It took 54 years for the Lyric Opera Chorus to give its first stand-alone concert. While we wish the wait hadn't been so long, the much-belated debut performance Sunday exceeded even high expectations, and the group's outstanding profile has been raised.
— Read more at CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

"Just as 'La Bohème' does not leave much impression in the mind of the listeners, it will not leave much impression on the history of our lyric theater." That wildly inaccurate prediction was made by a critic writing in the Italian newspaper La Stampa after the 1896 premiere of Puccini's much-loved opera in Turin.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Opera Grand Rapids has a new executive director. Michael W. Havlicek has joined the company after an extensive national search.
As a seasoned development executive, Havlicek brings to Opera Grand Rapids more than 30-years of high level fundraising experience.
— Read more at MLive.com

Most musicians, following a week like the one Daniel Barenboim just concluded, would think they had earned a weekend off.
On Thursday, joining the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall to celebrate Elliott Carter's 100th birthday, Mr. Barenboim played the daunting solo part in Mr. Carter's newest work for piano and orchestra, "Interventions," as well as Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto and Schubert's Fantasy in F minor for Piano Four-Hands, with James Levine as his partner. On Friday night he conducted the fourth in a run of six performances of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" at the Metropolitan Opera, a five-hour evening.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

What would be more apt to a cold December afternoon than a dark, cynical Russian opera? The Metropolitan Opera obliged Saturday with the final performance in a run of Tchaikovsky's also-ran, The Queen of Spades. And the Met did it in style, with a cast that, apart from Ben Heppner's announced indisposition, went from vocal strength to strength.
— Read more at Dallas Morning News

From Off the Streets of Cleveland Comes Leave Me Alone!, a Jazz Opera by Harvey Pekar and Dan Plonsey.Premieres at the Oberlin Conservator of Music and via webcast Jan 31, 2009.
American Splendor Icon Pekar Focuses His Sardonic Wit on the Everyday Struggles of Avant-Garde Artists, with Music from Cleveland-born Composer and Saxophonist Plonsey.
— Read more at allaboutjazz.com

Friday night Peter Gelb, the managing director of the Metropolitan Opera, came on stage just before the curtain was due to go up on Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" to announce that our Isolde would be Waltraud Meier. She had agreed to sing it only two days beforehand, replacing an indisposed soprano, and had flown in from Munich the night before. Although Meier, one of the world's great Wagnerians, had sung at the Met before, this would be her first Isolde.
— Read more at NY Daily News

HARVARD'S JEFFERSON LABORATORY, home to the physics department since 1884, has seen its share of firsts; 10 Nobel Laureates have made their discoveries there. Today, leading theoretical physicist Lisa Randall is working on another improbable first for the department: She's writing an opera.
— Read more at The Boston Globe

Before each performance of Puccini's "La Boheme" at the San Francisco Opera house this fall, company director David Gockley stepped through the curtain and delivered a grim message to the audience.
Gockley told them he wanted to "address all of your concerns about how the San Francisco Opera is affected by the tumultuous state of the economy." Opera fans could expect "fewer and less elaborate productions," he announced.
— Read more at Reuters

For both performers and audiences, an opera as long as Tristan und Isolde - five hours Friday night at the Metropolitan Opera - challenges concentration. Imagine then, just off the center of your view of the Met stage, a woman fiddling with her PDA, flashing green light and all. That was my experience for the first 30 minutes of the opera's last act Friday. Oh, for some of Isolde's death potion?
— Read more at Dallas Morning News

WHAT do the New York Jets quarterback Brett Favre and the Tristan-singing tenor Peter Seiffert have in common?
There is no mystery about the speaker in Mr. Favre's helmet. Over the last 15 years or so it has become standard in the National Football League for quarterbacks to be equipped with devices through which instructions can be relayed before each offensive play
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Thursday's holiday concert by the New Century Chamber Orchestra and its new music director, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, was flying this way and that way, struggling to find its nest, its comfort zone. Then arrived soprano Melody Moore. The holidays are supposed to be about peace; with Moore, came peace.
This gifted young singer flew the music home.
— Read more at San Jose Mercury News

Massenet's Thaïs, anno 1894, is a period piece, a shameless fusion of slick eroticism, perfumed piety and sentimental claptrap. Call it high-class hokum. It is decorated, however, with some lovely music, including that infernal, endlessly recycled "Meditation". And it does provide a grateful showcase for a lofty soprano and a gutsy baritone.
— Read more at Martin Bernheimer - FT.com

From the moment that Jake Heggie read Terrence McNally's short play "Some Christmas Letters (and a Couple of Phone Calls)," he knew that he had found an ideal opportunity to showcase his muse, the celebrated mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade (known to friends and acquaintances as Flicka).
— Read more at San Jose Mercury News

It's not just business institutions that are in danger of economic extinction these days. Your local opera company could be next.
Arts organizations across the country - especially in opera and classical music - are feeling the pinch as patrons have less money to donate and buy tickets. Groups are scaling down, canceling productions and, in some cases, even closing up shop altogether.
— Read more at Washington Times

In the 19th century, they had to choose between sex, e.g. having fun, and spirituality, e.g. being pure. Literature was filled with people like Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina who got what was coming to them for daring to step outside the boundaries of civilized behavior.
— Read more at huffingtonpost.com

The Egyptian desert serving as ascetic home to the priests and nuns in Jules Massenet's 1894 opera Thais, adapted from Anatole France's satirical novel, can be taken as a metaphor for the dry stretches found not only in much of the composer's writing, but also in John Cox's Metropolitan Opera production. There simply isn't a lot to look at: some dunes, a palm tree or three (the palms are gilded as if supposedly prospering in the Alexandria locale) and a couple of staircases for star Renee Fleming to descend in sumptuous Christian Lacroix costumes.
— Read more at TheaterMania.com

Richard Van Allan, a British bass-baritone who was a commanding presence on the world's opera stages, has died at age 73.
Van Allan died Dec. 4 in London, according to the National Opera Studio, which he directed from 1986 to 2001. He had been diagnosed with lung cancer two years ago, The Guardian newspaper reported.
— Read more at The Associated Press

The Royal Opera's new production of "Hansel and Gretel" is schmaltzy, sentimental, beautifully sung and played -- in short, everything it should be, until German soprano Anja Silja shows up as the witch.
Then Covent Garden really starts cooking.
— Read more at Yahoo! News

Austrian conductor Franz Welser-Moest, Vienna State Opera's chief-conductor-to-be, was the star of the show in the new production of Wagner's "Twilight of the Gods", which premiered here on Monday.
"Goetterdaemmerung", the fourth and final part of Wagner's massive "Ring" cycle, should really be Bruennhilde's evening.
— Read more at Yahoo! News

The Baltimore Opera Company filed for bankruptcy protection yesterday, as Chairman Allan Jensen seeks to raise "several hundred thousand" dollars to revive the 58- year-old company.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

What, besides bullfights, does Madrid have that Toronto does not?
The Spanish capital's spectacularly renovated opera house, the Teatro Real, is presenting a thrilling production of Katya Kabanova starring superb soprano Karita Mattila, a triumph for Toronto-born director Robert Carsen.
— Read more at TheStar.com

Dec. 7 is the feast of Sant'Ambrogio, Milan's patron saint; the annual opening of La Scala; and thus a time of scandal in the opera world. This year, the intrigue, the music and, inevitably, the booing were available to American audiences. On Sunday, Stéphane Braunschweig's production of Verdi's "Don Carlo" was broadcast live to movie theaters around the United States -- including the Charles Theater in Baltimore, which was well filled though not sold out.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

More than a century before Justin Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson's right breast at the Super Bowl halftime show, the opera world had its own "wardrobe malfunction" - a scandal that gave rise to the mystique that surrounds Jules Massenet's "Thais" to this day.
— Read more at The Associated Press

It was classic La Scala intrigue.
The famed opera house threw its understudy into one of its biggest nights yesterday, removing tenor Giuseppe Filianoti at the last minute for the season-opening premiere of "Don Carlo" after he made mistakes during a dress rehearsal.
— Read more at The San Diego Union-Tribune

[Gone are the days when a listener could read the story line and let the imagination soar. Librettos, once standard, are now mostly forgotten.]
We all know reading is declining and we all know that video and the Internet have a lot to do with the reasons why. So too does the closing of bookstores, along with the downsizing of publishers, magazines and newspapers. Obviously, if you give people less to read, they will read less. Now the literary predicament has hit opera, where we are also faced with more screens and less access to printed text.
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

Puccini's most popular work returns to the Metropolitan Opera on Monday, December 15, at 8:00 p.m. in the visually stunning classic production by Franco Zeffirelli. Frédéric Chaslin conducts the performances which run through Saturday, January 10, 2008 and feature Mexican tenor Ramón Vargas and Latvian soprano Maija Kovalevska as Puccini's star-crossed lovers, Rodolfo and Mimì.
— Read more at broadwayworld.com

An opera company does not decide to mount a production of Massenet's "Thaïs" and then look for a soprano to sing the title role. The only reason to produce this ultimate star vehicle today is that a company has a genuine star who wants to sing it.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

New York's Metropolitan Opera, with ticket sales lagging and the economy in recession, said it will offer some of its priciest seats for weekend evening performances at $25 each for the rest of the season.
Starting today, the opera company will hold a weekly drawing on its Web site, Metopera.org, for orchestra and grand tier seats that usually sell for $140 to $295, Met General Manager Peter Gelb said. The discount tickets are available only for Friday and Saturday evening operas and are subsidized by $3 million in donations from the Met's board.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

After 58 years and more than 200 productions, the Baltimore Opera Company will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy-law protection Tuesday amid dwindling ticket sales and contributions.
The remaining two productions of the 2008-2009 season, Rossini's The Barber of Seville and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, have been canceled. Ticket-holders will not receive refunds. Singers engaged for next season are being released from their contracts, but the company plans to continue fundraising in an effort to resume productions in the future.
— Read more at baltimoresun.com

Our friends at KQED-Channel 9 are devoting a healthy chunk of airtime this month to the Bay Area's highest-profile providers of classical music, the San Francisco Opera and the San Francisco Symphony.
At 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, the highly praised Jon Else documentary "Wonders Are Many: The Making of Doctor Atomic" airs on KQED-TV and KQED-HD as part of the PBS series "Independent Lens." It's a 90-minute behind-the-scenes look at the collaboration between Berkeley composer John Adams and renowned stage director Peter Sellars on the groundbreaking opera about J. Robert Oppenheimer, which had its world premiere at War Memorial Opera House in 2005.
— Read more at San Jose Mercury News

[DAVID SHENGOLD holds the mirror up to a century's worth of Thaïs recordings. ]
America and Thaïs have had a date from the beginning. The role of the sybarite-into-saint Alexandrian beauty was created for and by the beautiful California socialite Sibyl Sanderson, whose meteoric Parisian career touched Massenet, both professionally and intimately.
— Read more at Opera News

It's a good thing John Wilkes Booth wasn't bald. If he was, Hollis Thoms might have had to look elsewhere for inspiration for his new opera, "The Moustache."
— Read more at HometownAnnapolis.com

Can opera hold the same power and intimacy of a well-made play? Opera composer Jake Heggie thinks so. He believes his latest work, the chamber opera "Three Decembers," is a telling example.
— Read more at sacbee.com

JULES MASSENET is emerging from reputation rehab yet again, about to make one of his periodic applications for re-evaluation in hopes of being taken seriously. No doubt the arrival of the Metropolitan Opera's new production of "Thaïs" on Monday evening - with Renée Fleming as the title character, an Egyptian courtesan devoted to the cult of Venus, and Thomas Hampson as Athanaël, the cenobite monk who leads her to God - will rekindle arguments over Massenet's artistic worth and whether he has anything useful to say to contemporary audiences.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

When the Palm Beach Opera kicks off its season next weekend at the Kravis Center with Verdi's Rigoletto, illustrator Mark Stutzman will be about 1,000 miles away, holed up in his Maryland studio.
And yet, Stutzman's presence will be as strongly felt as any of the cast members, owing to the indelible images he's created for the posters advertising the company's productions.
— Read more at palmbeachpost.com

Henry Purcell's 1689 Dido and Aeneas was one of the earliest English operas and is considered one of the composer's masterworks. It runs only an hour but is a true opera. Though the story, taken from Virgil's Aeneid, is a tragedy, Thursday night's performance at the Samsung Experience in the Time Warner Center was a joy, and one of an unusual sort.
— Read more at blogcritics.org

What could possibly be better than one of the world's greatest living divas in the principal role of one of the best-loved operas of all time? Try adding a remarkably gifted tenor, a deeply passionate conductor, a first-rate chorus director, and a visionary stage director. All of these ingredients came together in San Francisco Opera's La Bohème.
— Read more at Epoch Times

[Joyce DiDonato, 39, is an American mezzo-soprano particularly admired for her interpretations of Handel, Mozart and Rossini. She has performed with many of the world?s leading opera companies.]
Her new album, Furore: Handel Opera Arias, is out now on Virgin Classics, and she will perform this repertoire at the Barbican, EC2, on Saturday. She lives in Kansas City with her second husband, the conductor Leonardo Vordoni
— Read more at Times Online

[After being away for sixteen years, Seiji Ozawa returns to the Met for The Queen of Spades. ANDREW MORAVCSIK traces the maestro's unorthodox career. ]
To watch conductor Seiji Ozawa at the podium is a spectacle in itself. His technique is dazzlingly visual, evincing remarkable balletic agility: his body leans at impossible angles, his arms trace fluid lines, and his long salt-and-pepper hair sways in circles about his head. It's a style that Richard Dyer, former Boston Globe music critic, calls "calligraphy in motion, precise and evocative." At seventy-three, Ozawa ranks among the most charismatic and most celebrated of contemporary conductors.
— Read more at Opera News

[In trying economic times for the arts, American Opera Projects commits itself to the trickiest of all ventures ? creating new operas and selling them to the public. BARRY SINGER reports.]
Making new operas is an uneasy enterprise. No one - not the composers and librettists on the front lines, not the administrators and funders who succor them behind the scenes - really has a firm grasp on this business. New operas today demand musical savvy, dramaturgical savvy and marketing savvy in almost equal measure. They require audience analysis, along with readings and workshops ? but in what proportions, and at what cost? In our slippery cultural epoch, it is especially hard to say.
— Read more at Opera News

The future director of Madrid's Teatro Real said Thursday he would work to make it one of the world's great opera houses and win more people over to the art.
"I aim to fascinate the public," said Gerard Mortier, 65, in his first meeting with the media since being appointed last week as the Teatro Real's artistic director from January 2010.
— Read more at The Associated Press

Convicted swindler Alberto Vilar concocted a fictional tale about fleeing Castro's Cuba and ducked jury duty during a life marked by lies big and small, Manhattan federal prosecutors say.
— Read more at nydailynews.com

Renee Fleming made her overdue Washington National Opera debut in a visually lavish production of "Lucrezia Borgia" that John Pascoe mounted especially for her. Fleming alternated with Sondra Radvanovsky, whose local press was considerably better.
— Read more at GayCityNews.com

Before Morris Robinson began studying voice and working his way toward the opera stage, he was a college football star ? an all-American offensive lineman at the Citadel, in Charleston, S.C. - and seemed to have a future in that line of work. He has the build for it: 6 foot 2, broad boned and weighing more than 300 pounds, he?s not someone you would want to crash into you accidentally during a frenetic Zeffirelli party scene.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Outspoken and opinionated, Angela Gheorghiu isn't afraid to act like a diva when the occasion demands it. OUSSAMA ZAHR visits with the soprano, the glamorous centerpiece of the Met's gala La Rondine on New Year's Eve.
— Read more at Opera News

MEGAN McKINNEY visits some of the generous men and women whose contributions have made a difference in the lives of five U.S. opera companies.
— Read more at Opera News

The Boston Early Music Festival attracts crowds from near and far for its biennial productions of Baroque opera. But offering one big, splashy presentation every other year has made BEMF seem like more of an occasional visitor to the opera world rather than a serious player.
— Read more at The Boston Globe

The management of La Scala says it has reached a deal with a performers' union to save the gala premiere of the new season.
— Read more at The Associated Press

The Luciano Pavarotti tribute concert staged in the world heritage site of Petra in Jordan, in front of just 500 people, will now be available to a much wider audience.
A 90-minute filmed version of the Oct. 12 2008 show is being screened in 24 U.K. cinemas tomorrow (Dec. 2) in high-definition, followed by the Dec. 8 DVD release "The Pavarotti Tribute: One Amazing Weekend In Petra" (Decca). All money raised from the sale of the DVD will go to the UNHCS World Food Program; the commercial deal for the cinema release also includes a charity contribution.
— Read more at billboard.biz

For the first time ever, La Scala's 2009 season opener will be presented live in HD on the big screen in New York and other U.S. Cities. Don Carlo, widely considered to be Giuseppe Verdi's greatest work, has been selected to open the 2008/09 Teatro Alla Scala Opera Season. Now a global audience can see it LIVE in high definition and multi-channel sound in selected cinemas in Europe and North America on December 7. The digital cinema presentation is a collaboration between New York based Emerging Pictures, and RAI Trade, the international sales arm of public broadcasting powerhouse, RAI.
— Learn more at opera.emergingpictures.com

Even in troubled financial times, "La Bohème" can always be relied on to sell tickets. That's why the San Francisco Opera packs its schedule with multiple performances of Puccini's beloved chestnut, which in turn is why they need two complete casts to share the work.
— Read more at sfgate.com

High-profile opera companies across the country have more operatic drama in the front office than on stage in the death-spiraling economy, but Arizona Opera and other midlevel opera companies so far are avoiding similar calamities.
— Read more at tucsoncitizen.com

[Live performances of the New York Metropolitan Opera are beamed into movie theaters across the country, offering audiences ways to experience high culture at low prices. But is it the same as live or is it just Memorex?]
I load up my cardboard tray with Raisinets, Milk Duds, popcorn, Coke, and bonbons - OK, that's an exaggeration: I skip the Milk Duds. I make my way down the brightly carpeted hallways flanked by oversized photos of all the greats (Bogie and Bacall, Gable and Monroe) and push open the doors to Theater 8 at the Burbank AMC 16 multiplex.
— Read more at csmonitor.com

Recognized worldwide as one of today's most exciting vocal stars, Denyce Graves will perform at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium in Asheville. Graves made her professional debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1995 and has appeared in many international opera houses.
— Read more at Times-News Online

Each time the Metropolitan Opera performed Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" last season the big question was who would show up in the title roles. This season, both lead singers are new to their parts at the Met ? and both went on as scheduled for the opening. The real news was in the pit.
— Read more at The Associated Press

Daniel Barenboim, at 66 one of the leading musicians of our time, has been a recurring presence in the musical life of New York for decades. So it was no surprise that he received a prolonged ovation when he first appeared in the pit at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday night to conduct Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" in his long-overdue debut with the company.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

IN 1858 Gioachino Rossini, wealthy, well fed and, at 66, retired from the opera business for nearly 30 years, bemoaned the decline in the heritage of Italian singing during a conversation with friends in Paris. "Alas for us," he is reported to have said, "we have lost our bel canto."
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson star in the Met's first new production of Jules Massenet's richly melodic Thaïs in thirty years. The rarely performed opera opens at the Met on Monday, December 8, and runs through January 8, with the December 20 matinee transmitted live worldwide as part of The Met: Live in HD series.
— Read more at broadwayworld.com

Five years have passed since the young German soprano Diana Damrau made her sensational British opera debut as the Queen of Night at Covent Garden. Since then, she has become one of the handful of singing superstars, a specialist in the vertiginous, high-wire virtuoso roles, especially by Mozart and Richard Strauss.
— Read more at Times Online

Kentucky Opera often comes up with offerings that make you grateful for the chance to revisit repertory that falls out of the mainstream. The company premiere of Massenet's "Werther" qualifies as just such a prime opportunity.
— Read more at The Courier-Journal

Flags on Sydney's Harbor Bridge flew at half mast today as Australia mourned the death of Joern Utzon, the Danish architect who designed the iconic Sydney Opera House.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com