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Renee Fleming, the extraordinary American soprano performing at Benaroya Hall on Friday as part of Seattle Symphony's Distinguished Artists series, has known more than one instance of musical statesmanship.
She has performed for the Supreme Court, the Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace, at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and the televised "We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial" last January.
— Read more at Seattle Times

For young opera singers, lucky breaks don't come easy -- and for mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato they tend to be incredibly painful.
This summer, DiDonato was in London performing in Rossini's "The Barber of Seville" (a role she reprises today in her LA Opera debut). She was well on her way to a successful opening night at the Royal Opera House, finishing the famous aria "Una voce poco fa." Then suddenly, DiDonato tripped on a metal flap track onstage and fractured her fibula.
— Read more at latimes.com

NOVEMBER has been a typically busy time in the Murphy household. The Murphys of opera circles in New York and abroad, that is: the soprano Heidi Grant Murphy, celebrating her 20th season at the Metropolitan Opera, and her husband of 18 years, the pianist Kevin Murphy, formerly a valued coach at the Met and now the director of music administration at the New York City Opera.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

"I'd like to take a little bit of responsibility for this nightmare."
The source of that generous offer is far from evil. If anything, Nathan Gunn is the dimpled picture of Midwestern nice guy-ness -- think a younger, darker Russell Crowe without the edge. That's why he's volunteering to take the fall for men like himself -- opera's tantalizing new breed of baritone known as "barihunks."
— Read more at latimes.com

"NO offense, but it's a little like Frankenstein," the director Bartlett Sher genially told the bass-baritone Alan Held during a recent rehearsal of Offenbach's "Contes d'Hoffmann" ("Tales of Hoffmann") at the Metropolitan Opera. Mr. Sher, referring to the menacing laugh that announces Dr. Miracle's appearance in the second act, suggested that Mr. Held, who is singing the four villains, try a subtler approach.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

The only thing missing from the Metropolitan Opera's latest revival of Mozart's "Nozze di Figaro" on Monday night was a starter's pistol, or so you might have thought during a breakneck overture. Fabio Luisi, the conductor, drove the music so hard at times that split ends clearly showed among Mozart's silken strands. Mr. Luisi, it bears saying, is a very fine conductor. When the pace was reined in slightly, the orchestral performance was impressively even and lively.
— Read more at Steve Smith - NYTimes.com

For music lovers, the appearance of Renee Fleming at the Orpheum Theatre on Tuesday (December 1), for the Vancouver Recital Society, will be a major event. Many will argue that she is the most resplendent American soprano singing today, whether on the opera stage or in recital, as she'll be doing here with pianist Gerald Martin Moore.
— Read more at Straight.com

Complaints recently lobbed at Renee Fleming and Angela Gheorghiu over shortchanging their concert audiences could not be levelled at Cecilia Bartoli. At the Barbican, like Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall, the Italian prima donna sang her heart out and could have gone on all night. Whether a less reckless expenditure of vocal energy might have yielded greater artistic returns is a moot point.
— Read more at Rupert Christiansen - telegraph.co.uk

There's something about the honeyed sweetness of Joseph Calleja's voice that seems to evoke memories of a golden age, as if this young tenor carried within his vocal cords a secret passed down from bygone generations.
"Nobody sings like that anymore," said Craig Rutenberg, director of music administration for the Metropolitan Opera. "His voice is just so intrinsically beautiful, with a very old-fashioned vibrato. It's sort of like sunshine to me."
— Read more at San Francisco Examiner

What should be done with the unfinished works left behind by master composers at their deaths? This question has long dogged musicians and scholars of later eras, and the debate goes on. Maybe the proper way to respect the masters is to leave their incomplete scores alone. How can we presume to know what an ingenious composer might have intended?
— Read more at NYTimes.com

The annual concert of the Richard Tucker Music Foundation, which was created in 1975 to offer emerging singers awards, grants and performance opportunities, took place at Avery Fisher Hall on Sunday evening. Fabio Luisi conducted members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the New York Choral Society, opening with a rousing rendition of the overture to Verdi's "Nabucco."
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Two North Carolina opera companies announced this week that they will merge into one, Raleigh-based company in the hopes of saving money and producing more operas.
The Opera Company of North Carolina and Capital Opera Raleigh will combine and be called North Carolina Opera.
— Read more at WRAL.com

Renee Fleming is one of the opera world's most recognizable divas. Blessed with gorgeous good looks and a golden voice, the Pennsylvania-born soprano started her career in Mozart roles and soon moved on to her favorite composer, Richard Strauss. Today, her repertoire includes a wide variety of roles, including Rusalka, Tatiana, Alcina, and Blanche DuBois in Andre Previn's Streetcar Named Desire, a role she brought to luminous life in the opera's world premiere at San Francisco Opera. Fleming returns to the Bay Area for a recital Dec. 6, presented by Cal Performances; I spoke to her by phone in New York.
— Read more at Georgia Rowe - sfcv.org

Say "Philip Glass" and "opera," and most listeners will think of the composer's enormous, slowly unfolding early works like "Einstein on the Beach" (1976) and "Satyagraha" (1980). Yet many of Mr. Glass's operas (there are more than 20) are smaller-scale chamber pieces based on source materials ranging from the films of Jean Cocteau to Grimm's fairy tales.
— Read more at Heidi Waleson - WSJ.com

Katya Kabanova is a very modern operatic heroine, a caged bird yearning to fly free, the sort of tormented romantic for whom Dostoevsky or Thomas Hardy would have felt sympathy. Pity a young woman caught between a weakling mama's boy of a husband on one side and a monster of a mother-in-law on the other.
A heroine of such complex emotions needs a great singing actress to sort them out and, at the same time, move us to pity. And that's what the mesmerizing Finnish soprano Karita Mattila brings to the title role of Leos Janacek's "Katya Kabanova" at Lyric Opera of Chicago. The net effect of her performance can be summed up in three words: overwhelming emotional force.
— Read more at John von Rhein - chicagotribune.com

When Lisette Oropesa sang Susanna in the Met's Le Nozze di Figaro for the first time two seasons ago, she replaced another singer on short notice, had just turned 24 a few weeks before, and had only minor roles in Idomeneo and Suor Angelica on her Met resume. And yet, she was ready. As a 2005 winner of the Met's National Council Auditions and a participant in the company's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program (she's since graduated), Oropesa had received extraordinary musical and theatrical training at the Met. This month she returns to the role of Susanna already a young star, with a Live in HD movie-theater transmission and a run in Wagner's Ring under her belt.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

With Artistic Director Antony Walker at the helm, the Washington Concert Opera (WCO) opened its 2009-10 season Sunday evening at Lisner Auditorium with a riveting performance of Charles Gounod's "Faust." It featured a top-notch cast of vocalists who were so familiar with the score that none of them needed the stands and sheet music that generally are a staple of concert opera.
— Read more at Washington Times

The void left by the demise of the Baltimore Opera Company last year will not be easily filled. That reality was reinforced Sunday afternoon with the debut performance by the Baltimore Opera Theatre before a modest, appreciative, audience at the Hippodrome.
Described in the program book as "a new opera company with an aesthetic view of the arts ... not based on frivolous budgets and grandiosity," the enterprise offered a production of Rossini's "The Barber of Seville" that contained roughly equal portions of professionalism and provincialism.
— Read more at Tim Smith - baltimoresun.com

Few ventures in the Met's recent history have suffered as many casting casualties as the company's new production of Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann, directed by Bartlett Sher. Initially, it was a project that seemed to offer the best of everything currently available in the opera world. Singing the role of the lovelorn poet Hoffmann was Rolando Villazon, who in the past few seasons has been hailed as one of the most gifted exponents of French opera to come along in years. Anna Netrebko was slated to sing all four heroines, which would have made her the eighth soprano in Met history to accomplish this feat. Taking on all four of Hoffmann's villains was the authoritative star bass Rene Pape. In the role of Nicklausse, Hoffmann's protective companion, there was a bit of luxury casting - the elegant Latvian mezzo Elina Garanca (said by insiders to have an extremely promising future at the Met).
— Read more at Opera News

Fifty years ago this month, Birgit Nilsson's sensational Metropolitan Opera debut as Isolde was front-page news in both The New York Times and The New York Herald Tribune. Nilsson, who died on Christmas Day in 2005, is still making headlines: a foundation that the soprano started has resources sufficient to institute the Birgit Nilsson Prize, an honor which carries with it an award of $1 million. The first winner, Placido Domingo, received the honor in mid-October; "Million Dollar Legacy," an article by Brooks Peters explains the genesis of the prize and the Birgit Nilsson Foundation's plans for the future.
— Read more at Opera News

Over the last several decades, the landmark operas of Leos Janacek have been emerging from the fringes of the repertory and winning deserved favor with mainstream audiences.
The Metropolitan Opera recently weighed in with Patrice Chereau's celebrated production of the Czech composer's final stage work, "From the House of the Dead." Beginning this weekend, Lyric Opera is bringing back, after 23 years, one of the greatest of Janacek's mature operas, his deeply moving tragedy "Katya Kabanova" (1921).
— Read more at John von Rhein - chicagotribune.com

A funny thing happened on the way through the program at the Richard Tucker Gala: The night's honoree, tenor Stephen Costello, nearly faded into the woodwork that panels Avery Fisher Hall.
That's more a reflection of Sunday's all-star programming than any lack of talent on the part of this promising young singer.
— Read more at sfgate.com

The San Diego Opera has created the latest Twitter project involving opera fans worldwide. In early November the company began documenting the entire 400-plus years of opera history, one 140-character tweet at a time.
The Opera History Twitter Project began on November 2 with an entry from 1580. It is expected to cover opera history through the present, at the rate of two tweets per day.
— Read more at The Independent

Sunday morning's paper brought news of the death of Elisabeth Soderstrom, the Swedish soprano whose acclaimed performances of Leos Janacek's tragic heroines did much to popularize the Czech composer's operas.
Another celebrated Scandinavian, Karita Mattila, has taken the mantle as today's reigning Janacek soprano, and the Finnish singer opened the Lyric Opera of Chicago's production of Janacek's Katya Kabanova Sunday afternoon at the Civic Opera House.
— Read more at Chicago Classical Review

Patricia Racette had just sung her moving final notes in "Suor Angelica" and fallen to the stage.
Around the Metropolitan Opera House, a significant segment of the audience was sniffling and wiping away tears.
Racette took on the rare task of singing all three soprano leads in Puccini's "Il Trittico," three one-act operas of melodrama, tragedy and comedy. Her shattering performance as the nun was the highlight of the night and one of the high points of her career.
— Read more at The Associated Press

Like the prisoners in the Dostoyevsky novel on which it is based, Janacek's darkly transfixing final opera "From the House of the Dead'' languished for too long in the operatic equivalent of Siberia. Introduced to the world in 1930, this remarkable score waited a full six decades for its first staged performances in this country, a 1990 production at New York City Opera. Now, finally, the work is back, this time at the Metropolitan Opera in a brutally powerful Czech-language staging directed by Patrice Chereau and conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, both in their Met debuts.
— Read more at Jeremy Eichler - The Boston Globe

The 79th consecutive season of the Metropolitan Opera Saturday Matinee Radio Broadcasts launches on December 12, 2009 at 12:30 p.m. EST with a live performance of Puccini's Il Trittico, starring Patricia Racette singing all three leading soprano roles. Mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe also appears in the Puccini triple-bill. The 22-week season, carried over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network, runs through May 8 and features 19 live matinee performances broadcast direct from the Met stage, one pre-recorded performance, and one archival performance.
— Read more at broadwayworld.com

'THE FUTURE Is Now" is both the concert program title and the literal truth for the current crop of Adler Fellows entertaining a gala audience Sunday night at the Herbst Theatre. That goes double for soprano Heidi Melton, the only one of the 13 in the San Francisco Opera's prestigious apprenticeship program not participating in the performance - because she's off making her debut at the New York Met instead!
— Read more at ContraCostaTimes.com

The new Curtis Opera Theatre production of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress is a test of sorts. How much are you willing to endure for love of this opera? What aspects mean the most to you? Music? Words? Characters?
Of the three, I connected with one at Thursday's opening night - the music - and though that's the best you can hope for in some dramaturgically antiquated operas, The Rake's Progress so intertwines the elements that the Curtis package was reasonably satisfying but also quite frustrating.
— Read more at David Patrick Stearns - Philadelphia Inquirer

Like a live wire that throws off sparks wherever it wills, the Sacramento Opera's production of Donizetti's "Elixir of Love," sizzles. And it does so with potent singing and crisp, smart direction.
The result was the delivery, on Friday evening at the Community Center Theater, of the best production this company has staged in recent memory.
— Read more at sacbee.com

Elisabeth Soderstrom, 82, a Swedish soprano who was greatly admired for her sensitive operatic roles and for her refined, delicately shaded voice, died Nov. 20 of a stroke in Stockholm.
During a career of more than 50 years, Miss Soderstrom was renowned for the subtlety of her performances and was considered one of the foremost actors on the operatic stage. Her dramatic skill made her particularly effective in portraying such complex characters as Leonore in Beethoven's "Fidelio," Tatyana in Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin" and Marie in Alban Berg's "Wozzeck."
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

Renee Fleming has been described as "the Great American Soprano" and "the people's diva," heavy monikers. But then, over the past two decades, few singers have combined majesty of voice and true charisma as has Fleming.
She turned 50 this year. She has a sumptuous new recording, ""Verismo" (Decca), a survey of emotionally devastating works by Puccini and his contemporaries. And, yes, she is coming Dec. 6 to Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall for a program that moves alluringly from Messiaen to Strauss to numerous of those sumptuous verismo works.
— Read more at Richard Scheinin - Inside Bay Area

SCHOLARS wishing to examine the manuscripts of the masters must expect to go out of their way, but since World War II several Mozart operas have required more effort than many other such treasures. Of the principal scores only two have come down in one piece: "Don Giovanni" in Paris and "The Magic Flute" in Berlin. The others are dispersed among various owners.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

The starry sky is regular subject, spiritual circumstance or actual setting of Philip Glass' work. His latest opera, "Kepler," given its American premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Wednesday night, is about the German astronomer who identified the elliptical orbits of our solar system. The composer couldn't have been more at home.
Among Glass' 23 operas are "Galileo Galilei" and two others based on Nobel laureate Doris Lessing's "Canopus in Argos" series of science-fiction novels. "The Voyage" opens with Stephen Hawking meditating on space-time and an alien spaceship crashing onto Earth; it ends with Columbus taking his final journey on his deathbed into outer space.
— Read more at Mark Swed - Los Angeles Times

Philip Glass clearly enjoys examining ideas from just about every angle, and that applies as fully to opera subjects as to specific musical moves. His earliest operas, for example, were about historical figures who changed the way their societies thought: Einstein, in "Einstein on the Beach"; Gandhi, in "Satyagraha"; and the monotheistic Egyptian pharaoh, Akhnaten, in the opera that bears his name.
— Read more at Allan Kozinn - NYTimes.com

The battle of the sexes will always provide fodder for entertainment. The issue of fidelity, in particular, never runs out of juice - if it did, a massive wing of the television industry would suddenly collapse.
Innumerable operas have depended on this topic, too, of course. And for an incisive example of how to make great art out of romantic foibles, it's still hard to beat Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte," which delivers its laughs with a pinch of pain.
— Read more at Tim Smith - baltimoresun.com

Now that the Metropolitan Opera no longer has the monopoly on opera broadcasts to cinemas, fans can look forward to a greater variety of productions from outside the Peter Gelb Ministry of Music.
Starting Dec. 7, Laemmle Theaters in Southern California will screen broadcasts of opera productions from Milan's La Scala and Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu. The season of programs, which runs through July 1 and includes six productions, features such vocal luminaries as Placido Domingo, Diana Damrau, Jonas Kaufmann, Ben Heppner and Erwin Schrott.
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

The Swedish soprano Elisabeth Soderstrom has died at the age of 82, the Royal Swedish Opera announced on Saturday.
She died in a Stockholm hospital on Friday morning.
During a career spanning half a century, the singer performed regularly at New York's Metropolitan Opera and Covent Garden in London, and made numerous appearances at Britain's Glyndebourne summer festival.
— Read more at Yahoo! News

Renee Fleming has been described as "the Great American Soprano" and "the people's diva," heavy monikers. But then, over the past two decades, few singers have combined majesty of voice and true charisma as has Fleming.
She turned 50 this year. She has a sumptuous new recording, "Verismo" (Decca), a survey of emotionally devastating works by Puccini and his contemporaries. And, yes, she is coming Dec. 6 to Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall for a program that moves alluringly from Messiaen to Strauss to numerous of those sumptuous verismo works.
— Read more at Richard Scheinin - San Jose Mercury News

It's not that the loos at the Royal Opera House are necessarily an ideal barometer of public taste, but attending Wagner's Tristan und Isolde recently, I had a startling experience: it was the only time I have ever noticed a longer queue for the men's room than the women's. But, a few days later, in the interval of a dress rehearsal for the ballet The Sleeping Beauty, there was barely a man in sight. Opera and ballet audiences don't often mix, and it's not only about gender. How many people at each show, I wonder, would have ventured into the other?
— Read more at Jessica Duchen - The Independent

"Write what you know" is advice often given to aspiring novelists and playwrights. Apparently, it also applies to composers of operas.
Los Angeles Opera said today that it will present two workshop performances of a new commission called "The 110 Project," an opera that tells the stories of the communities along L.A.'s 110 Freeway, which runs from the Pasadena area, past downtown and all the way to San Pedro.
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

Things are finally looking up for New York City Opera. The once-feisty alternative to its imposing Lincoln Center neighbor, the Metropolitan Opera, has an acoustically improved home, is selling tickets and getting very good reviews. None of that was true a year ago -- or anticipated.
In fact, bookmakers, had they cared about the state of opera, would surely have expected to make money off those betting against success after Gerard Mortier's sudden resignation. The then-visionary head of the Paris Opera was set to take over City Opera with a more venturesome and newsworthy operatic agenda than any New York or the United States had seen.
— Read more at Mark Swed - Los Angeles Times

From the house of the dead -- as I've heard the Metropolitan Opera grumpily described from time to time -- comes a great "From the House of the Dead." OK, that's a cheap shot, but a company generally eager to please has finally tackled Janacek's last and least ingratiating opera, with the acclaimed French theater, film and sometimes opera director Patrice Chereau and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen making their Met debuts.
— Read more at Mark Swed - Los Angeles Times

Bay Area music lovers have known about the brilliance of the American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato longer than most, thanks to her breakthrough Merola performance as Rossini's Cenerentola and a triumphant Schwabacher Debut Recital back in the mid-'90s.
Yet I doubt that even her biggest local fans - and yes, I am one - could have foreseen the vigor, the subtlety or the sheer vocal splendor that DiDonato brought to her Monday night recital in Herbst Theater.
— Read more at Joshua Kosman - sfgate.com

There wasn't space in my review of Opera Theatre of St. Louis's production of Brundibar to say everything that deserved to be said - so let me fill in some of the gaps here.
First, although critics really aren't supposed to review the audience, this one - which ranged from waist-high to almost-adult-sized - deserves a word of appreciation: they were silent and attentive, almost glued to the performance to an extent unheard-of among grownups. I sat with students from Edgar Road Elementary School in Webster Groves, who could not have been more engaged with the performance.
— Read more at Sarah Bryan Miller - STLtoday.com

When "Nixon in China" premiered at Houston Opera in 1987, it was noisy, busy and avant-garde. What created the most buzz back then was its subject matter - "ripped from the headlines," as the expression goes - and its Minimalist texture, with all those pounding chords and cross rhythms that defined composer John Adams' style.
— Read more at azcentral.com

Behind a scrim decorated with concentric circles, framed by cotton bolls, Emmett Till is dancing (performed by Hannefah Hassan-Evans), high-stepping in his Chicago finery, until he acknowledges a white woman passing-after which, two white men in black beat him in a brutal, stylized assault that turns his dance into writhing.
That's where Oakland Opera's world premiere of Mary D. Watkins' Dark River: The Fannie Lou Hamer Story takes off: with the reaction of the rural African-American community to Till's murder in the mid-1950s. The staging employs a broad, long ramp that leads through the audience to the main stage, where the ensemble gathers in a cotton field to mourn Till and other victims of lynch law. It seems as if every spare foot of the Oakland Metro Operahouse, off Jack London Square, is in use; later, the audience will turn to watch scenes in a sharecropper's home, positioned like a loft, opposite the main stage.
— Read more at The Berkeley Daily Planet

It's not the Metropolitan Opera's fault that its first production of Leos Janacek's final opera, From the House of the Dead, arouses more admiration than love. The company has rarely put on a more impeccably pedigreed show: The Met premiere of one of the major works of 20th-century opera, featuring the company debuts of a legendary director, Patrice Chereau, and a legendary conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen. It sounded great-the singing is uniformly beautiful and the orchestra is epic-and looked elegant, with high, pale walls that would slowly advance and recede. It should have been one of the really memorable Met evenings.
— Read more at Zachary Woolfe - The New York Observer

If you didn't know that this is National Opera Week, a glance at the local scene would make you suspect something of the kind. Three companies in Baltimore alone will be busy with performances; add in College Park and Washington, and it looks like an epidemic.
The designation of Nov. 13 to 22 as National Opera Week (easier to market than National Opera Ten-Day Period) was made by Opera America, the service organization representing about 150 companies, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The celebrating began last Friday in D.C. with the awarding of the 2009 NEA Opera Honors (recipients included mezzo Marilyn Horne and composer John Adams).
— Read more at Tim Smith - baltimoresun.com

I have no greater joy than basking in the artistry of a great singer at the top of her form. Such was my feeling as mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, perfectly accompanied by pianist John Churchwell, began her San Francisco Performances recital Monday at Herbst Theatre. Singing to an eager audience that included many supporters and fans who have followed her ever since her 1997 San Francisco summer in the Merola Opera Program, DiDonato looked every inch the star in the baby-blue, Grecian-style dress and gold-patterned cinch that perfectly complemented her shining blonde hair.
— Read more at San Francisco Classical Voice

A year after the death of Sydney Opera House architect Jorn Utzon, a $38 million refurbishment reflecting his vision for the World Heritage-listed building has been opened.
Great views of Sydney harbour from inside a stylish new foyer, better disabled access and more toilets are just some of the improvements transforming Australia's busiest building.
— Read more at Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Professional opera is back on the monetary scoreboard in Orange County, if not yet fully back in business.
The Dana Point City Council voted last week to appropriate $50,000, plus free use of Lantern Bay Park (pictured), overlooking the Pacific, for the Italian Opera Festival, whose organizers aim to make it an annual event, with the first one scheduled Sept. 10-19, 2010. A successful launch would put opera back on the O.C. cultural map from which it has disappeared for a year and counting since the 23-year-old Opera Pacific went bankrupt after failing to establish a strong enough donor pool to carry it through last fall's economic meltdown.
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

Clad in all black, one microphone in each hand, Erin Gee performed a portion of her new work, "Mouthpiece XIII - Mathilde of Loci, Part 1," at LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton's New York headquarters yesterday afternoon. Gee, a young American composer, is the first artist to benefit from a partnership between the American Composers Orchestra and the luxury goods conglomerate to support emerging talent in the U.S.
— Read more at WSJ.com

Since I am always interested in how to think of an evening's program as a journey in its entirety, I was delighted to see that Joyce DiDonato explicitly declared the structural strategy of her San Francisco Performances recital last night in Herbst Theatre with accompanist John Churchwell.
— Read more at examiner.com

The announcement last year that the NEA was establishing an annual opera honors seemed a mixed blessing. Was awarding famous artists the best use the federal agency could make of its limited funds? But the second annual NEA Opera Honors, officially bestowed Saturday night in a ceremony at the Harman Center for the Arts, had a particularly feel-good aspect. Among this year's five honorees were artists whose huge contributions to the field have been receding into the past; it was lovely and fitting that a national award should honor their work while they are still around to enjoy the applause.
— Read more at Anne Midgette - washingtonpost.com

The world ended on a stage devoid of scenery or special effects, just a soprano in a dark sequined dress singing of redemption and love.
But that was enough.
The Washington National Opera's presentation of Wagner's "Goetterdaemmerung" - reduced by economic necessity from full production to concert version - made for a riveting afternoon of musical theater in its second and final performance Sunday.
— Read more at The Associated Press

Soprano Renee Fleming, a two-time Grammy winner and winner of the Swedish Polar Music Prize 2008, will be performing at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley at 7:00 PM on December 6, 2009. Fleming is purported to be the extraordinary opera singer who inspired the character of Roxanne in Ann Patchett's novel `Bel Canto' (and if you haven't read the novel, well, there's another brilliant delight awaiting you). She will be accompanied by pianist Gerald Moore.
— Read more at examiner.com

[Soprano Aprile Millo will present a Nov. 17 concert with the Opera Orchestra Of New York. Often likened to such greats as Tebaldi, Milanov and Ponselle, the "Golden Voiced Diva" will perform opera arias, lieder and Italian art songs.]
Millo celebrates her 25th anniversary with Eve Queler and The Opera Orchestra of New York, with which she has remained a loyal collaborator since performing the role of Mathilde in William Tell in 1984. The soprano is joined by pianist Lucy Arner in a program of lieder, opera arias and Italian art song in Jazz at Lincoln Center's intimate Rose Theater. Additional guest artists include harpist Merynda Adams, violinist Christopher Collins Lee, tenor Michael Fabiano, cellist Lynn Harrell, baritone Luis Ledesma, pianist Danielle Orlando, and accordionist Mary-Lou Vetere, and special choreography by Melanie LaPatin from "So You Think You can Dance".
— Read more at PlaybillArts

In celebration of National Opera Week, the Chicago Opera Theater has sent its members to random places throughout the city to give short "Pop-Up Opera" performances. You can get tips on the locations and times on COT's website or Twitter. As an added bonus, if you tweet about the "Pop-Up" performance you're seeing (make sure to include #popupopera), you could win COT subscriptions, tickets to Kathleen Battle's performance with the Chicago Children's Choir, and $50 restaurant gift cards.
— Read more at Chicagoist.com

There is nothing like a Gilbert and Sullivan getaway to escape reality and H.M.S. Pinafore handily transports an audience. In the world of the G and S operetta, social class conflicts are easily resolved, baby farming is explained without difficulty and the coarse language of everyday is discouraged in favor of refined, elegant dialogue. An audience of just over 1,000 enjoyed the ride on opening night at the Lyric Theater, reveling in the lighter fare of the Lyric's latest production.
— Read more at KCMETROPOLIS.org

LIFE is what happens while we are making other plans. Growing up in blue-collar Bedford, N.H., Patricia Racette sang jazz and played guitar, and when someone asked her to join the choir, her answer was "No, I sing alone." Then she joined anyway, as a second alto.
Not long after, her parents, older sister and younger brother piled onto a Greyhound bus to see Pat safely to North Texas State University (now the University of North Texas) in Denton, where she meant to study jazz. "I was paying my own way, and the school was affordable," Ms. Racette, 44, said recently in the cathedral lobby of her Trump Place home in Manhattan. "I wept like a baby when my family said goodbye. But I completely blossomed there."
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Mezzo-soprano diva Joyce DiDonato last seduced us here as Octavian in Strauss's Rosenkavalier and is returning on Monday night for her first ever San Francisco Performances recital, with pianist John Churchwell. Joyce made headlines over the summer when she fell during a performance of the Barber of Seville at the Royal Opera House, broke her leg and kept on singing. She set such a courageous example that soprano Sondra Radvanovsky got hurt during an attempted purse snatching at the Van Ness Walgreen's so she too could sing with a leg cast. Joyce is out of the cast by now, and well, others have asked her about it, so we know how she was able to finish that performance after the wipe out: "Midwestern work ethic". Good thing she is from Kansas, and not from somewhere with depraved values.
— Read more at SFist.com

If you're inclined to wish Joyce DiDonato good luck, please do it with the Italian phrase, "In bocca al lupo." Please do not ask the mezzo-soprano to "break a leg."
She's been there, suffered that. It happened at London's Royal Opera House last summer during a performance of "Il barbiere di Siviglia," when DiDonato's foot fell into a crack on the stage. She felt a sharp pain, but finished the performance before seeking medical attention. DiDonato completed the rest of the "Barbiere" run in a leg cast and wheelchair, to the utter delight of British operaphiles.
— Read more at sfgate.com

This time last year, there was serious talk that New York City Opera, long a precarious operation, might be a goner.
Renovation of the New York State Theater had largely nixed the 2008-09 season, but staff, stagehands and orchestra musicians still had to be paid. The company had been without a general director for more than a year.
— Read more at Scott Cantrell - Dallas Morning News

OPERA Australia's new artistic director Lyndon Terracini hopes to premiere Wagner's Ring cycle in repertory in Melbourne from 2012.
"If we raise enough money to do The Ring, we will premiere it in Melbourne, beginning with Das Rheingold of course and then doing one a year," Terracini said yesterday at his Melbourne office in Southbank.
— Read more at theage.com.au

"I like to give everybody a show," 13-year-old Riley Morrissey declared recently.
She's getting a chance Friday and next Sunday, when Kentucky Opera closes its season with a production of "Hansel and Gretel" at the Brown Theatre.
— Read more at The Courier-Journal

After the Metropolitan Opera opened its season in September with Luc Bondy's convoluted new production of Puccini's "Tosca," widely deemed a dismal failure, Peter Gelb, the company's general manager, needed a comeback success.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

When Kansas-born mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato walks onstage Monday night in Herbst Theatre, she will return to the city that rewarded her with her first major operatic leading role.
She also revisits assured that her new Rossini recital on EMI Classics, "Colbran the Muse," has further secured her reputation as our generation's pre-eminent American mezzo-soprano in the operas of Rossini and Handel.
— Read more at San Francisco Examiner

While operatic conservatives dig in their heels against innovations afoot at the Metropolitan Opera, across the way the tentatively resurrected New York City Opera - whose unofficial mandate is to do things that might make Met-goers boo - opened in a much-improved State Theater last weekend with a sexy, concept-heavy production of Mozart's Don Giovanni.
— Read more at Philadelphia Inquirer

The executrix for an opera lover in Edinburgh who willed much of her fortune to the Metropolitan Opera confirmed reports about the extent of the gift: around $7.5 million (less 40 percent in taxes), according to a Met official. The executrix said she did not have a precise amount but said that accounts in British papers about the bequest, left by Mona Webster, who died last summer at 96, were accurate.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

The Metropolitan Opera's fourth season of free final dress rehearsals continues on Monday, November 30 with Bartlett Sher's new production of Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann, conducted by Met Music Director James Levine. Joseph Calleja stars in the title role, with Anna Netrebko as Antonia, and Alan Held as the four villains.
The dress rehearsal begins at 11:00 am; and the doors will open at 10:30 am. This is the second in a series of open rehearsals this season, a program supported by Agnes Varis, a managing director of the Met's Board of Directors, and her husband, Karl Leichtman for the fourth consecutive year; they also underwrite the Met's popular Rush Ticket program.
— Read more at broadwayworld.com

Peter Gelb doesn't like playing cheerleader.
Invited to get Post readers fired up about "From the House of the Dead," opening tonight, the Metropolitan Opera's general manager shrugs.
"Opera doesn't appeal to everybody," he says.
— Read more at nypost.com

If ever you need to know what's wrong with the Metropolitan Opera and its press puppet, the New York Times, look no further than the opening paragraph of last weekend's puff piece for tonight's production of Janacek's From the House of the Dead. Here goes:
Just as a diva regards her Metropolitan Opera debut as proof that she has arrived, a Met premiere confers on a work a lasting seal of approval. On Thursday, that honor will fall to Leos Janacek's From the House of the Dead...
— Read more at Norman Lebrecht - artsjournal.com

Beginning last Thursday, the New York City Opera staged its resurrection following a dark year, financial jeopardy and management disarray. With straitened means and only a few months to plan (George Steel, the company's general manager and artistic director, started work last February), City Opera's comeback season was pared to 30-odd performances of five operas, two this month and three in the spring. The company also hopes to get a lift from the acoustical and other improvements in its renamed David H. Koch Theater.
— Read more at Heidi Waleson - WSJ.com

When the lights went up Sunday afternoon on a shirtless man next to a pantsless man-both American, both young-I knew that New York City Opera was back. It was the start of the second act of Mozart's Don Giovanni, and the two men were playing the eponymous antihero and his servant, Leporello.
— Read more at Zachary Woolfe - The New York Observer

Opera Pacific died a year ago, and as far as professional opera in Orange County is concerned, the rest has been silence.
The Orange County Performing Arts Center, whose 1986 opening in Costa Mesa set the stage for Opera Pacific's launch the same year, hasn't offered opera since last Nov. 1, the final performance of Opera Pacific's swan song, "The Barber of Seville."
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

Throughout its 87-year history, the San Francisco Opera has presented Verdi's "Otello" with some of the title role's all-time great interpreters, including Lauritz Melchior (the company's first Otello, in 1934), and Placido Domingo, whose legendary 1983 appearance saw the tenor, called as a last-minute replacement, catching an afternoon flight from New York to San Francisco and finally arriving to start the performance at 10 p.m.
— Read more at Georgia Rowe - San Jose Mercury News

Mona Webster, a lighthouse keeper's daughter who lived in Edinburgh and died in August at 96, had a love of birds, and warblers in particular - of the human kind. She demonstrated that affection by leaving most of her fortune to the Metropolitan Opera and a nature charity in Britain.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

In planning New York City Opera's comeback 2009-10 season, George Steel, the company's new general manager and artistic director, knew that the budget would allow him just one chance to make a statement with a new production of a standard repertory work. He approached the director Christopher Alden, known for revisionist stagings of the staples, filled with striking, often jarring modern imagery. They chose Mozart's "Don Giovanni" as a project. They chose well.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

The bouquet that is the Met's production of Richard Strauss' "Der Rosenkavalier" may include a faded bloom or two, but the overall effect is charming.
The title's "cavalier of the rose" is a youthful nobleman, Octavian (Susan Graham), who presents a silver flower to Sophie (soprano Miah Persson) at her betrothal to Baron Ochs (bass Kristinn Sigmundsson). Instantly falling in love, they scheme to break her engagement to the snobbish baron.
— Read more at nypost.com

New York City Opera's revival of Hugo Weisgall's "Esther" gets high praise from The New York Times' Anthony Tommasini. Christopher Mattaliano, Portland Opera's general director, staged the work, which he also directed in 1993.
While Mattaliano was in New York preparing for "Esther," Portland Opera was getting ready for Philip Glass' "Orphee," which opened last weekend. Mattaliano flew to Portland in time to see Friday's opening, but had to miss Saturday's opening of "Esther."
— Read more at OregonLive.com

Put on a production of Verdi's "Otello," and all anyone wants to know about is the tenor in the title role. Well, we'll get to that in good time.
But first, all hail the hero of the San Francisco Opera's final fall offering, a reasonably potent "Otello" that opened Sunday afternoon at the War Memorial Opera House. That was Italian baritone Marco Vratogna, whose superb company debut as Iago gave this production its most striking infusion of vocal power and theatrical electricity.
— Read more at Joshua Kosman - sfgate.com

In the end, it was neither love nor the flames of passion that defrosted the Ice Princess, Turandot - it was Franco Zeffirelli's hot, opulent sets and glorious pageantry.
Not that any one's complaining, mind you. The Met's over-the-top production, which is rumored to have cost $1.5 million when this extravaganza first opened in 1987, must be seen to be believed. And if seeing is believing, those watching the live HD simulcast Nov. 7 had a pronounced advantage over their counterparts at Lincoln Center, journeying along with the cameras through every nook and cranny of Zeffirelli's massive, imposing scenic design.
— Read more at David Abrams - cnycafemomus.com

When mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato made her San Francisco Opera debut in 2003, as Rosina in The Barber of Seville, it was immediately apparent that audiences were hearing an artist of extravagant vocal gifts. The Kansas native has gone on to sing a wide variety of roles - from Cherubino and Cenerentola, to Octavian (which she sang in San Francisco in 2007) and Sister Helen Prejean in Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking.
— Read more at Georgia Rowe - sfcv.org

It was supposed to be a triumph, then it was supposed to be a tragedy. The Washington National Opera's performance of "Gotterdammerung," the culmination of Wagner's four-opera "Ring" cycle, was offered Saturday night at the Kennedy Center Opera House not in a staging by Francesca Zambello to complete her multiyear work, but in concert, without sets or costumes, a victim of the recession.
— Read more at Anne Midgette - washingtonpost.com

In 2006, when Washington National Opera opened its American Ring Cycle, few could have imagined that it would end as it did on Saturday night, with a concert performance of Gotterdammerung. After very promising productions of Das Rheingold and Die Walkure in 2006 and 2007, financial considerations delayed the staging of Siegfried by one season, to last spring, when it ended up with a troubled casting and special-effects woes.
— Read more at Charles Downey - DCist.com

Throughout its 87-year history, the San Francisco Opera has presented Verdi's "Otello" with some of the title role's all-time great interpreters. They included Lauritz Melchior (the company's first Otello, in 1934) and Placido Domingo, whose legendary 1983 appearance had the tenor, called as a last-minute replacement, catching an afternoon flight from New York and finally arriving to start the performance at 10 p.m.
— Read more at Inside Bay Area

The New York City Opera, which traditionally plays David to the Goliath of the Met next door, has gone through hell. Mismanagement, fiscal disaster and a dangerous liaison with a disappearing impresario from Belgium have endangered the company's survival. But the doors reopened cautiously on Thursday under the direction of a novice boss, George Steel.
— Read more at Martin Bernheimer - FT.com

REMEMBER Dorothy's exclamation to her little dog Toto in the classic movie "The Wizard of Oz?" "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore," she said as the two emerged from the tornado-transported farmhouse into the magical Technicolor of Oz.
Similarly, Kansas-born mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato must be having like thoughts each time she steps forth onto one famed international stage after another into the glittering, also magical, world of grand opera.
— Read more at ContraCostaTimes.com

With the New York City Opera's production of Hugo Weisgall's "Esther," which opened on Saturday night at the David H. Koch Theater, this essential company, teetering on the brink of extinction not long ago, announced it was back. Not just up and running, but exuding purpose and confidence.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

If judged only by the Dom Perignon flowing in the lobby and the American melodies flowing from the stage last night at the State Theatre -- which for the next 50 years, it was announced, will be named "The David H. Koch Theatre" -- New York City Opera would appear to be back in business.
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

[A pioneering project is helping young - and not-so-young - composers get to grips with the challenges of writing an opera. Rule number one: collaborate, collaborate, collaborate]
David Toop has a spring in his step. "What a day," he says, looking out over a sea of billowing reeds sweeping out to the Suffolk horizon. "I feel I've achieved more in these past three days than in the last three months. Today is perhaps the most productive day I've ever had."
— Read more at guardian.co.uk

Rossini's "La Cenerentola," or "Cinderella," sets the fairy tale to music. It's a classic. The musical numbers are rapid-fire, bubbly, very funny, and then touching and totally gorgeous. It's opera for opera lovers, but also for newcomers, including children. There are no glass slippers in this version of the story, but there is a matching set of bracelets and a prince who recognizes a good woman when he finds her.
— Read more at Richard Scheinin - San Jose Mercury News

On opening night of the opera season, on two different continents, war was declared between the audience and the director. In New York, at the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Tosca, director Luc Bondy was greeted with boos for the minimalist sets and a scene in which the villain tries to become intimate with a statue of the Virgin Mary. Meanwhile, in London, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, began the 2009-'10 season with a staging of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde by director Christof Loy, who used an all-white stage and almost no scenery except a table and chairs; during curtain calls, the audience gave Loy the same reception Bondy got. It's normal for music lovers to complain about what directors do to their favourite operas. What's new is that the audiences are moving from quiet grousing to open revolt.
— Read more at Macleans.ca

Mexican opera star ROLANDO VILLAZON will return to the stage next year (10) after regaining his voice following throat surgery.
The tenor was forced to scrap all concerts for 2009 after doctors found a cyst on his vocal chords. He underwent surgery earlier this year (09) but experts feared he would never be able to sing again.
— Read more at Contactmusic News

If you think all Philip Glass music sounds the same - rush-hour traffic for the ear - Portland Opera would like you to meet "Orphee," a French twist on the Orpheus myth.
Glass' operatic riff opened at the Keller Auditorium, Friday, in a stylish production that will almost make you take back those awful things you said about him.
— Read more at OregonLive.com

JUST as a diva regards her Metropolitan Opera debut as proof that she has arrived, a Met premiere confers on a work a lasting seal of approval. On Thursday, that honor will fall to Leos Janacek's "From the House of the Dead," based on Dostoyevsky's chronicle of a Siberian gulag. Adding cachet are a star director, Patrice Chereau, and a star conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, both making Met debuts. The international ensemble is led by the Slovak Stefan Margita as a sadistic confidence man, the American Willard White as a political detainee, the American Kurt Streit as one impenitent killer and the Swede Peter Mattei as another.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

New York City Opera opened its 2009-10 season on Thursday night with a celebratory program, "American Voices," and for once at an opening-night gala, there really was a great deal to celebrate. The company is back in business, and its long-imperfect home, the New York State Theater - now the David H. Koch Theater - has been extensively and attractively renovated, at a cost of $107 million.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Opening night at New York City Opera felt like New York City Opera can sometimes feel: like the Metropolitan Opera, but scrunched up. Rather than unfolding majestically along Lincoln Center like the Met's, City Opera's red carpet was crammed into the lobby. Then, when the gala ended, those who hadn't been invited to the post-concert dinner had to squeeze past tables crammed with flowers, candles, and salads before emerging into the cold November night.
— Read more at Zachary Woolfe - The New York Observer

Nature and nurture - and all the dark and unexpected places in between. Some - Duke Bluebeard's cellar - you may never want to return to; others might invoke smiles, even laughter. English National Opera's audacious double-bill turns expectation on its head and springs so many surprises that to write about it at all - and it isn't an easy event to capture in words - runs the risk of giving the entire game-plan away. So stop reading now if you want to keep that element of surprise intact and know that the five-star rating has as much to do with vision as accomplishment. It isn't a perfect evening - the dance half is controversial to say the least - but you come out of each "event" feeling, well, just about everything.
— Read more at The Independent

Shakespeare has nothing to do with Bellini's "I Capuleti e i Montecchi," which is based on a different version of the Romeo and Juliet story. But let's quote the Bard anyway: "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?"
Juliet is wondering how their love can be reconciled when Romeo is a Montague and she is a Capulet. Some observers might pose another question about Bellini's opera: why is Romeo sung by a woman?
— Read more at Donald Rosenberg - The Plain Dealer

Friday night the Madison Opera opened this season with a lavish production in Overture Hall of the perennial crowd-pleaser, Bizet's Carmen.
And a production to please it surely was. A set from the Austin Lyric Opera, basically a single-unit structure with variable parts, served the different settings of the four acts quite well. It allowed space for a huge cast not only of soloists and choristers, but an outsized troop of children, flamenco dancers, jugglers and diversely costumed extras. Costumes themselves, from the Utah Opera, were exceedingly, but appropriately, colorful.
— Read more at The Daily Page

Dominick Argento didn't see this coming.
"I've been sitting around waiting for 'Casanova' to open on Broadway," the composer said. "Artie Masella [a Hal Prince associate] thought it would make a terrific musical, but he hasn't found the angels yet."
— Read more at StarTribune.com

The New York City Opera - missing in action through the 2008-9 season as it grappled with a debilitating deficit and a chaotic leadership crisis - returns on Thursday evening with "American Voices," a gala program at its extensively renovated home, the David H. Koch Theater. There is no doubt what the main question hovering over the proceedings will be: How are the acoustics of the renovated hall?
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Opening night of New York City Opera's new season is Thursday. A longtime scrappy alternative to the plush Metropolitan Opera, the company has struggled to make a comeback after financial and artistic turmoil.
The New York City Opera makes its home on the plaza of Lincoln Center, right in the shadow of the Metropolitan Opera. But New York Times music critic Anthony Tommasini says there's always been room for two opera companies in town, because both have been so different.
— Hear more at NPR.org

Grammy-award winning mezzo-soprano Susan Graham just headlined a concert series six weeks ago with the San Francisco Symphony, which will be released on a CD as part of the SFS Mahler project. Obviously, we can't get enough of her: she returns this week to star in a concert version of Purcell's opera Dido and Aenas, with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. She chats about her upcoming Dido and looks back at her Mahler performance here.
— Read more at SFist.com

THE first rule of being a star is surely: don't make yourself too available. Keep your mystique and rarity value.
It's a rule that great soprano Renee Fleming has taken to heart. At last night's concert in the International Voices series she didn't actually appear until after the interval. Before that came an over-large hors d'oeuvres - Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet, played routinely by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Charles Dutoit.
— Read more at telegraph.co.uk

Fresh from her parallel U.S. debuts this past season with Washington National Opera and The Metropolitan Opera as Brunnhilde in Wagner's "Siegfried," Swedish soprano Irene Theorin returns.
This time she will perform two contrasting roles, the sprightly Ariadne in "Ariadne auf Naxos" by Richard Strauss and her profound Brunnhilde in a concert version of Wagner's "Gotterdammerung."
— Read more at Washington Examiner

The Met: HD Live in Schools, the acclaimed educational program that brings live transmissions of opera to students in 18 school districts in 13 states, kicks off its second season on Saturday, November 7, at 1:00 pm with Puccini's Turandot.
— Read more at broadwayworld.com

An expansive new production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Die Zauberflote, a co-production of Indiana University Opera Theater and The Atlanta Opera, will be premiered Nov. 13 at 8 p.m. at the Musical Arts Center in Bloomington. Additional performances in Bloomington are Nov. 14, 20 and 21.
— Learn more at IU News Room

It's taken a while and the final details aren't nailed down, but Portland Opera is "98 percent" likely to make its first commercial recording. The opera is "Orphee," Philip Glass' retelling of the Orpheus myth, which opens Friday.
— Read more at OregonLive.com

The good news: New York City Opera is back onstage, after a year of renovation and reorganization under new leadership. The equally good news is that the company is celebrating a robust return to its roots as an enterprise known for and dedicated to nurturing extraordinary young talent.
The names of singers who rose from the City Opera roster to become international stars form a long, long list. Among the best-known of these are the company's iconic Beverly Sills, as well Jose Carreras, Phyllis Curtin, David Daniels, Mark Delavan, Joyce DiDonato, Placido Domingo, Lauren Flanigan, Elizabeth Futral, Jerry Hadley, Catherine Malfitano, Bejun Mehta, Sherrill Milnes, Samuel Ramey, Norman Treigle, Tatiana Troyanos, and Carol Vaness, to name just a few. And it speaks volumes that several of these artists will return to perform in American Voices, City Opera's opening gala concert, on Nov. 5.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Credit where it's due to the diva who can leave an audience happy when for most of the evening they had been waiting for her to appear rather than applauding any actual singing. But even Renee Fleming's rather brittle conclusion to a bitty Festival Hall recital provoked coos of delight. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have one encore," she announced with brisk and rather over-efficient finality. Perhaps the fact that the single extra was Puccini's O mio babbino caro - delivered with delightfully cosy charm and all of the plush tone that is the Fleming calling card - was the reason why nobody minded.
Well, it was that sort of evening. It's possible that the 50-year-old Fleming (clad in a majestic creation by Vivienne Westwood, she looked at least ten years younger) is now husbanding some vocal resources - hence a more compact display of soprano lustre than her last London recital. But lustre there still was, and the gleam of undeniable star power.
— Read more at Times Online

Much ink has been spilled speculating on the strange life of Angela Gheorghiu. The Romanian soprano with a voice of seductively soft dark velvet is a creature of whims, caprices and volte-faces. Her supermodel looks and pencil-slim figure aside, the term "prima donna" could have been invented for her. The stories and the nicknames - Cruella de Vil, Madame Ceaucescu, Draculette - are legion. The sackings, the walkouts, the no-shows just keep on coming: Milan, Rome, Vienna, and Chicago have all experienced their Gheorghiu scandals.
— Read more at Rupert Christiansen - telegraph.co.uk

Not unlike the state of Texas, where she grew up, Susan Graham is a large and commanding presence. Tall and physically imposing, she sings with a tonal plushness and theatrical vigor that make every performance a potent spectacle.
This week, though, the mezzo-soprano will tone things down to a more intimate register. In her first appearance with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Graham will sing Dido in Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas," with Music Director Nicholas McGegan conducting.
— Read more at sfgate.com

There will be a recurring California motif at the National Endowment for the Arts' second annual NEA Opera Honors ceremony on Nov. 14 -- but there are no plans for the national radio broadcast of the musical proceedings and award presentations to grace Southern California's airwaves.
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

Robert Lepage has elevated the Metropolitan Opera's La Damnation de Faust to a new level--four of them, actually.
The set, introduced last year and revived this season, is four stories partitioned off by five columns, a Hollywood Squares-style wall backed with 24 cubicles of drama and activity. It's a captivating innovation for modern, plugged-in theatergoers used to watching multiple screens, browsers, tabs, and windows. The cells are configured to either frame the main scene, so viewers don't have to squint at tiny figurines parading around up- or down-stage, or flood the set with action on all four levels.
— Read more at Fast Company

Even opera productions that were strong to begin with can benefit from the new perspectives a later cast of singers bring to them. Such is the case at Lyric Opera of Chicago, where Joseph Kaiser and Kyle Ketelsen have taken over the roles of Faust and Mephistopheles, respectively, for the remaining performances of Gounod's "Faust" at the Civic Opera House.
Both the Canadian tenor and Iowa-born bass-baritone have promising careers ahead of them that can only benefit from major-company exposure. It doesn't hurt one bit that they are good-looking, cut athletic figures and are well-schooled young singing actors.
— Read more at chicagotribune.com

Simon Robey spends his days orchestrating mergers and acquisitions, and his evenings at the opera.
Robey is the head of Morgan Stanley U.K. and co-chairman of global mergers and acquisitions -- currently advising candy maker Cadbury Plc, which is resisting a takeover bid by Kraft Foods Inc. He also chairs London's Royal Opera House, and goes to its Covent Garden home as often as three nights a week.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

Writing to her sister Cassandra, Jane Austen - someone whose wisdom I hold in the highest regard - expected a performance of Arne's Artaxerxes to be "very tiresome". Being invincibly prejudiced against stiff-jointed baroque opera, I confess I did, too.
But in its quaint fashion, Artaxerxes proved to be charming. Although it's set to a translation of one of those formulaic opera seria texts about amorous intrigues and power struggles at a royal court, it is light-footed, colourfully orchestrated and full of good tunes that aren't done to death da capo: in fact, it has an insouciant element which reminded me more of The Beggar's Opera than of Handel's Italian jobs. The most famous number is probably the virtuosic The soldier tir'd - once a Joan Sutherland showpiece - but I was just as taken with the drooping O too lovely, which the programme essay suggests could have influenced the young Mozart.
— Read more at Rupert Christiansen - telegraph.co.uk

A nagging illness has forced renowned Canadian tenor Ben Heppner to withdraw from the Canadian Opera Company's upcoming 60th anniversary concert, for which he was considered among the major highlights.
The COC made the announcement over the weekend, with the concert slated for Nov. 7.
— Read more at CBC News

When tenor Jesus Leon learned that he had been selected - along with sopranos Angel Blue and Karen Vuong and baritone Andrew Fernando - to receive a Career Achievement Award of $5000 from the Opera Buffs, he went straight from the rehearsal hall to his computer. "Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!" he wrote the organization's Board President. "I have no words. Please thank everybody."
— Read more at California Chronicle

A few years ago, Sylvia McNair felt she had reached "the bottom of the bottom." Not long after discovering that her husband of two decades wanted out of their marriage, she learned that she had breast cancer and might have only six months to live.
Today, the Ohio-born soprano could not look healthier or happier as she rehearses a new work fashioned out of Kurt Weill songs and created expressly for her by the American Opera Theater; it premieres this week at Baltimore's Theatre Project.
— Read more at Tim Smith - baltimoresun.com

All sorts of images captivate the eyes and mind in the fresh production of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" that Opera Cleveland is performing this week and next to end its 2009 season at the State Theatre.
As Leporello catalogues his master's prodigious sexual exploits, Donna Elvira becomes draped in lists of female names that drop from the heavens. Surrounded by potential contenders for seduction, Giovanni sits on a crescent moon of phallic implications. He sings his alluring serenade while an enormous moon rises in the distance.
— Read more at Donald Rosenberg - cleveland.com

The opening of the AT&T Performing Arts Center's Winspear Opera House and Wyly Theatre has drawn attention in the national and international press. Critics from The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, London's Financial Times and Bloomberg News are among writers weighing in on the new buildings - and Dallas.
— Read more at Scott Cantrell - Dallas Morning News

The marvelous thing about John Steinbeck -- which you realize whether you read a grand work like "The Grapes of Wrath" or a more modest creation like "Of Mice and Men" -- is his unwavering authenticity of language and purpose. He may have a certain political point of view in his depictions of Depression-era America, but those back story prejudices never obstruct his essential imperative: to paint the truest picture possible of men and women set against a landscape that is both beautiful and bitter.
So it is, too, with Carlisle Floyd's opera "Of Mice and Men." Now 40 years old, it is one of those rare works that seem to defy the passage of time and trend.
— Read more at The Courier-Journal

[Washington National Opera has unveiled its complete schedule of events and activities - many of them free - for National Opera Week, kicking off Nov. 13.]
"National Opera Week is a wonderful opportunity to spotlight the many different ways that WNO serves the city of Washington, D.C.," stated WNO General Director Placido Domingo. "Opera is so much more than the grand productions performed on stage. Yes, it is entertainment and a beautiful synthesis of many art forms; but at WNO, opera is also an enrichment tool for our community and an educational medium for our young people.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

Everyone has probably had enough of the Great "Tosca" Scandal at the Met last month-the last-minute firings and hirings, the tit-for-tat between directors old and new, the funny business with prostitutes and stunt jumpers, and, of course, the boos-but I'd like to append a few miscellaneous last thoughts. First, let the record show that although most of the reviews tended negative-mine included-Luc Bondy's staging of the Puccini classic did have its advocates. Opera Chic, the mystery blogger of Milan, offered perhaps the most full-throated defense of Bondy's approach. Tim Smith, of the Baltimore Sun, also had approving words. James Jorden, writing at his Parterre blog and in the New York Post, distanced himself both from the production and from its attackers. Zachary Woolfe, the New York Observer's sharp new opera critic, performed a similar maneuver. The vigor of the discussion showed how much life resides in opera at the present time. No American arts audience is more hotly engaged.
— Read more at Alex Ross - The New Yorker

Washington National Opera's new production of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos puts me in a bit of a quandary. It has a score and libretto of particular beauty and is produced rarely enough -- the last time WNO mounted it was in 1994 -- that I would always recommend that others see it, even if this particular production, heard on Wednesday night, is not an ideal one. It is a shame that this quirky opera, revised by Strauss and his brilliant librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, as a postmodern dissection of the perils and vanities of creating opera, returns to Washington National Opera at this time.
— Read more at Charles Downey - DCist.com

The Dallas Opera attracted international attention in the 1960s and '70s with starry casts and a wide range of 18th- and 19th-century repertory. But by the 1980s, Houston Grand Opera was stealing headlines with a daring series of world premieres. With the opening of the Wortham Theater Center in 1987, HGO could present two operas on successive evenings, a feat impossible at Dallas' Fair Park Music Hall. Houston became the talked-about Texas opera destination.
Dallas hopes to even the competition with the new Winspear Opera House. As it happens, you can sample both Texas companies this week in heroic 19th-century operas: Otello in Dallas, Lohengrin in Houston.
— Read more at Scott Cantrell - Dallas Morning News

This is a delight. Mascagni wrote this enchanting bucolic comedy a year after Cavalleria rusticana. It suffers from an unusually daft, wafer-thin libretto in which the prosperous landowner Fritz overcomes his reluctance to marry when he meets the humble village maiden Suzel. Verdi harrumphed at the score's "modernist" dissonances, false modulations and interrupted cadences, but today the music seems freshly charming and exuberant, with the irresistible Act 2 "Cherry Duet" as its hit number.
— Read more at Rupert Christiansen - telegraph.co.uk

Reigning Wagnerian soprano Deborah Voigt presented an impressive array of musical jewels from the repertoire of both opera and art song in her Friday night recital at the Folly Theatre. Opera fans the world over have followed the rising star of the diva as she has taken on ever-increasingly difficult roles, and is now preparing to sing the role of Brunnhilde for the Met's 2012 production of the Ring Cycle. In her Kansas City recital for the Harriman-Jewell Series, Voigt shared an evening of intimate music-making with versatility that one would not expect to find from a specialist of dramatic opera. Nuance, engaging candor and honky tonk were but a few of the elements of the extraordinary evening.
— Read more at KansasCity.com

THE New York City Opera, ornery and independent as ever, opens its abbreviated fall season on Saturday evening in the newly renovated David H. Koch Theater with a revival of Hugo Weisgall's last opera, "Esther." "Inexplicable," a recent editorial in the influential British periodical Opera grumbled. Several American commentators seem equally baffled by the choice, an opera by a composer whose name is no longer familiar and whose music has long since fallen from fashion.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Molly Fillmore was flown in from Arizona yesterday to replace an ailing Nadja Michael as the lead in San Francisco Opera's Salome. General Director David Gockley, in his own inimitable way, took great pains to pronounce Michael's name correctly, and then told the audience we were about to hear and see "Molly Dill," even though he had a note in his hand. Thanks David- the season has been so strong thus far I haven't been able to say anything snarky about you lately, so I appreciate this opportunity and I'm sure Ms. Dill, I mean Ms. Fillmore, will get over it. I suppose there's a good reason there wasn't a cover already in place, but maybe that's besides the point.
— Read more at Mark Rudio - examiner.com