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The New York City Opera has long faced certain challenges, including an acoustically unfriendly home, a need to distinguish itself from the neighboring Metropolitan Opera and a dearth of strong leadership.
As George Steel takes on the company, though, NYCO seems to have each of these concerns in check. Steel, who ran Columbia University's Miller Theatre to great critical respect and an avid fan base, became the company's general director in January.
— Read more at NJ.com

Patricia Racette is the first soprano since Teresa Stratas 20 years ago to sing all three leading soprano roles in Puccini's Il Trittico at the Met. Comprised of three one-act operas, Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica, and Gianni Schicchi, Il Trittico returns to the Met in the production by Jack O'Brien that was a popular and critical hit at its premiere in 2007.
— Read more at broadwayworld.com

For 20 years, Dallas has had one of the world's greatest orchestra halls in the Meyerson Symphony Center. On Oct. 23, it was joined by one of the world's greatest opera houses.
Designed by London's Foster + Partners, the new Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House is wonderfully welcoming outside and coolly elegant inside. And thanks to acoustician Robert Essert, the sound for the Dallas Opera's first full production in the house, Verdi's Otello, answered every dream and then some.
— Read more at star-telegram.com

The best art lingers like an aftertaste in your mouth, sometimes an unpleasant one. San Francisco Opera's current production of Richard Strauss' Salome is art on that level. It left me with a visceral feeling of having witnessed the perverse melt-down of a sexually abused and confused young girl. I can't say it was fun to watch, but it was thrilling in a weird, icky way.
— Read more at Mark Rudio - examiner.com

The opening night of the Dallas Opera's production of Otello was a joyous occasion all around. Of the 2,200 ticketholders, you could count on one hand the number of men not in tuxes and women in less-than-spectacular evening gowns. They turned out in full regal drag for the debut of the Winspear Opera House, making the celebration as much about Dallas itself as what took place onstage.
— Read more at Dallas Voice

When the Dallas Opera opened its 53rd season in its splendid new home here on Friday, the New Yorker who might have been hosting the event, had things gone differently, was missing.
George Steel, hired last year as the general director of the Dallas Opera, left the job in January after less than four months on the job in order to take over the troubled New York City Opera. At the time Dallas Opera officials described the parting as amicable. But at a media luncheon here on Friday, when I asked the company's artistic director, Jonathan Pell, about it, he said only that this matter was "in the past and best left there."
— Read more at NYTimes.com

A mini-soap opera involving Argentine soprano Gabriela Pochinki, who was arrested Oct. 18 in a New York eaterie for disorderly conduct, criminal trespass and obstructing-government charges, got even stranger this week when she revealed the cause of it all.
According the the AP, Pochinki "was talking to the organizers of the Las Vegas premiere of Michael Jackson's film 'This Is It' when she was arrested at a swank Manhattan restaurant for yelling into her cell phone."
— Read more at Tim Smith - The Baltimore Sun

The Canadian Opera Company filled almost all its seats last year, but still needed help balancing its books.
A sour note was sounded at the COC's annual general meeting Wednesday night in the form of a $1.6 million shortfall. It has been covered with money in a rainy-day fund created from budget surpluses in years past.
— Read more at thestar.com

In addition to great voices, the War Memorial Opera House now has a new face among its inhabitants. A bas relief of former San Francisco Opera General Director Lotfi Mansouri was installed in the lobby this week, joining those of Mansouri's predecessors Kurt Herbert Adler and Terence McEwen.
— Read more at sfgate.com

Opera, according to Pam Wolfe, is all around us.
It's the music that plays in the background of many television commercials.
Sports broadcasts employ opera music to add drama to highlights and clips, and the opera was often referenced and parodied by The Three Stooges.
— Read more at The Daily News Transcript

What exactly did Renee Fleming mean by calling Giuseppe Verdi's sword-and-sandal epic an "intimate" opera?
Fleming, the American diva, introduced the Metropolitan Opera's live high-definition broadcast of "Aida," the great Italian composer's exotic magnum opus, with all its richly melodious, bombastic orchestration.
— Read more at The Taunton Gazette

There was a bittersweet element to the festivities at the new Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House here on Friday night. The performance that began the 53rd season of the Dallas Opera, a new production of Verdi's "Otello," came on the day that Bill Winspear would have turned 76. Winspear, who with his wife gave the $42 million that made the building possible, died two years ago of cancer.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Of all operas, with the exception of Wagner in its entirety, Puccini's Tosca is the most disaster-prone. Tales abound, such as the over-sprung mattress ensuring the soprano, having leapt to her death from the ramparts, returns again and again to public view, or the platoon of guards being told "follow her", do just that, causing mass suicide. Then there was the delicious moment in the documentary of Opera Australia's Tosca when, at the dress rehearsal, its diva failed to make her Act I entrance because she was trapped in the Sydney Opera House lift; the ensuing row between soprano Joan Carden and conductor Roderick Brydon was another show-stopper.
— Read more at theage.com.au

Director Patrice Chereau and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen will discuss their Metropolitan Opera production of Leos Janacek's From the House of the Dead, at the Met on November 2, at 6pm. The event will be moderated by Met General Manager Peter Gelb.
— Read more at TheaterMania.com

The Ethiopians weren't the only ones to go down during the October 24 Metropolitan Opera HD Live Simulcast of Aida Saturday - a few actors joined the carnage as well.
As high-tech cameras panned in on the (mostly unsuspecting) faces of principal singers, an audience completely invisible to them scrutinized every facial expression, lip movement and sweaty forehead.
— Read more at David Abrams - CNYCAFEMOMUS.COM

The always anticipated Opera Scenes by Yale Opera will be performed Friday and Saturday evening at 7:30 in Morse Recital Hall at Sprague Memorial Hall - a chance to get an opera fix that's a smorgasbord of comedy and tragedy and see some of the stars of the future.
— Read more at The New Haven Register

The most fun thing about the live HD broadcast from the Met would be soprano Renee Fleming's backstage interviews. You never know who Flemming will present and the San Francisco audience giggled their way through her efforts. Nobody laughed when the soprano tripped backstage live.
— Read more at examiner.com

The Canadian opera company's celebrated production of Robert Lepage's "The Nightingale and Other Short Fables" is among the performances that will be broadcast on radio and online in a bid to connect with new audiences.
— Read more at Toronto Sun

On November 14, 19 and 21st, San Francisco Parlor Opera will perform Jules Massenet's "Thais." All performances will take place at the historic Zellerbach Mansion at 1550 Fell Street in San Francisco. Instead of the scenes changing on a dedicated stage, the audience will follow the action from room to room.
— Read more at SYS-CON MEDIA

Celebrated American soprano Deborah Voigt will sing a recital on Friday, October 30, at 8 p.m. at the Folly Theater (12th and Central Sts.) in downtown Kansas City. The opera superstar has selected a delightful program that includes arias by Richard Wagner (from Die Walkure and Tannhauser) and Giacomo Puccini (from Tosca) and songs by Amy Beach, Ottorino Respighi, Richard Strauss, Benjamin Moore, and Leonard Bernstein (including "Somewhere" from West Side Story).
— Read more at Kansas City infoZine

The rush of landing a lead role in an opera is often quickly replaced by another cocktail of emotions, with elation giving way to nervousness and fatigue.
University Opera reduces the stress and doubles the opportunities for the young singers at UW-Madison by double-casting its starring roles. And "Thais," an opera by Jules Massenet, has a peach of a lead: a charismatic, priest-seducing courtesan with a heart of gold.
— Read more at madison.com

Under a brilliant Texas sun, Dallas's wealthiest arts patrons -- among them oilman Bruce Calder, mergers and acquisitions super-lawyer Hal Brierley and art collector and philanthropist John Dayton -- thronged the city's fantastic new opera palazzo on Friday night for the premiere of its inaugural production, Verdi's "Otello."
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

The celebrity quotient was pretty impressive onstage at the Washington National Opera's Saturday for the opening night performance of Strauss' "Ariadne auf Naxos." In this production, directed by Chis Alexander, the setting for the opera-within-an-opera portion of "Ariadne" is a contemporary mansion, and guests of an extravagant host are seen onstage watching the proceedings.
— Read more at Tim Smith - The Baltimore Sun

The charismatic mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato is a singer in demand. Winning ecstatic reviews for the flexibility, brilliance and expressiveness of her voice, she is equally admired for her strong acting abilities and unaffected personality. Her wide-ranging repertoire includes everything from the most challenging coloratura roles to characters in contemporary works such as Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

John Berry, artistic director of the English National Opera has promised to "take a fresh look at core classics" and unwraps Multi-award winning theater director Rupert Goold's alternative take on the composer's last opera. While scandalizing some and earning mixed reviews, this production, for all its whimsy, has much to say.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

ON MySpace carving out a virtual niche of your own takes a few clicks of a mouse. In the real world the job never ends. As classical divas at the head of the class Cecilia Bartoli and Renee Fleming share native talent, personal glamour, a puritan work ethic, a capacity for self-criticism and also something extra: a scholar's taste for intellectual adventure.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

I am sharing a very 21st-century moment with a very 21st-century opera singer. I have met Renee Fleming at the end of her much-praised run as Violetta in Verdi's La traviata at the Royal Opera House officially to talk about her London concert next month. Unfortunately neither of us can remember exactly what she's singing.
— Read more at Times Online

The Argentinian opera star who was nearly arrested after throwing a tantrum at an Upper West Side restaurant had her day in court yesterday. Soprano Gabriela Pochinki had been carrying on a noisy cell phone conversation via speakerphone at restaurant Nice Matin when a manager asked her to pipe down. When Pochinki blew her off, the manager asked her to leave-four times, and then Pochinki allegedly flew into a rage, shoved her, and refused to pay her bill.
— Read more at Gothamist

Soprano Deborah Voigt and her operatic cohorts spilled jealousy, rage and anguish all over Lyric Opera of Chicago's stage during the recent season-opening production of "Tosca." In the audience, more subtle dramas played out as season-ticket holders eyed their new neighbors in the grand Civic Opera House.
— Read more at Crain's Chicago Business

In her first New York master class Tuesday night, Renee Fleming proved she could teach perhaps even better than she can sing.
A capacity audience in the Juilliard School's Peter Jay Sharp Theater greeted the soprano with warm applause. Unlike her mannered performance in "Der Rosenkavalier" at the Met the night before, here -- in a 90-minute session with four 20-something students -- Fleming looked relaxed and engaged.
— Read more at nypost.com

Roll over Elgar, Handel is set to take over Malvern next week, when English Touring Opera bring productions of no fewer than five Handel operas to the Festival Theatre.
Billed as "the largest Handel Opera Festival in Europe", the event marks the 250th anniversary of the composer's death and celebrates the 30th birthday of ETO itself, as general director James Conway explains.
— Read more at Birmingham Post

By all accounts, San Francisco is in love with Nicola Luisotti -- a 47-year-old conductor from Viareggio, Italy, and very Italian - as is he with his new city. Last month he became music director of San Francisco Opera, and his performance of the season's opening production of Verdi's "Il Trovatore" won unanimous praise.
— Read more at Mark Swed - Los Angeles Times

Opera purists may be pleased to learn that the renovation of New York City Opera's home at Lincoln Center, the David H. Koch Theater, has eliminated the amplification system for live voices that was installed in 1999.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

The Metropolitan Opera's HD broadcast series in movie theaters may be the biggest thing since sliced bread, but it's not the only game in town. The Emerging Pictures opera-in-cinema series provides similar services, although most performances are on tape, rather than live. (A notable exception -- opening night at La Scala, which will be beamed live to participating theaters on Dec. 7).
— Read more at Tim Smith - The Baltimore Sun

The Canadian Opera Company says it has added another performance of Robert Lepage's "The Nightingale and Other Short Fables" due to unprecedented demand.
The opera, which features puppets performing in an orchestra pit filled with 68,000 litres of water, received critical raves after its world premiere last weekend.
— Read more at CTV Toronto

Der Rosenkavalier at the Met looks like a museum piece. The kitschy production was old-fashioned when it was designed by Robert O'Hearn and staged by Nathaniel Merrill in 1969, and the passage of time has not been kind. Robin Guarino, the current director, has added a layer of sight gags that occasionally distort the sentimental narrative. Still, a rote-conservative Rosenkavalier is better than a modern-perverse one.
— Read more at Martin Bernheimer - FT.com

Take a classic Shakespeare play, change the setting to Africa, and throw in a troop of singing baboons -- and you might come up with something like the new Alexander McCall Smith opera.
— See more at The Globe and Mail

Edo de Waart will conduct Der Rosenkavalier on October 22, replacing Jens Georg Bachmann who is ill. De Waart has conducted the season's previous three performances of the Strauss opera stepping in for James Levine, who underwent surgery for a herniated disk.
— Read more at broadwayworld.com

Astonishingly, no black tenor has ever sung the role of Otello in a professional British production of Verdi's opera - until now. Trinidad-born, Guildhall-trained Ronald Samm is to take the role in December for Birmingham Opera Company, for which director Graham Vick is creating one of his trademark walkabout productions in the city.
— Read more at The Guardian

You had to applaud the chutzpah the Bleecker Street Opera Company displayed in its maiden voyage. You might have thought that this upstart company, founded by former executives and artists of the Amato Opera (which closed in June), would start with a familiar repertory staple, as the Amore Opera, a rival Amato spinoff, plans to do with a production of Puccini's "Boheme" in December.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

When New York City's beloved Amato Opera Company closed its doors last spring, rumor had it that a new company, made up of members of the 60-year-old Amato, was in the making.
It was indeed. The Amore Opera has officially announced its inaugural season, set to open Dec. 11 with "La Boheme" at the Connelly Opera House, 220 East Fourth Street in Manhattan. Anthony Amato sold the Bowery brownstone that housed his company, but he did not sell his productions; he has given some 30 of them - sets, costumes, props and all -- to Amore Opera, including "Boheme," whose designer, Richard Cerullo, is onboard to refresh the original.
— Read more at MusicalAmerica

Glasgow's East End is not known for cradling opera stars, but tonight Thomas Walker breaks the mould, taking the stage in Rossini's The Italian Girl in Algiers, one of Scottish Opera's biggest productions of this season.
Walker, 30, one of the youngest tenors in Britain, was brought up as an only child in a single parent household on a council estate in Carntyne, Glasgow.
— Read more at Times Online

The musical toast of New York, 28-year-old American composer Nico Muhly - who has worked with Bjork and Antony Hegarty, and is a protege of Philip Glass - is to premiere his opera, Two Boys, at English National Opera in 2011. About a young boy who takes on the personality of a middle-aged woman on the internet, its subject is, he says, "violent sexuality".
— Read more at The Guardian

George Steel speaks at the pace of a man working on borrowed time. When we meet on a midsummer day in New York City Opera's development offices near Columbus Circle in Manhattan, Steel, the company's general manager and artistic director, seems to be doing his best to appear outwardly collected while trying to keep it all from falling apart: in what seems to be a single breath, he has apologized for the last-minute cancellation of our interview the previous day, asked for a clarification of the scope of our chat and launched into an account of the exigencies he faced in arranging the embattled company's upcoming five-opera, thirty-two-performance season in a "very, very short amount of time." (He estimates it took somewhere between forty-five and ninety days.) At the time of our meeting, he has been on the job barely five months.
— Read more at Opera News

On November 19, Susan Graham and Thomas Hampson will cohost the fifth annual OPERA NEWS Awards at Gotham Hall in Manhattan. The former Greenwich Savings Bank headquarters and now a magnificent event space, Gotham Hall will be a new venue for OPERA NEWS - and for our two lively hosts. I feel confident that Graham and Hampson will "play the room" at Gotham Hall with the same wit and grace that made our 2008 awards presentation memorable. Everyone at OPERA NEWS is profoundly grateful that these two very busy artists have made time in their schedules to take on our hosting duties once again.
— Read more at Opera News

Nearly 20 years ago, Los Angeles Opera added its name to the list of commissioners of John Adams' opera about terrorism, "The Death of Klinghoffer." The company wrote a check and promised a Music Center production at some unspecified but not unreasonably distant time after the work's premiere in Brussels in 1991.
The other co-commissioners -- Lyon Opera in France, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and San Francisco Opera -- mounted "Klinghoffer." L.A. Opera hesitated, perhaps worried about a mixed critical reaction and charges that the opera was anti-Semitic. The sets, while housed by the company, were destroyed in a mysterious warehouse fire, and that, apparently, was that.
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

In Richard Strauss' "Salome," a teenage nymphomaniac princess discovers her inner necrophilia. At the opera's conclusion, she kisses the crimson lips of the severed head of a prophet, John the Baptist, served to her on a silver platter. Top that, Quentin Tarantino.
Ever the cause scandale, "Salome" was a hit at its Dresden premiere in 1905, and its new San Francisco Opera production at War Memorial Opera House also would seem to be a hit-in-the-making, given the lusty standing ovation it received at Sunday's opening. I wasn't entirely won over by this "Salome," despite the at times staggering performance of German soprano Nadja Michael in the title role, and yet - what a cause for fascination this opera remains, even after a century.
— Read more at Richard Scheinin - San Jose Mercury News

So you're thinking of investing $350 to $2,200 per ticket -- or perhaps you already have -- and something on the order of 18 hours to see Los Angeles Opera's four-installments-in-eight-days presentation of Wagner's "Ring" cycle next May and June. (Sorry -- the frugal gourmand option, $100 for a handrail-obstructed nosebleed seat, is sold clean out.)
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

Quebec director Robert Lepage celebrated the world premiere of his new opera over the weekend, an awe-inspiring production that features shadow puppets performing to the music of Igor Stravinsky and intricate characters sailing miniature boats across an orchestra pit filled with 67,000 litres of water.
Many who took in the Canadian Opera Company's world premiere of "The Nightingale and Other Short Fables" at the Four Seasons Centre on Saturday afternoon went away dazzled.
— Read more at CTV News

Given 10 minutes and some acquacolor makeup, James P. "Jim" McGough can conjure a wicked-looking witch from any willing subject. In little more than an hour he can transform even the most clean-cut subject into a convincing Geico caveman, complete with glue-on 3-D brow piece.
As the wig master and makeup designer for the Virginia Opera, McGough spends his days creating alternative realities and putting the final touches to imaginary worlds. "A lot of singers thank me. It's the last piece in a character," he says in his studio, a few steps from the "Stage Right" entrance in the labyrinthine backstage of the Norfolk's Harrison Opera House. McGough is a master of the temporary disguise.
— Read more at dailypress.com

Pre-Halloween hordes went absolutely "Lulu", as mad as "Lucia di Lammermoor", over the Washington National Opera's costume sale this weekend.
The offerings ranged from gorgeous to outrageous. "The Diva Rack" alone was worth lining up for more than an hour in rain as heavy as the deluge in the last act of "Rigoletto" or the first act of "Otello".
— Read more at examiner.com

To witness Michigan Opera Theatre's vocally splendorous production of Verdi's "Nabucco" is to wonder why this amazingly rich musical tapestry does not have a place in the core repertoire.
Actually, there is an answer. "Nabucco," based on biblical accounts of empire-building by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, makes one demand too many. The role of the ambitious king's demonic daughter, Abigaille, is so vocally treacherous that few singers have ever been able to manage it without physical risk.
— Read more at The Detroit News

Even for those who have never been to an opera, the word itself typically conjures up spectacles and grand musical passages from either Italian composer Puccini's "Tosca" or Wagner's "Die Walkure." My bet for most is on "Tosca."
Wagner may have those flying valkyries, but his operas are arguably cerebral compared to the gritty humanity of the Italians. Italian opera's fully exposed and explored emotions, soaring into high drama and sweeping down into the lusty depths of melodrama, all conveyed through arguably the most passionate music of excellence ever composed, is, for many, the same as the difference between having a great thought or having great sex.
— Read more at The Taunton Gazette

Scott Altman, founder and general director of Princeton-based Opera New Jersey, has accepted the position of general director of Arizona Opera, it was announced Wednesday.
Mr. Altman and his wife, Lisa, Opera New Jersey's executive director, will relocate to Arizona and begin the next stage of their careers. They will both continue working with Opera New Jersey through the end of the current calendar year to facilitate a smooth transition for the organization.
— Read more at The Princeton Packet

Walking through the doors of the Gene Frankel Theatre at 24 Bond Street to see The Pig, The Farmer and The Artist (Music/Book/Lyrics by David Chesky) is a bit like falling down the famous rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland where when you hit bottom you come across an array of zany characters telling you their story. With a bit of Fellini thrown in for good measure. It is an operatic satire about sex, music and art.
— Read more at talkentertainment.com

Like some rare alignment of planets, ideal casting of the three leading female roles in Richard Strauss' "Der Rosenkavalier" can make for a spectacle wondrous to behold.
Thanks to veterans Renee Fleming and Susan Graham and newcomer Miah Persson, the Metropolitan Opera achieved that elusive combination on Tuesday night when it revived one of the oldest productions in its repertory, the beloved 1969 staging by Nathaniel Merrill and Robert O'Hearn.
— Read more at CBS News

Soap opera and real opera often collide.
It's not exactly news, but tenor Roberto Alagna and soprano Angela Gheorghiu, who have been separated for a while, are heading for divorce court.
Once dubbed opera's "love couple" and famously married on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in 1996 (with then-mayor Rudy Giuliani officiating), had a great run together early on, delighting audiences when they performed in operas together. They also developed a reputation for being extremely difficult offstage, with many an unflattering story about making demands of one kind or another.
— Read more at Tim Smith - baltimoresun.com

Things have calmed down at the Metropolitan Opera since an annoyed opening-night audience booed a depressing new production of "Tosca."
Until Janacek's "From the House of the Dead" staged by European directing legend Patrice Chereau (but the same dreary wall-obsessed designer, Richard Peduzzi) arrives on Nov. 12, the company is presenting revivals that have offered few booing opportunities for a newly vocal Met audience.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

"Joyfully we greet this noble hall/where only art and peace shall ever dwell."
With the rousing Entry of the Guests from Richard Wagner's Tannhauser the Winspear Opera House opened for business Thursday night.
The Dallas Opera doesn't open its first full production, Verdi's Otello, until Oct. 23. But in the meantime, the company was a major presence on the second gala program inaugurating the two-hall AT&T Performing Arts Center.
— Read more at Dallas Morning News

The Skylight Opera Theatre staffing comedy of errors that made international headlines over the summer has resulted in the return of Bill Theisen as artistic director. In June, Theisen was axed in a budget-cutting move that was protested by the Milwaukee troupe's artistic community, leading to the toppling of administrators who made the decision.
— Read more at Playbill News

John Salapatas, chairman of the Opera New Jersey Board of Trustees announced that Founder Scott Altman has accepted the position of General Director of Arizona Opera. Scott and Lisa Altman will relocate to Arizona and begin the next stage of their careers. They will both continue working with Opera New Jersey through the end of the current calendar year to facilitate a smooth transition for the organization.
— Read more at Opera-NJ.org

When opera singers perform touchstone roles from the staples, they compete, however unfairly, not just with legendary artists of the past but also with themselves. The soprano Renee Fleming first sang the role of the Marschallin in Strauss's "Rosenkavalier" at the Metropolitan Opera in early 2000, to wide acclaim. The Octavian during that run was the mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, who had triumphed in the role since her first Met performances in 1995.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

So many people think opera is, you know, ultra-challenging, elitist, weirdly out of the mainstream, anything but popular entertainment. These people now have an assignment: March to War Memorial Opera House, where San Francisco Opera's "La Fille du Regiment (The Daughter of the Regiment)," by Donizetti, is unleashing a blast of smart farce that's flat-out fun and resplendent with singing guaranteed to leave folks scratching their heads in tingly amazement.
— Read more at ContraCostaTimes.com

Nearly four weeks after Luc Bondy's version of Puccini's "Tosca" opened the Metropolitan Opera's season, Bondy is still on the defensive, and so is Met director Peter Gelb--as they should be. In every performance, the boos keep coming from the audiences, and there's nothing to suggest they won't be there again next Saturday night and next spring, when this "Tosca" returns to the stage.
— Read more at Forbes.com

Looking for a unique piece of opera memorabilia, or the ultimate Halloween costume? Don't miss the San Francisco Opera Costume Shop Sale on Saturday, October 24 from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m and on Sunday, October 25 from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the San Francisco Opera Scene Shop, located at 800 Indiana Street (between 20th and 22nd Streets) in San Francisco.
— Read more at Cindy Warner - examiner.com

Spanish tenor Placido Domingo on Tuesday received the first ever $1 million dollar Birgit Nilsson award at a formal award ceremony in Stockholm.
Domingo, who won the prize for his "unrivaled" contributions to the world of opera, accepted the award from King Carl XVI Gustaf at the Royal Swedish Opera.
— Read more at The Associated Press

Soprano Angela Gheorghiu and tenor Roberto Alagna are ending their marriage on a low note.
Gheorghiu (gee-or-GEE'-you) says she has started divorce proceedings against Alagna (a-LAN'-ya), whom she married on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in April 1996 - with then New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani presiding.
— Read more at The Associated Press

Verdi's "Falstaff," the astonishing product of a 79-year-old-composer, is getting a freshly conceptualized treatment from Washington National Opera. Some of the bare-bones physical material comes from a co-production with the Royal Opera and other opera companies, but director Christian Rath has devised something new out of it for this run of performances at the Kennedy Center, the WNO's first "Falstaff" in more than 25 years.
— Read more at Tim Smith - baltimoresun.com

Peter Gelb, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, talks about the 2009-10 season, the first planned entirely by Mr. Gelb and James Levine, which opened with a new production of Puccini's Tosca.
— Hear more at WNYC.org

I wasn't really expecting to find a real opera at the Gene Frankel Theatre. I mean, the kind where there's a lush red curtain framing the proscenium and a nine-piece(!) orchestra; where the lights go down and the first violinist leads his colleagues in that final tune-up ritual, followed by the arrival onstage-to applause-of the conductor.
But that's just what's going on at the Frankel right now, even though the opera has the perhaps unlikely title of The Pig, the Farmer, and the Artist. It's the fruit of a collaboration of many inordinately talented people: author (libretto and music) David Chesky, director A. Scott Parry, musical director Anthony Aibel (who has conducted the National Symphony Orchestra and at Carnegie Hall), the already mentioned musicians, and a nine-member cast of legit singers-who, as they say, can move. These folks are giving us a grand, entertaining, hilarious, and highly intelligent evening that satirizes not only its stated targets of sex, music, and art, but also politics, society, and the mores and foundations of opera itself. You have to know the rules in order to break them, they say; these artists clearly know their way around opera and their skill and insight informs every moment of this delightfully engaging work.
— Read more at Martin Denton - nytheatre.com

RICHARD STRAUSS'S "Rosenkavalier," to be revived on Tuesday at the Metropolitan Opera, begins with one of the most vivid depictions of sexual ecstasy in music: an orchestral buildup reaching a climax in a brace of whooping French horns.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

At last, we now know for a fact what their fans had long suspected (and what both had heavily hinted to me in interviews this year) - tenor Roberto Alagna and soprano Angela Gheorghiu, opera's `golden couple', married thirteen years ago by New York's mayor Rudy Giuliani, have split, personally as well as professionally. But just how split is split?
Alagna went public on Friday in Le Figaro, admitting that for `a long time now we haven't been doing things together', but adding that `Angela doesn't want to hear of a divorce'.
— Read more at telegraph.co.uk

The fraught-with-peril aria that got the late, legendary Luciano Pavarotti dubbed the "king of the high C's" will ring out from War Memorial stage Tuesday night, as San Francisco Opera opens its production of Donizetti's "The Daughter of the Regiment." And if there's some anticipatory angst in the air about whether all nine C's will be hit dead on, it's probably because the tenor hurling those piercing notes skyward was anointed the crown prince of the high C's by Pavarotti himself before he died in 2007.
— Read more at San Jose Mercury News

Verdi's "Falstaff," which the Washington National Opera presented Saturday night at the Kennedy Center Opera House, is one of the great late works of art. Think late Titian: Each gesture is telling; each image is part of a densely layered web of brushstrokes. It's an old man's opera, with an old man as hero, playing the buffoon with, ultimately, a great shrug and a laugh. Its core is the scene at the start of Act 3 when a fat and bedraggled Falstaff, dumped into the river by the ladies he'd hoped to woo and sulking at the duplicity of the world, sits on the riverbank and sips wine as he gradually rediscovers the life force in the simple things around him: the joy of an old man sitting in the sun.
— Read more at Anne Midgette - washingtonpost.com

In a dismal economy, one that's put a serious cramp in many arts organizations' style, Opera Theatre of St. Louis reports that it's kept its long-standing record of balanced budgets through its 34th season.
OTSL's fiscal year ended Sept. 30. The operating budget had a small surplus, although the endowment, like most investments, lost value during the financial crisis.
— Read more at Sarah Bryan Miller - STLtoday.com

The phrase "break a leg" may imply something a bit more literal to the soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, below right, when she performs in Verdi's "Ernani" at the Lyric Opera in Chicago on Oct. 27. Ms. Radvanovsky's publicist said the singer tore a ligament in her right ankle when she kicked a would-be mugger trying to steal her purse in San Francisco on Oct. 3.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

It may be too early to argue the relative merits of experiencing opera live in the theater and watching it live via high-definition simulcast broadcast, but one thing's for certain: The more you see, the greater your vision.
Luc Bondy and his production team have been maligned repeatedly in the media, partly over his remodeling of a beloved and sacrosanct warhorse, but mostly over his heretical break with the quarter-century-old Zeffirelli production that, in New York at least, has evolved into something akin to a local shrine.
— Read more at David Abrams - cyncafemomus.com

The Carlisle Floyd House at Millstone Institute for Preservation is nothing fancy.
The 140-year-old cottage is missing a chimney. The rusty tin roof needs to be pried off and replaced. The bathroom could use an extreme makeover. There's an empty bird's nest in the mail box by the front door.
— Read more at Tallahassee Democrat

Turn-of-the-century Nebraska came to life at the Touhill Performing Arts Center with the world premier of "O Pioneers!" on Friday.
Part of the "Women in the Arts" program at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, "O Pioneers!" was composed by Barbara Harbach, professor of music at UM-St. Louis. Though a world-renowned performer and composer, this is Harbach's first opera.
— Read more at thecurrentonline.com

Singer and songwriter Rufus Wainwright is known for navigating the border between classical and pop. Now his longtime obsession with opera has led him to write one of his own. Wainwright composed the score and wrote French lyrics for his debut classical opera "Prima Donna," which will make its North American premier in June, 2010 at the Luminato arts festival in Toronto.
— Read more at Billboard.com

During Thomas Hampson's extraordinary song recital, Tuesday, the Newmark Theatre became a front porch, a Texas ranch, the Ohio River, a church, a battlefield, a blues bar and a cemetery.
In two dozen songs that showed humor and pathos, Hampson, the renowned baritone, evoked spirituals and slave rhythms, jazz and blues, hymns and eligies, conveying the idea of song as an oral tradition, and one that he is eager to pass on. He is an ideal storyteller. Tall, broad-shouldered, square-jawed, he plants his feet and sings of homespun beauty, a mother's grief and nostalgic regret ("Shenandoah") with a voice that can fill a room or hush it with a whisper.
— Read more at OregonLive.com

New York City Opera announced today it has added a fifth performance of Hugo Weisgall's Esther to its November 2009 run, citing thriving ticket sales. Tickets for a November 17 performance have now been made available in addition to previously offered performances on November 7, 13, 15 and 19. The company's revival of Esther takes place at Lincoln Center's newly renovated David H. Koch Theater.
— Read more at Opera News

This is the season when Lyric Opera of Chicago really gives the devil his due. Settings of the Faust legend by Gounod and Berlioz will take the stage of the Civic Opera House between now and mid-March. It was Gounod's turn on Monday night. The company's revival of "Faust" found Lyric fully hitting its stride after stumbling in its season-opening production of Puccini's "Tosca."
Part of what drives this winning revival is how neatly Frank Corsaro's venerable but sturdy production, last seen here in 2003-04, cuts through the pious sentimentality of the original. Its theatricality gains immeasurably from a first-rate cast.
— Read more at John von Rhein - chicagotribune.com

I've never been one of those who thinks Charles Gounod's 1859 sentimental retelling of the Faust legend belongs in the canon of the greatest operas of all time or even of great operas.
Great tunes? Absolutely. Opportunities for both beautiful and thrilling singing? No doubt.
— Read more at CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

For every gift, perhaps, there's a deficit, and when Ben Heppner started his career in opera, he was aware of that he had a natural advantage in his powerful voice, but his acting skills. ...
"I was bad," Heppner says, able to look back cheerfully from his position as one of the world's most sought-after dramatic tenors. "Oh boy, was I bad."
— Read more at The Globe and Mail

Robert Lepage's imaginative production of Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust, which premiered last season to sold out houses, returns to the Met on October 23. Three stars sing their roles for the first time at the Met: Olga Borodina as Marguerite, Ramon Vargas as Faust, and Ildar Abdrazakov as Mephistopheles. James Conlon returns to the Met for the first time in three years to conduct. The production uses virtual scenery, interactive video, and aerial acrobatics to bring Berlioz's masterpiece to life. At the production's premiere last season, New York Magazine said, "Lepage...uses the flicker and dissolve of film to free Berlioz's romantic psychodrama from reality's constraints...Lepage restrains his wizardry enough to keep it from overwhelming the drama or the music, but with his suspension of gravity and the ability to reshape light by touch, he too, invokes the ability of art's power to displace natural law." The production was transmitted to movie theaters worldwide as part of The Met: Live in HD series last November.
— Read more at broadwayworld.com

Just in time for Halloween, the Los Angeles Opera distributed a press release today announcing their first ever costume sale. Over 2500 costume pieces will go sale this Saturday, October 10 from 10:00AM to 6:00PM.
— Read more at Los Angeles Metblogs

Playing it safe in a down economy, Lyric Opera of Chicago has launched its season by reviving two box-office favourites, with mixed results artistically - a tepid "Tosca," followed by a first-class "Faust."
The choice of Puccini's "Tosca" for opening night seemed based primarily on the star power of soprano Deborah Voigt in the title role.
— Read more at canadaeast.com

Coming after Luc Bondy's grim, controversial staging of Puccini's "Tosca," the Metropolitan Opera's latest revival of Bartlett Sher's production of Rossini's "Barbiere di Siviglia" provides a timely reminder of just how potent the rejuvenating efforts of Peter Gelb, the Met's general manager, have been. An immediate hit when it was introduced in 2006, Mr. Sher's "Barbiere" had not lost a smidgen of its freshness when it returned on Saturday night.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

The Metropolitan Opera and its stagehands are in a dispute over who is to build the huge set for the Met's new Wagner "Ring" cycle, scheduled to open next season. Robert Lepage, the Canadian director who has been assigned the task of developing a new version of the "Ring," creates all his productions at a workshop in Quebec.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

The Pig, The Farmer, and The Artist: An Operatic Satire About Sex, Music, and Art, with music/book/lyrics by multi-Grammy-nominated composer David Chesky, will receive its world premiere performance at the Gene Frankel Theatre (24 Bond Street, in NYC's East Village - the setting for the opera), Friday, October 2, 7:00 p.m. Directed by A. Scott Parry of New York City Opera and conducted by Anthony Aibel, the production will continue October 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, and 17 at 8:00 p.m.
— Learn more at www.davidchesky.com

Rogue Opera's executive director, its artistic director and the president of its board of directors have resigned, following what a member of the opera's board said were personality conflicts and differences over management style.
Lorrie Hall of Medford, the group's volunteer executive director, and Willene Gunn of Talent, the group's artistic and stage director and producer, resigned their positions effective immediately at a special meeting, Hall said.
— Read more at MailTribune.com

Two weeks ago, the Metropolitan Opera opened its season to the one sound that no one really wants to hear in such an august house -- booing. The cause was a production of Puccini's evergreen "Tosca" in a staging that took the polar opposite view of what Met audiences had seen and relished for years.
' Gone was the monumental design of Franco Zeffirelli that did everything but relocate the entire audience to the opera's actual historic settings in Rome. In its place, you might say defiantly, was a darkly minimalist design by Richard Peduzzi and direction by Luc Bondy, who didn't hesitate to ignore stage directions or traditional bits of stage business. I gather the opening night boos could be heard in New Jersey when the production team came out for a bow.
— Read more at Tim Smith - The Baltimore Sun

I was fortunate to be invited to the opening of the Metropolitan Opera two weeks ago. The new production of Tosca made news when the production team was greeted by a chorus of boos when they bowed at the end of the performance.
I was surprised not so much by the boos as by the press coverage. Over the past thirty years of opera-going, I have seen many new, adventurous productions greeted by jeers when they debut. (Who can forget the reaction to Sir Peter Hall's Macbeth at the Met in 1982?)
— Read more at Michael Kaiser - huffingtonpost.com

Opera Theatre of St. Louis said Tuesday that it ended its fiscal 2009 with a surplus of less than $5,000 but has frozen salaries and cut spending to prepare for an even harder fiscal 2010.
— Read more at St. Louis Business Journal

Chicago Opera Vanguard is pleased to announce the opening production of our 2009/2010 Season, the Chicago Premiere of NO EXIT by Boston Conservatory composer Andy Vores. NO EXIT appears for 3 performances only, October 16-18, at Center on Halsted's Hover-Leppen Theatre. This will be one hell of an opera!
A Chicago premiere, NO EXIT features a stellar cast of the city's rising young singing stars and orchestral musicians. Based on Jean-Paul Sartre's iconic play, NO EXIT packs a small space with large consequences, intense drama and sly comedy. NO EXIT is a haunting vision of damnation that you will remember ... forever!
— Learn more at chicagovanguard.org

Robert Lepage's upcoming new opera sounds pretty ambitious - even by his standards.
For "The Nightingale and Other Short Fables," making its world premiere Oct. 17 in Toronto, Lepage plans to fill a partially raised orchestra pit at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts with roughly 30 tonnes of water. His singers will wade in, waist-deep, to manipulate puppets while they perform. The orchestra will play onstage behind them.
— Read more at The Canadian Press

What began in December 2006 as a daring idea to bring live, high-definition broadcasts of Metropolitan Opera productions into movie theaters worldwide has turned into a snowballing cultural phenomenon.
The first season's six transmissions attracted an audience of 325,000 in seven countries, and the numbers have skyrocketed since. More than 1.8 million tickets were sold for last season's 11 presentations, a whopping 450 percent increase.
— Read more at The Denver Post

Saturday night saw the world premiere of a new opera created by Edinburgh-based author Alexander McCall Smith.
The Okavango Macbeth is his contribution to the musical culture of Botswana, the country which inspired his Number One Ladies' Detective Agency series.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

Renee Fleming knows the value of exploring forgotten repertoire. On her glossy CD Homage: The Art of the Diva she imagined herself as a firebrand soprano from 100 years back, scorching through opera rarities and several chestnuts. That mix is repeated in Verismo. But this time she concentrates on those Italian operas of the 1890s and beyond, touched by the fashion for realism and emotional rhetoric launched with Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana.
— Read more at Times Online

Parvan Bakardiev thinks building seasons for Wichita Grand Opera is getting easier.
After all, the company he founded with his wife, Margaret Ann Pent, in 2000 has a track record of getting things done - concerts by superstars Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo, outdoor opera at Bradley Fair, and appearances by top singers such as Samuel Ramey, Joyce DiDonato and Marcello Giordani.
— Read more at Wichita Eagle

Peter Gelb had a lot riding on the new production of "Tosca" that opened the Metropolitan Opera season on September 21.
It was the opening salvo in the first season of his regime planned entirely by himself, setting the tone for his vision of the Met. Gelb's challenge was to top the beloved 1985 Franco Zeffirelli production that represented the conservative yet lavish tastes that previously reigned. The charismatic Finnish diva Karita Mattila would unveil her Floria Tosca for the first time outside her native country in a new production by Swiss director Luc Bondy. We were promised a leaner, meaner "Tosca" in the guise of a Hitchcock thriller set to music.
— Read more at Gay City News

ALTHOUGH opera might be healthier if die-hard fans were as intensely curious about new works as theatergoers are, you have to admire the passion with which opera enthusiasts defend the staples. Still, it makes me uncomfortable when I hear an opera lover, myself included, castigating a new production of a classic by saying, "It was a violation of Verdi." Or, "The director just ignored the stage directions." Or, "Wotan would never do that." An opera score is not a sacred text. Directors should claim the freedom to reinterpret a work.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

The gala concert with starry guest artist is the obligatory traditional herald of a new musical season. Renee Fleming was the prime attraction for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's formal soiree Saturday night, and while the concert may have been the second CSO event of the weekend, for all intents and purposes it served as the essential kickoff to the CSO's 119th season.
— Read more at Chicago Classical Review

Lovers," says Roberto Alagna. "We will be like lovers." Er, yes, I giggle, and even I can hear that my voice is just a little bit too high. We are in Giovanni's, his favourite restaurant in Covent Garden, and after much slapping of shoulders and kissing and cries of "Roberto!" (the name of the manager) and "Robertino!" (Alagna's nickname), we have been shown to a table in what you might call Roberto Alagna corner. On the walls are photographs and posters of Alagna: youthfully golden, on the cover of Classic CD, broodingly romantic in a poster for Tosca and, in photographs everywhere, gazing adoringly at his wife, Angela Gheorghiu. It's like a little shrine to opera's golden couple: the handsome tenor, hailed as the heir to Pavarotti, married to the Romanian femme fatale, opera's prima diva, and perhaps the most glamorous opera singer in the world.
— Read more at The Independent

Edinburgh based author Alexander McCall Smith found inspiration for his best-selling series The Number One Ladies Detective Agency in Botswana.
Now he's returning the favour, with his support for a new arts centre in the country's capital Gaborone. His new chamber opera The Okavango Macbeth will premiere on Saturday at the Number One Ladies Opera House.
— Read more at BBC NEWS

Every opera lover knows that Thomas Hampson, the American baritone, can sing his heart out. But it's also true that he can talk your ear off.
For as long as many music lovers remember, Hampson has been a prime attraction at the world's great opera houses and concert halls, singing a wide variety of material, including Mozart, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Mahler and Ferruccio Busoni. Even Stephen Foster falls within his ken. But though always billed as an American singer, Hampson was long based in Europe. That changed last year with his leasing of an apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The continental shift has seemingly brought a change in priorities too. Though Hampson isn't turning his back on the Old World -- far from it -- he is devoting increasing attention to the New, including an appointment as the New York Philharmonic's first artist in residence.
— Read more at latimes.com

[Ben Heppner is okay as the hero but Nina Stemme's radiantly beautiful Isolde has never been more convincing at this venue]
Storms of booing greeted the production team's curtain call on Tuesday's opening of the Royal Opera's first new offering of the 2009/10 season. It had to be a Wagner night, of course: Tristan und Isolde, in an austere, monochrome staging by the objects of the audience's wrath, the director Christof Loy, the designer Johannes Leiacker, the dramaturge Marion Tiedtke and the lighting designer Olaf Winter. With the blessing of the Royal Opera's music director, Antonio Pappano, they give us a polemical, internalised, doom-and gloom-laden realisation of Wagner's music drama in a contemporary, mirror-of-the-audience setting.
— Read more at Times Online

Renee Fleming is sitting pretty atop the classical music world, enjoying her reign as America's iconic soprano but refusing to let fame and success pump up her ego. I recently caught up with the perpetually in-demand singer by telephone and found her to be open and gracious, as undiva-like as ever.
She was giving interviews to promote her latest Decca recording, "Verismo," a discerningly chosen collection of opera arias and ensembles by Puccini and his contemporaries that she delivers with creamy tone and expressive insights at once beguiling, affecting and true.
— Read more at John von Rhein - chicagotribune.com

The estate of famed soprano Beverly Sills is headed to the auction block in New York City.
Costume designs, artwork, furniture and jewelry are among the items up for sale next Wednesday at Doyle New York auction house.
— Read more at The Associated Press

James Levine, music director of the Metropolitan Opera and Boston Symphony, has canceled appearances with both institutions to undergo back surgery. (Just my luck. I'm heading to New York this week to catch up on all the fuss about the Metropolitan Opera's roundly booed new "Tosca" production, figuring I would at the very least enjoy Levine's conducting.)
— Read more at Tim Smith - The Baltimore Sun

There is a wide generic gulf between the Christmas panto and Tristan und Isolde at the Royal Opera House. Yet many patrons of Covent Garden don't seem to have noticed. The wall of aggressive sound - of booing - that greeted the director and designers on the first night of Tristan on Tuesday was boorish, callow and just plain rude. And it was all the more shocking after the production's Isolde, the wonderful Nina Stemme, had just received a standing ovation.
— Read more at guardian.co.uk

Marcelo Alvarez likens parts of Luc Bondy's controversial new production of Puccini's "Tosca" to a car wreck.
"It's like there's an accident in the middle of street: People say, 'Ah, I don't want to go.' But they want to see the blood," the tenor said.
— Read more at sfgate.com

Tristan and Isolde, tables and chairs.
That's the extent of the scenery in German director Christof Loy's version of Wagner's epic drama of doomed lovers that premiered Tuesday night as the first new production of the Royal Opera House's fall season.
— Read more at sfgate.com

Baltimore these days has become a veritable case study in opera-company development. You wouldn't have thought so this time last year, when the Baltimore Opera Company was emitting its last gasps before closing for good this spring. That demise left a gaping hole in the landscape - but that hole is now being flooded with so many other opera companies that you truly can't tell the players without a scorecard. I've mentioned this before, but it seems like new opera is being added every day.
— Read more at Anne Midgette - washingtonpost.com

Danielle de Niese strode through the winding hallways of the Metropolitan Opera House's basement on a recent morning with a reporter, navigating its warrens as though showing a sibling around a favorite playground.
"It's like coming home," she said, to come to the Met. And in fact she was in a sense raised here: She was 18 when she became the youngest singer ever to be accepted into the company's prestigious program for young artists.
— Read more at Zachary Woolfe - The New York Observer

The destruction of opera has been the aim of opera-house managers and producers for a good many years now. It isn't too difficult an objective. Ignore the composer's intention in order to insult and offend the audience, which in any case has no right of reply. Recast the setting to make some present-day social point, most usually to do with sexuality. Design brutalist sets, for instance furnishing a Renaissance palace with tank traps or oil drums, and if at all possible getting in some reference to Auschwitz, with barbed wire or striped prisoner garb. The predictability is boring beyond boredom.
— Read more at National Review Online