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David Gockley continues to make good on his promise to restore San Francisco Opera to its major-house status. In a fall season loaded with top-flight stars - Sondra Radvanovsky, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, and Stpehanie Blythe in Verdi's Il Trovatore; Matthew Polenzani and Anna Christy in Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio; Diana Damrau, Juan Diego Florez, Bruno Pratico, and Meredith Arwady in Donizetti's Daughter of the Regiment; Patricia Racette and Ewa Podles in the three one-acters of Puccini's Il Trittico; Nadja Michael and Greer Grimsley in Richard Strauss' Salome; and Johan Botha in Verdi's Otello - almost everyone lived up to their promise.
— Read more at The Bay Area Reporter

She is one of Canada's premier mezzo sopranos; Krisztina Szabo has performed with the Canadian Opera Company, the Chicago Opera Theatre, L'Opera de Montreal, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra - to name a few.
She's not intimidated by large audiences. And on the road, Szabo is taking on a new challenge - learning to drive a stick shift in her first car, a 2004 Honda Element.
— Read more at The Globe and Mail

"The Opera Show," the stunning international spectacle that is making waves across the globe, is making its debut performance in Jacksonville on Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010. at the Times Union Center's Moran Theater.
"The Opera Show" is a spectacle of the world's most seductive arias performed in colorful, breathtaking style for the 21st century. This ravishing, original production just completed a sold-out engagement in the United Kingdom and received rave notices.
— Read more at The Beaches Leader

With the kids already bored with their Zhu Zhu hamsters, it's high time the entire family had a between-holidays diversion. At the moment, I can't think of a better one than Light Opera Works' merry production of "The Pirates of Penzance," which settled into a weeklong run Saturday at Cahn Auditorium in Evanston.
The timing could hardly be more felicitous. Gilbert and Sullivan's imperishably popular operetta had its premiere in New York City on New Year's Eve 1879, which makes the new version, staged and choreographed by the company's artistic director, Rudy Hogenmiller, an appropriate 130th anniversary tribute.
— Read more at John von Rhein - chicagotribune.com

Young people ages 8 and up who like to sing and act will have the opportunity to perform on the stage of the Sarasota Opera House this spring.
Sarasota Youth Opera will enroll new singers from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Jan. 5.
— Read more at HeraldTribune.com

OPERA, not dance, first taught me how felicitous the conjunction of movement and music can be onstage. From a 1973 "Tosca" I could tell you on which phrase the singer Tito Gobbi timed which brilliant piece of acting (most chillingly, a sensuous, slow stroke of a feathered quill along Tosca's bare neck). From a 1975 "Rosenkavalier" I can never forget how Josephine Barstow as Octavian clenched her hands, in polite frustration, like fists - a tiny effect, yet scorching like a brand - on the penultimate note of her final line in Act I. Other examples stay in my head.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

The big news on the 2009 classical-music beat was the Dallas Opera's move into the acoustically superb, if logistically imperfect, Winspear Opera House.
After only four months as the company's fourth general director this decade, George Steel left to head New York City Opera. But the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, playing with new precision and depth under music director Jaap van Zweden, booked him through 2016.
— Read more at Scott Cantrell - Dallas Morning News

"We don't seem to make piracy pay" says Michael Cavalieri's Pirate King early on in Light Opera Works' Pirates of Penzance. Such a line had particular irony for Gilbert & Sullivan, since piracy of their works had become big business in America, where foreign copyrights were not recognized.
— Read more at Chicago Classical Review

Tracy Lee Glenn will join the staff of Opera Cleveland on Jan. 28. She will be responsible for growing annual fundraising as well as cultivating the company's funding from corporations, foundations and individuals.
— Read more at Crain's Cleveland Business

The Bronx Opera presents the New York Premiere of this merry musical tale of mistaken identity and secret romance in 17th century, Spain. "Pintos" concerns a fortune-hunter named Gaston, masquerading as husband-to-be Don Pinto in order to swindle wealthy arranged-marriage bride-to-be, Clarissa. He also employs her secret lover to swindle her father. So at once, there are three [Don] Pintos running around. Originally written by Carl Maria von Weber, the opera was finally completed by Gustav Mahler more than 60 years later.
— Read more at broadwayworld.com

Acclaimed mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato has just finished a series of performances as Rosina in Rossini's ever-popular Il barbiere di Siviglia in Los Angeles. It has been quite an amazing year for the charismatic American star, especially in regard to her interpretation of Rosina - one of her 'signature' roles. The production of Il barbiere in LA was the fifth for DiDonato for the year 2009, and the list of other venues includes several of the most important opera houses in the world.
— Read more at musicalcriticism.com

Every element of the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Offenbach's problematic masterpiece "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" ("The Tales of Hoffmann"), which opened on Dec. 3, has been chewed over by critics and opera lovers.
There have been pro, con and mixed reactions to the director Bartlett Sher's phantasmagorical production; to the impassioned singing of the Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja in the daunting title role; and to James Levine's weighty, detailed conducting of this stylistically eclectic and elegant music. (For the performances at the Met on Saturday night and Wednesday, the conductor John Keenan takes the podium; Mr. Levine returns for the final "Hoffmann" on Jan. 2.)
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Richard Strauss' monumental Elektra returned to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City on December 10.
The production, designed by Otto Schenk, with sets and costumes by Jurgen Rose and lighting by Gil Wechsler, was originally unveiled in 1992, and featured the late Hildegard Behrens in the title role.
— Read more at MusicalCriticism.com

Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb told the New York Times today that the company is considering the possibility of reviving its recently retired production of Franco Zeffirelli's Tosca during the 2010-11 season. According to Gelb, the Zeffirelli staging would potentially run in tandem with a revival of the contentious Luc Bondy staging of Puccini's opera that opened the current season, though Gelb told the Times that a final decision would be made before the company announces its complete 2010-11 season in February.
— Read more at Opera News

It takes guts to stage an opera in a working man's pub in an Irish part of London, but the Cock Tavern Theater Company's production of Puccini's "La Boheme," in English and updated for modern audiences, has audiences mesmerized.
— Read more at Reuters.com

This is rather funny, actually. Dan Wakin, the intrepid New York Times reporter who covers (and uncovers) the classical music scene, reports that "the Metropolitan Opera is considering bringing back its Franco Zeffirelli production of 'Tosca' next season to run in tandem with the new version directed by Luc Bondy, which was introduced to boos and reviewer scorn in September."
— Read more at Tim Smith - The Baltimore Sun

[First-rate acting and singing buoys Bartlett Sher's new production of Offenbach's subliminal tales]
Much of Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann ("Tales of Hoffmann") remains shrouded in a fog of uncertainty. The same can be said, perhaps, of E.T.A. Hoffmann's bizarre tales upon which the opera is based. In this new Metropolitan Opera production, Director Bartlett Sher takes a cue from Stanley Kubrick and keeps the ambiguities intact, leaving it to the observer to connect the dots. When Sher's psychoanalytical journey into Hoffmann's unconscious came to a conclusion, I felt certain about one thing only: Imaginative staging, superior singing and convincing acting add up to good theater - and even better opera.
— Read more at David Abrams - cnycafemomus.com

Fans of Richard Strauss' operas do not suffer weak singers gladly, which is why productions of his "Salome" and "Elektra" are not as frequently seen as works with less demanding roles. To be heard over this composer's enormously powerful music is a daunting challenge for singers, particularly sopranos who take on the title roles in these relentlessly grim classics.
— Read more at NewsTimes.com

The Metropolitan Opera is considering bringing back its Franco Zeffirelli production of "Tosca" next season to run in tandem with the new version directed by Luc Bondy, which was introduced to boos and reviewer scorn in September.
"There's a strong possibility, but there's a possibility it won't come back," said Peter Gelb, the Met's general manager, speaking of Mr. Zeffirelli's lavish production. "It's certainly been talked about."
— Read more at Dan Wakin - NYTimes.com

Few broadcasts have endured as long as the live transmissions from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. Jan. 12 will mark the 100th anniversary of the first live transmission of opera via radio.
Radio pioneer Lee De Forest was an opera lover. The May 1907 prospectus of his Radio Telephone Company said, "It will soon be possible to distribute grand opera music from transmitters placed on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House by a Radio Telephone station on the roof to almost any dwelling in greater New York and vicinity."
— Read more at broadcastengineering.com

Star tenor Placido Domingo regaled a crowd in frigid Mexico City with a weekend Christmas concert under the gilded iconic El Angel statue in a central part of the city.
Tens of thousands of people, by the city's count, crowded into the Angel plaza and along the central Paseo de la Reforma boulevard for half a mile to hear the free concert Saturday night.
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

Mary Curtis-Verna, a Metropolitan Opera soprano of the 1950s and '60s who became famous for stepping into the roles of ailing, stranded or otherwise indisposed divas, often on only a few hours' notice, died on Dec. 4 at her home in Seattle. She was 88.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

For 23 years Elena Doria coached, cajoled, hectored and inspired the children of the Metropolitan Opera chorus, earning near-legendary status among many regular operagoers and the musically inclined families who sent their young ones into her care.
But not this season. Ms. Doria departed abruptly in January, with no public announcement from the Met. Anthony Piccolo, who led the New York City Opera children's chorus, stepped in and has been appointed full time to the job.
— Read more at Daniel J. Wakin - NYTimes.com

He made his Covent Garden debut all but unnoticed, as the Singer at the Marschallin's levee in a glamorous Rosenkavalier starring Susan Graham in the title role and Renee Fleming as his aristocratic sugar mummy in 2000. Almost 10 years later, Piotr Beczala - his Christian name, Polish and Russian for Peter, sounds as it is spelt; his surname is pronounced "Betchowa" - is arguably the hottest lyric tenor on the international circuit.
— Read more at Hugh Canning - Times Online

'Rufus Wainwright: Prima Donna' is being pitched as a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the singer-songwriter's first opera, which premiered last summer at the Manchester International Festival. As promised, the documentary includes much footage of laborious scoring sessions and intense workshops that illuminate the steep learning curve for a pop artist stepping into the opera world.
— Read more at The Boston Globe

Less than two weeks after exhuming its twenty-five-year old production of Der Rosenkavalier, the Royal Opera digs even deeper into its vault to dust off John Copley's 1974 safely traditional but perfectly effective version of La Boheme.
— Read more at Rupert Christiansen - telegraph.co.uk

Perry Lorenzo, known to thousands as Seattle Opera's education director, died over the weekend, succumbing to lung cancer. He was 51.
Perry joined the Opera in 1992, after ten years at Burien's Kennedy High School. Very quickly, he transformed the education department: His standing-room-only preview lectures became a sold-out $5 ticket, and helped fund the beginnings of a Young Artists Program, which over the years has become of the country's leading opera training programs.
— Read more at The SunBreak

The faltering economy hit Baltimore's arts community hard this year. The cruelest blow came in May, when the Baltimore Opera Company was liquidated, right down to sets and costumes in storage and posters on office walls. Various factions of board, staff and patrons should have come together to find a way to save the historic company, but the odds were formidable.
— Read more at Tim Smith - baltimoresun.com

Wagner nights are not as traditional as Christmas, but have a long, cosy history, going back to Victorian times. Because Wagner did not write concert music, Siegfried Idyll apart, it is necessary to offer a carnivorous menu of "bleeding chunks" from the operas. It is true that the overtures and preludes are frequently performed in concert, and one could enjoy a programme made only from them, so marvellous are they, so resonant with dramatic context.
— Read more at Times Online

Before Susan Boyle made a name for herself on " Britain's Got Talent," there was Paul Potts. The former cell phone salesman and amateur opera singer won the first season of the talent show in 2007 and sparked interest and controversy. Some naysayers said he was a working musician and should have been disqualified from the competition. In truth, Potts did have stage experience, but he had never received payment for his work.
— Read more at chicagotribune.com

For Michael Niemann, singing was like breathing. But when a devastating diagnosis crippled his vocal cords, the 41-year-old former New York City opera singer turned to an experimental treatment.
In 2007, Niemann was diagnosed with a rare disease called papillomatosis, recurring benign growths in the voice box, which made it impossible to sing and nearly impossible to speak.
— Read more at ABC News

On one level, Renee Fleming's eloquent recital at the Lyric Opera House Thursday night was just that - a solo performance by a pulchritudinous and ever-engaging soprano, one of the biggest vocal stars on the world stage today. But the event also carried a certain symbolic weight.
— Read more at Tim Smith - The Baltimore Sun

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Engelbert Humperdinck's opera "Hansel and Gretel," the familiar story of hunger, kidnapping, cannibalism and witch burning, is perhaps a strange work to have become a Christmas staple. Richard Jones's deliciously dark production, which returned to the Metropolitan Opera on Monday, doesn't tone down the less savory aspects of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale that inspired it.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

I went to both New York City Opera productions -- Don Giovanni and Hugo Weisgall's Esther -- in their fall season, their first since returning from the abyss.
And good news -- the company is definitely back. Definitely a sense of something going on, both onstage and in the house. You could love or not love what you saw. I didn't love Esther as an opera, for instance (far from it), but it was sung, staged, and played (by the orchestra) really well.
— Read more at Greg Sandow - artsjournal.com

Director Bartlett Sher's dark new staging of "Les Contes d'Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann)" reflects Offenbach's opera through the prism of Kafka and Fellini, will not be to everyone's liking.
Sher regularly directed for the Idaho Shakespeare Festival from 1992 to 1999, creating visceral, deftly constructed productions such as "Richard III," "Cymbeline" and "Titus Andronicus."
— Read more at Idaho Statesman

When the Gramophone Company wanted to record soprano Adelina Patti in 1905, the then 62-year-old diva insisted it truck its equipment hundreds of miles to her castle in Wales. The resulting discs broke all sales records for an industry then in its infancy.
Recitals by opera sopranos have been a staple of recording ever since, and though the industry is now in its dotage, with one foot in the grave, the love affair with the diva carries on.
— Read more at Reuters

Glimmerglass Opera has reduced its 2010 operating expenses by nearly 20 percent in order to balance the company's budget, according to a statement released Monday.
The company's board of trustees recently approved a $5.6 million budget, which is about $1 million less than in recent years.
— Read more at Cooperstown Crier

Susan Bullock makes an honorable assault on the impossible title role in the current Metropolitan Opera revival of Richard Strauss'"Elektra." But the real vocal thrills are provided by another soprano, Deborah Voigt, in a glorious return to one of her best roles as the heroine's sister, Chrysothemis.
— Read more at sfgate.com

The American mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe can portray a range of characters with compelling immediacy and subtle differentiation. But formidability is a constant whether she is singing the scolding goddess Fricka in Wagner's "Ring" cycle, the vengeful gypsy Azucena in Verdi's "Il Trovatore," or the haughty Principessa in Puccini's "Suor Angelica" (the second of three one-acts composing his "Il Trittico"). It is also a quality that Ms. Blythe herself evinces, for she is blunt and assured offstage, too.
— Read more at David Mermelstein - WSJ.com

Susan Bullock makes an honourable assault on the impossible title role in the current Metropolitan Opera revival of Richard Strauss' "Elektra." But the real vocal thrills are provided by another soprano, Deborah Voigt, in a glorious return to one of her best roles as the heroine's sister, Chrysothemis.
Bullock, an English soprano making her Met debut, sounded pressed to the limit - and occasionally beyond - in the second of six performances Tuesday night. That's understandable: Elektra is on stage during virtually all 100 minutes of the one-act opera, and it's a rare singer indeed who can muster the volume to cut through Strauss' heavy orchestration, hurl out daunting high Bs and Cs, and then switch to passages of melting lyricism.
— Read more at Brandon Sun Online

Beethoven's birthday came early this year, as the Eccles Foundation gave $1 million to the financially beleaguered Utah Symphony | Utah Opera to help sustain the viability of the state's largest performing arts organization.
This morning, as classical music fans celebrate the 239-year anniversary of Beethoven's birth, Spencer F. Eccles, chairman and CEO of the George S. and Dolores Dore Eccles Foundation, will present the grant to symphony musicians at Abravanel Hall in Salt Lake City.
— Read more at Salt Lake Tribune

Richard Strauss's Elektra fairly crackles, sings and explodes off a stage with gripping, ironic ambiguities. All pervasive, these ambiguities constitute one of the distinguishing hallmarks of Elektra in comparison to Salome. Salome's erotic motivations, for example, are clear. By contrast, Elektra's sexual motivations and frustrations are not subject to tidy definitions or understanding. Furthermore, the transmogrifications of diatonic harmonies in Elektra - so far evolved beyond those in Salome - potently convey the ambiguities of Elektra's destabilized mental state.
— Read more at Opera News

From Seven in One Blow to Snow White and now Hansel and Gretel, the Brothers Grimm have defined my December. Grandest and "Grimmest" of all is the last, presented by the Metropolitan Opera in a gorgeous English-language production by Richard Jones that originated at the Welsh National Opera and first ran at the Met in 2007.
— Read more at Blogcritics.org

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a $14 million private bond offering on Tuesday, secured by a lease of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, to support the Los Angeles Opera.
The unusual and apparently last-minute request for the board's support was required for the LA Opera to meet its debts and maintain a letter of credit, which would otherwise expire next Tuesday, according to opera Chief Operating Officer Steve Rountree.
— Read more at San Marino Tribune

Years after writing his opera "Elektra," Strauss admitted that the singing was often "handicapped by instrumental polyphony." He jokingly suggested that the orchestral part be conducted like Mendelssohn's "fairy music" to allow the soloists to be better heard.
When Otto Schenk's production of "Elektra" returned to the Metropolitan Opera on Thursday evening, the conductor Fabio Luisi highlighted startling subtleties in his exciting reading of the complex score, which still sounds as astonishing as it must have at its premiere in 1909.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Rufus Wainwright's debut opera, "Prima Donna," now has a director for its North American premiere next year in Toronto.
Tim Albery, who lives in Toronto and has directed at the Canadian Opera Company, will helm the show when it premieres at the Elgin Theatre June 14 as part of the Luminato arts festival.
— Read more at CTV News

[A look back at ten years of opera]
It was a decade in which our opera companies finally got their bricks and mortar sorted out. Ten years ago this month, the Royal Opera House reopened after an expensive and controversial redevelopment. But the scheme has proved a triumph - the organisation has remained constantly in the black, drawing 90 per cent overall attendances - and, under the strong direction of conductor Antonio Pappano and administrator Elaine Padmore, the Royal Opera has made the most of its magnificent new premises.
— Read more at Rupert Christiansen - telegraph.co.uk

Arts managers are calling it "the Great Recession," and it has been brutal for opera, the most rarified (and expensive) of all the arts. But the Atlanta Opera plans to stay afloat despite announcing Thursday that it will perform just three operas next season.
General director Dennis Hanthorn said total ticket sales, including subscriptions and single-tickets, dropped 19 percent over the past two seasons, while fundraising revenue has decreased 13 percent. (The current season will continue as planned: "Aida" opens Feb. 27 and "The Magic Flute" opens April 24.)
— Read more at ajc.com

The last time Renee Fleming sang at Baltimore's Lyric Opera House, in December 2007, she heard something that superstar sopranos typically don't encounter - a wailing alarm bell, set off accidentally backstage. She was right in the middle of one of the most intensely moving scenes in the operatic repertoire, the "Willow Song" and "Ave Maria" from Verdi's "Otello."
Fleming went silent, the orchestra went silent, and a packed house at this fundraising concert for the Baltimore Opera Company waited for the nuisance to cease. When the bell was finally turned off, the singer smiled and, before picking up where she left off, said, "You'll remember this."
— Read more at Tim Smith - baltimoresun.com

A word of warning. If you hate operatic cliches, give Verdi's "Simon Boccanegra" a pass.
No amount of wonderful music hides the fact that this work is riddled with the stuff that opera haters love to hate, and so it was in Saturday night's production at the Vienna State Opera.
— Read more at The Associated Press

Opera purists often turn their noses up at Andrea Bocelli. But for a great many people, he is opera. For better or for worse, Bocelli -- who has made a career out of moving between classical and pop -- represents the closest thing to opera that most people will ever experience.
No stranger to Southern California, Bocelli is in town this weekend to appear at the Honda Center in Anaheim on Sunday evening. The Italian tenor will perform a set of holiday music from his latest album, "My Christmas," which was released in November. He is also expected to perform operatic arias and duets.
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

The young mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton positions herself as a barrel of laughs. She clearly loves to be onstage, and to be cute. When she was among the winners of the Met Auditions in 2007, she sang the Witch's aria from "Hansel and Gretel," an unusual but very character-ful choice -- not unlike auditioning for a drama competition with a Carol Burnett monologue. At her recital at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater on Thursday night, presented by the Vocal Arts Society in collaboration with the Marilyn Horne Foundation, she showed the same penchant for mugging. She's got a big voice, and she sings very well, but she's happiest when she's playing to the crowd.
— Read more at Anne Midgette - washingtonpost.com

[from press release]
Cantata Singers is pleased to announce that Jeffry George, former Managing Director of Theatre Aspen in Aspen, Colorado, has been appointed to the position of Executive Director.
George replaces former Executive Director, Lisa Stiller, who served the organization for nine years.
Mr. George comes to the Cantata Singers from years of non-profit management in theatrical production. Of note is his recent success as Managing Director of the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre in Wellfleet, MA. During his tenure at W.H.A.T. he and Artistic Director, Jeff Zinn opened the new state-of-the-art Julie Harris stage growing the company into a three venue operation offering theatrical, musical, and performance art productions.
— Learn more at cantatasingers.org

If the critics are right, La Scala's production of Bizet's "Carmen" could well give new force to the role of women in Italian opera.
They cited Sicilian-born Emma Dante's "truthful" and "concentrated" staging coupled with the triumphant premiere of 25-year-old Georgian Anita Rachvelishvili in the title role at the famed Milanese opera house.
— Read more at The Associated Press

Opera To Go will present a pair of world premiere one-act operas with four performances over the next two weekends. "The Last Leaf" and "The Gift of the Magi" by Michael Chordas will be performed at 8 p.m. on Dec. 12, 18 and 19 and at 3 p.m. on Dec. 20 at the Thunder Mountain High School Auditorium.
Both operas are based on short stories by nineteenth century author O. Henry, famous for his surprise endings.
— Read more at CapitalCityWeekly.com

Los Angeles Opera asked for and received a $14-million emergency loan from Los Angeles County on Tuesday to keep it afloat through the middle of next year.
The loan "is needed now, literally next week," Stephen Rountree, chief executive of both the opera company and its landlord, the Music Center, told the Board of Supervisors at its Tuesday meeting. The company is $20 million in debt, Rountree said.
— Read more at latimes.com

On December 29, the Symphony Space in New York will come alive with The After Dinner Opera Company's 60th anniversary premiere of The Day Boy and the Night Girl. The three-act opera by Jordan Wentworth Farrar is a modern adaptation of a classic Victorian fable written by George MacDonald.
The Day Boy and the Night Girl tells the timeless tale of a young boy named Phytogen and a young girl named Nycteris. Unfortunately, the pair is condemned by the magic of a she-wolf named Watho. Phytogen's supernatural affliction prevents him from seeing night while Nycteris is unable to see the light of day. This modified masterpiece spawned from Wentworth's imaginative recollection of hearing the story in her childhood. "I wanted to take the premise of the book and make it my own," she says.
— Read more at Digital City

Plans for a northern base for the Royal Opera House have moved a step forward after an arts centre withdrew its opposition to the plan.
The Royal Opera House plans to establish a presence at Manchester's Palace Theatre.
— Read more at BBC News

The Amore Opera Company, formed by members of New York's former Amato Opera, will debut tonight at 7:30, with a fully staged production of Puccini's "La Boheme," to be performed throughout December and early January.
— Read more at NJ.com

The Atlanta Opera will clip its budget by nearly 22 percent and cut one production next fiscal year due to the recession, the organization said Thursday.
Its next fiscal year starts July 1, 2010.
— Read more at Atlanta Business Chronicle:

Operagoers got a flashback to 1998 at the Metropolitan Opera last Thursday. It was the beginning of the second act of the Met's new production of Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann, directed by Bartlett Sher. The curtain rose on an almost bare stage. Against a background of rich, dark blue, a white panel slowly began to descend from the flies.
— Read more at Zachary Woolfe - The New York Observer

A week or so after Washington National Opera announced staff cuts and a reduction in productions next season to help keep the finances in order, the Los Angeles Opera, which also has superstar tenor Placido Domingo as general director, went with cup in hand to the local government. The Los Angeles County supervisors approved a $14 million loan loan Tuesday. The main reason for the bailout is said to be the cost of the LA Opera's "Ring" Cycle, which will be presented in the spring.
— Read more at Tim Smith - The Baltimore Sun

Live broadcasts of opera in HD are not an unalloyed good. It's exciting to have a window into the world's great opera houses. It's depressing to realize just how many really bad directors there are out there.
On Monday, starting at 11 a.m. Central Time, audiences from around the world could see an atrocious production of Georges Bizet's Carmen at La Scala as it was committed at the famed company's opening night.
— Read more at STLtoday.com

Puccini didn't write any music for police sirens, but their appearance in the tender first act of La Boheme is by no means offputting once you get used to them. In fact they feel completely appropriate for the dodgy area in which the louche flat of our four bohemians is located. The composer had in mind the Left Bank in Paris, but the opera translates remarkably well to the upstairs room of the Cock Tavern in Kilburn, north-west London, where a young cast are rehearsing for next week's opening, accompanied by sirens screeching through an open window.
— Read more at The Guardian

The operatic repertoire is full of passion, suspense and dizzying turns of fortune - kind of like what's been going on at LA Opera, which is fending off financial uncertainty even as it gears up for its most ambitious year ever.
Los Angeles County stepped onto center stage in the hero's role on Tuesday, guaranteeing a $14 million loan to keep the opera afloat.
— Read more at zev.lacounty.gov

Although not nearly as controversial as its season-opening production of "Tosca," the Metropolitan Opera's new staging of "The Tales of Hoffmann" is generating diverse views on the singing (the distinctive sound of tenor Joseph Calleja, who has the title role, will probably always divide listeners) and the production concept by Broadway vet Bartlett Sher.
— Read more at Tim Smith - The Baltimore Sun

He's already done the Vatican. So don't be surprised if Milan's famed La Scala opera house doesn't turn up in Dan Brown's next thriller.
''It is quite possible. I'm mesmerized by this,'' Brown said during an intermission at the gala season opening of "Carmen" at La Scala. Brown has been in Italy promoting his latest book, ''The Lost Symbol,'' and doing research for his next one.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Renee Fleming surprised us on Sunday night. Walking onto the Zellerbach Hall stage for her virtually sold-out Cal Performances recital, ensconced in a form-fitting, gorgeous green dress that would be the envy of any prom queen, she looked as beautiful as ever. But no one expected her, after she took her place alongside the piano, to pick up a microphone and address the audience.
— Read more at San Francisco Classical Voice

Rolando Villazon is planning to sing in his first opera since undergoing surgery on his vocal cords, Agence France-Presse reported. The Vienna State Opera said that Mr. Villazon, the tenor, would sing the role of Nemorino in a one-time performance of Donizetti's "Elisir d'Amore" on March 22.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Georges Bizet's tale of love, jealousy and murder will open the opera season on Monday evening at Milan's La Scala to the delight of the glamorous and great.
Conductor Daniel Barenboim has promised that his "Carmen" will have "a knife at her throat all the time" she treads the boards for the start of La Scala's 2009-2010 season.
— Read more at Yahoo!Xtra News

One searches for images to describe the voice of Renee Fleming, as so many have been expended through the years. But as her Sunday night recital in Berkeley was winding down, with the audience cheering in Zellerbach Hall, the obligatory bouquet of roses was delivered to the soprano as she took her bows.
And, well, there it was: Her voice is like an abundance of fresh roses. The listener, breathing in its fragrance, can't escape the sumptuousness, the physicality of the voice. It's a perfect match, say, for the rarefied and mystical songs of French composer Olivier Messiaen, which grow lusciously ephemeral when given the Fleming treatment.
— Read more at San Jose Mercury News

The tenor Rolando Villazon is planning to sing in his first opera since undergoing surgery on his vocal cords, Agence France-Presse reported. The Vienna State Opera said that Mr. Villazon will sing the role of Nemorino in a one-time performance of Donizetti's "L'Elisir d'Amore" on March 22. He is then scheduled to sing the role of Lensky in Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin" at the Berlin State Opera on March 26 and 31 and April 2.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

With opera attendance down some 34 percent over the last six years, New York's storied Metropolitan Opera is asking how it can help keep a cherished art form not only alive, but thriving.
— Hear more at PBS NewsHour

I'm sure I do not need to tell the mostly New-York based readers of parterre this, but Turandot is an opera that can really be turned into a pageant. Not that that's a bad thing. It is, after all a fairy tale, and so when directors attempt to delve deep into the psychology of Puccini's icy Princess and her unnamed-for-two-and-a-half-acts Prince, they tend to come up short on actual ideas and long on self-indulgent concepts grafted onto the work. (David Pountney's production from Vienna, also available on DVD, is a clear-cut example of this problem.)
— Read more at parterre box

The story of the creation of the Sydney Opera House is just like a dramatic opera, says Ann Toltz, who is guiding me around the striking building that dominates Sydney Harbour.
"It has all the twists and turns and dramatic goings-on - even some scandal."
— Read more at NZ Herald News

There is much to cheer about in the Metropolitan Opera's phantasmagorical new production of Offenbach's "Contes d'Hoffmann" ("Tales of Hoffmann"), which opened on Thursday night.
As conceived, this production was to have featured the tenor Rolando Villazon as the poet, wild-eyed dreamer and delusional lover Hoffmann. When Mr. Villazon, in the midst of a vocal crisis, pulled out last spring, the young Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja, who had never sung this daunting role, accepted the assignment.
— Read more at Anthony Tommasini - NYTimes.com

On Friday night, soprano Renee Fleming showed Seattle exactly how a world-class diva makes an entrance. By the time she appeared onstage at Benaroya 15 minutes past the hour - resplendent in a peacock-green gown with gold filigree sparkling around her neck and fingers - the audience was about to burst with anticipation.
— Read more at Seattle Times

Orchestra members at Lyric Opera of Chicago have overwhelmingly approved a new three-year contract with the opera company, ending a strike threat.
Cellist William Cernota of the Lyric Orchestra Members Committee of the Chicago Federation of Musicians said Friday's union vote was 70-1 in favor of the new contract worked out Thursday night.
— Read more at chicagotribune.com

A HOUSE divided, two self-described families laying claim to the honored legacy of one: on a surface level, the competing arrivals of the Bleecker Street Opera and the Amore Opera could be the stuff of a libretto. Both companies grew out of the Amato Opera, a feisty, much-loved troupe founded in 1948 by the impresario and conductor Anthony Amato with his wife, Sally Amato. Mr. Amato closed the company in June, to the shock of many.
— Read more at Steve Smith - NYTimes.com

Before Oct. 17, 1963, the Vancouver Opera was a three-year-old company of regional consequence with an eight-production history. And then the Queen Elizabeth Theatre curtain rose on a production of Bellini's Norma that became the stuff of legend.
— Read more at thestar.com

The last time Los Angeles opera-goers saw the buffa Barber of Seville was way back in 2003. That turgid production buried Gioachino Rossini in heavy period costumes and polite stage business.
What a difference six years makes. An exuberant new production designed by Emilio Sagi and imported from the Teatro Real in Madrid opened recently at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Downtown Los Angeles, where it continues through Dec. 19. It is fast and fun, and would be frivolous if it were not so visually exciting and musically adept.
— Read more at Los Angeles Downtown News

Los Angeles Opera's latest production of "The Barber of Seville," heard in its second performance Wednesday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, is a charmer and a dazzler. Rossini's comedic masterpiece rarely fails to give pleasure, but this is something else, something extra.
The cast included three young stars, two of them in their company debuts, who mostly delivered the sparkling goods. The chance to hear Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Florez and American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato in the flesh provided special interest.
— Read more at Timothy Mangan - The Orange County Register

Soprano Renee Fleming launched her West Coast recital tour at the Orpheum Tuesday night with a confident, uncompromising program of largely unfamiliar repertoire.
Fleming began with perhaps the most astonishing music of the evening, five songs from Olivier Messiaen's Poems pour Mi.
— Read more at vancouversun.com

"The Merry Widow" will dance her opening night waltz as scheduled at the Civic Opera House Saturday evening.
Despite an escalating war of words between Lyric Opera of Chicago and the players committee of the company's 76-member orchestra, a possible strike by the instrumentalists has been averted less than 48 hours before members of the Chicago Federation of Musicians were set to walk out.
— Read more at CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

When no young woman worthy of being named the virtuous May queen can be found, Albert Herring's neighbors, to his mortification, name him instead.
Albert's coming-of-age story, in which he sets out to free himself from his mother's strict rule and his own squeaky clean reputation, makes for a compelling, character-driven drama - though the 20th-century British composer Benjamin Britten crafted the tale into a colorful, energetic comic opera.
— Read more at NJ.com

Renee Fleming is star enough to sing anything she wants, as her concert for the Vancouver Recital Series at the Orpheum Theatre showed on Tuesday. The leading American soprano - who has an iris and a dessert named after her, whose concert gowns have been specially designed by some of the top names in fashion (she wore a different one in each half of the concert), who has her own perfume and regularly hosts live opera broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera - is probably as visible to the general public as an opera singer can be. Fleming's adventurous program,
— Read more at The Globe and Mail

Despite the naysayers, New York City Opera has rebounded. At least for now.
Just a year ago the company was rudderless, mired in debt, dipping into its endowment and nearly defunct. But it ended the fall half of its season in late November with a sold-out performance of Christopher Alden's eerie, sexy and inventively modern production of Mozart's "Don Giovanni."
— Read more at NYTimes.com

The Chicago Federation of Musicians and the committee representing the 76 members of the Lyric Opera Orchestra said Wednesday they will strike the opening performance of Lehar's "The Merry Widow" if a new labor agreement is not reached by curtain time Saturday night.
"Contract negotiations are stalled despite recent negotiating sessions and the assistance of a federal mediator," said cellist William Cernota, chair of the members committee, in a statement. "We've offered meaningful concessions for the first years of a multiyear contract but want Lyric to compensate us for those concessions in the latter contract years. Lyric adamantly refuses to do so.
— Read more at John von Rhein - chicagotribune.com

French coloratura soprano Manon Strauss Evrard makes her fourth Virginia Opera appearance in Donizetti's "The Daughter of the Regiment," the company's first production of the opera sung in French.
It arrives at George Mason University Center for the Arts direct from performances in Norfolk and Richmond and rave reviews for Evrard as the spirited young Marie. Earlier in the week, the French Embassy hosts Evrard and cast members for an evening of French arias.
— Read more at Washington Examiner

Last week, on one of his rare evenings not spent in makeup sweating under a spotlight, Placido Domingo watched from a luxury box as the resurgent L.A. Lakers dusted off the New York Knicks 100-90 at Staples Center. Down on the floor, Domingo's friend and fellow Spaniard, the power forward and center Pau Gasol, who was back in action after missing the Lakers' first 11 games with a pulled hamstring, helped lift the home team with 11 points and 16 rebounds.
— Read more at latimes.com

Following weeks of rumors about serious financial difficulty, the Washington National Opera on Monday announced cutbacks, not only to staff, but also to programming for next season. The 2010-11 season will present only five operas, down from six this season and seven in 2008-09.
The company is also eliminating eight staff positions and shuffling at least one. Mark Weinstein, brought in as executive director in 2008, "will be focusing exclusively on fundraising and broad-range financial strategic planning," according to a statement by the opera's president, Kenneth R. Feinberg. Weinstein will retain his title through the end of this season, Feinberg explained in a subsequent telephone conversation.
— Read more at Anne Midgette - washingtonpost.com

Anna Netrebko is a very good, very famous singer. It feels almost heretical to ask her about the way in which her dazzling career might, at some point, wind down. But at the pinnacle of success, still young at 38, she has already given the matter some thought.
— Read more at Zachary Woolfe - The New York Observer

Los Angeles Opera's cute, clever new production of "The Barber of Seville," which opened Sunday afternoon at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, includes spectacular singing from talented, agile comedians. The costumes are witty. The spirit is light. The pratfalls are plentiful. The jokes are many. Rossini's popular opera is for everyone, and everyone on stage seemed to have quite a time.
And I'll say this for Emilio Sagi's production, which was imported from Teatro Real Madrid and turned over to Javier Ulacia to stage in L.A.: It is cunningly critic proof. If I hope to include as few spoilers as possible, I should reveal practically nothing.
— Read more at Mark Swed - Los Angeles Times

Twitter may or may not be the next new thing in Internet culture. Some people continue to scratch their heads over its usefulness as a social-networking tool.
Messaging to a wide audience in 140 characters or less? Yes, it can be fun and instantaneous and movingly serendipitous as we go about our lives. Nonetheless, in a way it feels so retro, like some updated version of the old-school telegraph. At least one fearless novelist has been issuing his precious prose in such periodic brief bursts. Imagine yourself in some 19th-century way station, reading a Dickens novel as it came over the wire.
— Read more at KansasCity.com

In 1927 the Mariinsky Theatre in Leningrad became only the third opera house to stage Alban Berg's "Wozzeck," after the opera's 1925 premiere in Berlin and a production in Prague. Berg himself was there and wired his wife that the performance was a "huge, tumultuous success." He was impressed by the Russians' appreciation of modern music. Shostakovich, then just 20, met him and attended all the performances - eight or nine, according to his memoirs.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

One of the biggest and brightest music superstars to grace our pre-Olympic season, soprano Renee Fleming sings Tuesday at the Orpheum in a demanding program of art songs and operatic arias.
It won't do to call Fleming a down-to-earth diva. One glance at her promo pictures, or one glimpse of her on television, demonstrates that she is the contemporary incarnation of the potent combination of glamour and artistry that pretty much defines the whole diva concept.
— Read more at vancouversun.com

Generally reliable sources report a shakeup at Washington National Opera. From what I can gather, it looks like the financial picture is cloudy enough to necessitate a reduction in the number of productions next season (for the second year in a row), a reduction in staff, and a reshuffling of management.
Although Mark Weinstein has been credited with strengthening WNO's financial picture since becoming executive direction in Feb. 2008 (he streamlined the staff a few months into the job and advocated postponing the company's planned "Ring" Cycle because of insufficient funding), he will apparently be moved out of that job (not necessarily out of the company). No sign of any changes to Placido Domingo's role as general director.
— Read more at Tim Smith - The Baltimore Sun

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

Vancouver Opera's production of Bellini's iconic Norma is as conventional as it could be. Its mist-ridden, craggy peaks in an indigo sky and heavy walls in stone and timber are stock sets for gloomy 19th-century tragedy, and its costumes are vintage opera - dark gowns and cloaks, Roman military gear and Druid's robes in layered, dishwater linens. Singers, too, move like pawns in an opera board game, forward and back with sudden stops and abrupt tosses of the head, melodramatic arm gestures choreographed to orchestral swipes, arias sung with hands at the side and eyes to the front.
— Read more at The Globe and Mail

Entering its seventh season, the Connecticut Lyric Opera continued nicely along its growth curve Saturday night by filling the stage at the Garde Arts Center with a musically and comically satisfying performance of Donizetti's "L'Elisir d'Amore."
This ever-popular bel canto comedy, the story of the village youth Nemorino who buys a bogus love potion from the snake-oil salesman Dulcamara to win the heart of the winsome Adina, featured what is now something of a repertory cast for the CLO.
— Read more at The Day