Today's Opera News -- Metropolitan Opera Radio HD Broadcast Schedule -- AllAboutOpera.com

I've said a few less-than-enthusiastic things about the British TV reality show "Pop Star to Opera Star" (or, as they spell it over there, "Popstar to Operastar"), based on what little I know through video clips. And I questioned what a bona fide stellar tenor, Rolando Villazon, was doing on that show as a judge and vocal coach. He wouldn't likely see my commentary, but Villazon couldn't miss the broadsides from some critics in the UK, and, this week, he fired back in The Telegraph.
— Read more at Tim Smith - The Baltimore Sun

Canadian tenor Ben Heppner is to sail the seas in search of the great white whale in the world premiere of an opera based on the Herman Melville novel Moby Dick.
Heppner will play Captain Ahab, whose obsession with the whale almost leads to the destruction of his crew, in the production by the Dallas Opera to open this April.
— Read more at CBC News

It's a trend: first the chance of a Fort Worth Opera reality-TV show, now the prospect of an "Opera Idol" on radio. The BBC has announced a new operatic talent search show, with Kiri te Kanawa as head judge.
Mercifully, this competition appears to be looking for real, actual, honest-to-goodness opera singers rather than the pop-opera crossover blather featured on "Popstar to Operastar," currently playing on Britain's ITV. (You can't watch the videos on their website if you're not in the UK, but I don't think any of us is missing much.) "Britain's Got Talent" and Paul Potts have a lot to answer for.
— Read more at Anne Midgette - NJ.com

This American mezzo [Joyce DiDonato] has developed a sufficient following to offer her Wigmore programme twice. It's a well-planned affair, consisting entirely of Italian songs almost entirely by Italian composers. Odd man out is Beethoven, who penned a handful of settings of classic texts, mainly by Metastasio, -perhaps when he was learning from the venerable Salieri how to set Italian.
— Read more at The Guardian

When the language of love is Italian there are countless different ways of saying "Amore".
Joyce DiDonato pretty much exhausted them all during the course of this intriguing recital but somehow kept coming back with more. Novelties abounded and if indeed it's true that "all you need is love" then no one was going to leave this recital feeling short-changed - or else.
— Read more at The Independent

Even the most ardent opera lover will probably never see Conchita or Iris or Fedora, but those who were at Renee Fleming's concert Tuesday night heard some arias from them. The soprano championed these obscure Italian works from the turn of the 20th century on her latest album, Verismo, and they supplied the backbone of the program she sang as part of the Opera Tampa series in Morsani Hall at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts.
— Read more at St. Petersburg Times

Eve Queler, the founder and longtime music director of the Opera Orchestra of New York, who has seen the institution through recent financial struggles, is preparing to step down. The orchestra said in a news release that it had appointed Alberto Veronesi, the Italian conductor, as music director starting with its 2011-12 season.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Lyric Opera of Chicago's fifty-sixth season will feature new productions of Verdi's Macbeth, Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Mikado and Handel's Hercules, as well as new-to-Chicago stagings of Un Ballo in Maschera and Lohengrin.
— Read more at Opera News

The Metropolitan Opera Guild will debut a new series, entitled "The Met Mastersingers," Feb. 3 at New York's Town Hall. The inaugural event will feature Renee Fleming in an informal conversation and video viewing with executive producer Paul Gruber.
Included in the evening will be screenings of the top soprano's favorite filmed performances, from the Metropolitan Opera as well as previously unscreened material from other opera houses and television shows; a new video biography; and filmed anecdotes by some of Fleming's colleagues and friends, including Susan Graham, Barbara Cook, and Peter Gelb.
— Read more at PlaybillArts

The Dallas Opera's world premiere of the Gene Scheer-Jake Heggie opera "Moby-Dick" will be previewed in three panel discussions on March 27 and 28.
Titled "From Page to Stage: The Operatic Journey of Moby-Dick," the symposium will include both librettist Scheer and composer Heggie as well as authorities on Herman Melville, whose seafaring novel is the basis of the new opera.
— Read more at dallasnews.com

Like just about every major performing arts group in the nation, Lyric Opera of Chicago continues to make "leaner and meaner" its mantra for surviving the great recession.
Although eight operas will continue to be presented in 2010-11, the company will cut back the number of performances to 68 from 77 in the current season. As a result, 32,000 fewer tickets will be put on the market.
— Read more at John von Rhein - chicagotribune.com

Dane Suarez is pursuing the career of his dreams. He's willing to accept that there's no guarantee of employment and ready to put in the hard work-all for the love of being in the spotlight and belting out music in front of a crowd.
But Suarez doesn't want to be a rock star. He wants to be a professional opera singer.
Breaking into the opera business isn't much easier, as opera companies across the world are short on money, and most professional companies are no longer working year-round. Those that still hold open auditions often hear more than 300 singers at a time and employ only a few.
— Read more at thebutlercollegian.com

[from press release] The Cleveland Orchestra brings Mozart's comic opera Così fan tutte to Severance Hall for four performances of a fully staged production from the Zurich Opera March 2, 4, 6 and 8 at 7:00 p.m. Music Director Franz Welser-Most conducts the production, which he previously led in Zurich. A collaboration with stage director Sven-Eric Bechtolf, set designer Rolf Glittenberg, and costume designer Marianne Glittenberg, Così fan tutte features an international cast of soloists with members of the Cleveland Orchestra Opera Chorus, prepared by Robert Porco, appearing as soldiers, servants, and sailors.

If she ever needs to remind herself why she dedicated herself to singing, Joyce DiDonato thinks back to a meeting she had with the great American soprano Leontyne Price. "I said, 'Miss Price, do you ever put on your own recordings?' She goes, 'Oh darling! Sometimes I open a bottle of champagne and listen to them all afternoon. What a gorgeous voice I had!'"
— Read more at telegraph.co.uk

Step aside, Survivor. Take a hike, Kardashians. And make room for a possible reality show focused on the Fort Worth Opera.
Dallas-based AMP Productions took a giant step toward making that reality show - well - a reality Monday when its proposal for Lone Star Opera, a behind-the-scenes look at the opera's preparations for its 2010 festival, won the CableU's Non-Fiction Emerging Producer Contest.
— Read more at star-telegram.com

The Lyric Opera of Chicago announced its 2010-2011 lineup Tuesday, which adroitly mixes populist repertory with less-often-heard works by Wagner and Britten as well as a Handel opera new to the company stage.
The season will open October 1 with a new production of Verdi's Macbeth starring Thomas Hampson as the murderous Scottish king, and soprano Nadja Michael as his equally homicidal spouse. Barbara Gaines, artistic director of Chicago Shakespeare Theater, will make her opera directorial debut, with Renato Palumbo conducting.
— Read more at Chicago Classical Review

[from press release] Norman Raben, Chairman and Eve Queler, Music Director of The Opera Orchestra of New York today announced that Italian conductor Alberto Veronesi has been appointed Music Director effective in the 2011-12 season. Mr. Veronesi will succeed The Opera Orchestra of New York founder Eve Queler, who will become Conductor Laureate once Mr. Veronesi's initial 5-year tenure begins. During the Opera Orchestra's 2010-11 40th-anniversary season, Mr. Veronesi will serve as Music Director Designate and conduct an opera-in-concert performance.

New York's Metropolitan Opera and Clasart Classic have signed an exclusive agreement for the international distribution rights for the Met's opera catalogue outside of the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, Japan and the U.K.
The Met's program catalogue contains the world's most extensive collection of opera productions recorded in HD. In addition to HD programs, the catalogue also includes about 100 operas videotaped over the last 30 years, featuring artists such as Roberto Alagna, Cecilia Bartoli, Piotr Beczala, Joseph Calleja, Placido Domingo, Renee Fleming and Juan Diego Florez.
— Read more at WorldScreen.com

For centuries, opera was mainstream entertainment.
In 1791, as Mozart was dying, his opera "The Magic Flute" was playing in the country, to a lowbrow audience. A rowdy crowd turned out to see it, night after night.
In the 19th century, the famous La Scala opera house in Milan was such a gathering place that Mary Shelley, the creator of "Frankenstein," complained it was hard to hear the music.
— Read more at The Buffalo News

A newcomer to Metropolitan Opera simulcasts, I began at the top.
I chose a big opera, Richard Strauss' "Der Rosenkavalier." It lasts four hours, 20 minutes and stars Renee Fleming, one of the great divas of our day. Plus, because I was one of the last arrivals, I sat just a few feet in front of the massive screen.
— Read more at The Buffalo News

Peter Gelb, GM of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, revealed details during the MidemNet conference in Cannes of the Met's success with cinecasting of live opera.
The former president of Sony Classical joined the Met in 2005, admitting that friends suggested he was going from "one sinking ship to another."
— Read more at billboard.biz

Robert Kurka's "The Good Soldier Schweik" is a sassy opera. Long Beach Opera is a sassy company. So there was never need to wonder whether this plucky American cult opera from the 1950s should suit the American opera company known for its profuse pluck. Of course it did Saturday night in an entertaining production at Center Theater of the Long Beach Performing Arts Center that will be repeated in Santa Monica on Saturday.
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

As traditionally performed, Donizetti's opera Lucia di Lammermoor is 2 1/2 hours of Scottish castles, mist-shrouded lakes, swordsmanship and tragedy.
Florida Grand Opera swept most of this aside Saturday in a production that brought the story into the modern era on a stark, cost-effective unit set dominated by a jagged gray wall.
— Read more at MiamiHerald.com

As it seeks to shrug off its reputation as a rubbish strewn, mafia-plagued city in decline, Naples is pinning its hopes for revival on its newly resplendent -opera house.
The San Carlo, Italy's oldest functioning opera house, reopens after a two-year, euro67m (pound57m) restoration project in which 300 workers buffed up the stucco, gold leaf and drapes, added new rehearsal rooms and installed a hi-tech stage set.
— Read more at guardian.co.uk

The Southbank Centre has taken a lot of flak, from the press and public alike, for previous events in its International Voices series. The American and Romanian divas du jour, Renee Fleming and Angela Gheorghiu, barely managed 35 minutes of singing between them over two concerts for which the top whack was pound50.
On Monday night, the premium price was even higher - pound85 - but few could complain when they got two International Voices in a Raymond Gubbay/Universal Music buy-one-get-one-half-price deal that offered the Russian compatriots Anna Netrebko and Dmitri Hvorostovsky. They had a goodly proportion of the audience - well, the much-in-evidence Russian contingent at least - on their feet by the end of the evening.
— Read more at Hugh Canning - Times Online

It has been a very odd winter for celebrity concerts in London. There was Cecilia Bartoli flouncing around in velvet breeches pretending to be a castrato, Bryn Terfel whip in hand as the devil, Angela Gheorghiu trailing a little-known Romanian tenor and a fleeting appearance by Renee Fleming that was over almost before it had begun.
What a relief to come back to a good, old-fashioned evening of stand and sing. It may be difficult to get the format to add up to much, but Monday's combination of soprano Anna Netrebko, radiating fun and film-star glamour, and the ever bullish baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky made for a star evening times two.
— Read more at FT.com

The Gotham Chamber Opera, in partnership with the American Museum of Natural History, presented "Il Mondo Della Luna," or "The World On The Moon," an opera composed in 1777 by Joseph Haydn.
The work was performed at the Hayden Planetarium, under the direction of Diane Paulus.
"This production is really an attempt to say opera can be unexpected," says Paulus. "We don't have to think about opera in a giant opera house, 3,000 people, singers on a stage, and you watch it with binoculars. "This is a very intimate venue. You have 300 people, you have opera singers a mere foot from you singing."
— Read more at NY1.com

Gerard Mortier, in his last season as head of the Paris Opera, imported a production of Jules Massenet's "Werther" (1892) from Munich. It was a clunker.
Nicolas Joel, in his first season as the opera house's new manager, has brought in another staging of the same work, directed by Benoit Jacquot. It hits the jackpot.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

There's a scene in Act 1 of "Il Trovatore" in which a gypsy clan is spread out in colorful domestic array over a rocky campground. Children are tussling, women cooking, workmen hammering the famous "Anvil Chorus."
That's when the realization clicks. Opera Naples gets it.
— Read more at Coastalbeat.com

A disgraced opera fan is singing the blues - and telling a judge he's too old and sick to die behind bars.
"At age 69, I have little to look forward to," convicted swindler and former Metropolitan Opera philanthropist Alberto Vilar wrote the federal judge due to sentence him Feb. 5. "I am not in good health. I ask your honor to grant me time outside of prison during the few years left to me."
— Read more at nydailynews.com

Last night, I happened to catch a repeat broadcast (on WETA) of "The Audition," Susan Froemke's recent documentary about finalists in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.
It wasn't the most interesting or informative show of its type, but the more I saw the young singers preparing their arias for the big finals, I kept thinking about the tripe currently on telly in the UK: "Pop Star to Opera Star." The video clips of the latter are popping up on YouTube, and I've had a morbid curiosity to check them out.
— Read more at Tim Smith - The Baltimore Sun

Opera stars Placido Domingo, Karita Mattila and Danielle de Niese will appear in the San Francisco Opera's 2010-11 season, which was formally announced today. The company also said it will mount the complete "Ring" Cycle in a new production directed by Francesca Zambello.
The company, which performs at San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House, will stage 10 productions in the upcoming season, including the four operas that compose Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung."
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

San Francisco Opera will open its 88th season on Sept. 10 at War Memorial Opera House with Verdi's "Aida," a spectacle. It will close the season in the summer of 2011 with opera's greatest spectacle of spectacles: Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen" ("The Ring of the Nibelung") in a production conceived and directed by Francesca Zambello, the company's artistic adviser.
— Read more at Richard Scheinin - San Jose Mercury News

On a Tuesday afternoon in mid-December, Symphony Space on Manhattan's Upper West Side was filled to near capacity with opera fans attending a live high-definition transmission of Verdi's "Il Trovatore" from Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu. The performance boasted some strong singing by Marco Berti as Manrico and Luciano D'Intino as Azucena, but the minimalist, static production, directed by Gilbert Deflo and designed by William Orlandi, received a lukewarm response from the crowd. The reaction a few weeks earlier to an edgy "Carmen," the live opening night from La Scala, was reportedly more energetic.
— Read more at Heidi Waleson - WSJ.com

Contemporary opera Nixon in China by John Adams and the Toronto premiere of Orfeo ed Euridice by Christoph Willibald Gluck will be part of the 2010-11 season of Toronto's Canadian Opera Company.
On Wednesday, general director Alexander Neef unveiled a program of seven operas, none of which have been performed by the COC in the last 15 years.
— Read more at CBC News

The celebrated Finnish soprano Karita Mattila, 49, is to return to the Finnish National Opera in August 2012.
She will sing the lead role in Leos Janacek's The Makropoulos Case (also known as The Makropoulos Affair), a co-production with the San Francisco Opera.
Karita Mattila is to make her role debut as the leading character in the new opera in San Francisco in November 2010.
— Read more at Helsingin Sanomat

George Jellinek, a former music director of the New York radio station WQXR and the host of a weekly program on opera singers and singing that ran on the station for 36 years, died on Saturday. He was 90 and lived in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

American, um, actress (??) (although we won't deny it on a stack of chocolate-covered bibles that we have a thing for The Parent Trap & Mean Girls) Lindsay Lohan was chosen by Richard Lunger, the Austrian business-dude and biggest pimp ever who decides every year which young, female celebrity to personally invite to the high-profile Wiener Opernball at the Vienna Staatsoper as his date.
— Read more at Opera Chic

[from the press release] The Collegiate Chorale, led by Music Director James Bagwell, presents the World Premiere Two Act Concert Version of Ricky Ian Gordon and Michael Korie's musical version of Nobel Prize-winner John Steinbeck's epic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Grapes of Wrath, on March 22, 2010 at 8pm at Carnegie Hall, conducted by Ted Sperling with Jane Fonda as the narrator. Tickets are $25-$160 and are available through CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800, at the Carnegie Hall Box Office, or online at www.carnegiehall.org.
— Read more at www.collegiatechorale.org

Superstar tenor Placido Domingo will return to the San Francisco Opera next season for the first time since 1994, singing the title role in the company premiere of Franco Alfano's "Cyrano de Bergerac."
The company's 2010-11 season, announced Tuesday, will also include new productions of Massenet's "Werther," starring tenor Ramon Vargas, and Janacek's "Makropulos Case," with soprano Karita Mattila singing the role of Emilia Marty for the first time. It concludes in June and July with three complete cycles of Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung," in the new American-themed production of director Francesca Zambello, conducted by former Music Director Donald Runnicles.
— Read more at sfgate.com

In 1959, when he was 18, Placido Domingo auditioned for the National Opera in Mexico City as a baritone. The jury was impressed but told Mr. Domingo that he was really a tenor. Two years later he sang his first lead tenor role, Alfredo in Verdi's "Traviata" in Monterrey. And so began one of the great tenor careers in opera history.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

It is mid-April, and Riccardo Muti is in New York for a series of performances with the New York Philharmonic. His day has begun with a morning concert of Ravel's Piano Concerto in G and Schubert's "Great" Symphony, followed by lunch with OPERA NEWS in the handsome dining room of The Peninsula. Conversation during lunch is lively - Muti is a brilliant storyteller, with a sense of humor that is sharp yet discreet - and the tempo of the subsequent interview is spacious and unhurried.
— Read more at Opera News

Acclaimed soprano Nina Stemme returns to the Met for the first time in nine years, adding the demanding title role of Ariadne auf Naxos to her company repertoire. Renowned for her portrayals of Wagner heroines, the Swedish soprano has previously appeared at the Met as Senta in Der Fliegende Hollander in 2000. Kathleen Kim, who performed Olympia in Les Contes d'Hoffmann earlier this season to great acclaim, sings her first Zerbinetta. Sarah Connolly returns to the Met stage as the Composer. The cast features two notable Met debuts: Lance Ryan as Bacchus and Jochen Schmeckenbecher as the Music Master. Kirill Petrenko conducts all five performances, which run through February 20. The 1993 production is by Elijah Moshinsky. Michael Yeargan designed the sets and costumes, and the lighting is by Gil Wechsler.
— Read more at broadwayworld.com

It doesn't have an orchestra pit, a stage or proper lighting, but that didn't deter the Gotham Chamber Opera's artistic director Neal Goren from staging Haydn's comedy "Il Mondo Della Luna" at the Hayden Planetarium's dome at the American Museum of Natural History.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

The fat lady has sung for the Berkshire Opera Co. The operation, whose financial woes have been well-documented over the past year, filed for bankruptcy Tuesday after a quarter century.
— Read more at Boston Business Journal

IT featured a former Britpop bassist playing air guitar to the strangled strains of Rossini, and a panel of judges featuring an interior designer and an outsized rock star - all in the name of taking opera to the masses.
But the new celebrity talent show Popstar to Operastar stands virtually no chance of popularising the discipline in the way Strictly Come Dancing did for ballroom, according to Grammy award-winning soprano Rebecca Evans.
— Read more at WalesOnline

Elsewhere in Tuesday's paper you can find my humble little story about renewed interest in the untimely death at 38 of tenor Mario Lanza, the huge -- no pun intended -- movie star of the 1950s. I didn't have room to include everything I had hoped to squeeze into that story, so I'll just add a few things here.
— Read more at Tim Smith - The Baltimore Sun

A half-century after his untimely death at the age of 38, celebrated tenor and movie star Mario Lanza is receiving fresh medical attention from a Baltimore doctor who takes a dim view of one of the singer's weight-loss treatments - injections of the urine of pregnant women, a controversial therapy with new followers today.
— Read more at Tim Smith - baltimoresun.com

The absurd plot of Verdi's "Il Trovatore" is a distraction best left unexplained and unexcused. Put simply, the opera concerns a romantic triangle between a woman and two men, one of whom is a mama's boy.
And depending on which Seattle Opera cast you see, you'll form very different opinions about which relationship in the odd quartet of lead characters is the most heartbreaking.
— Read more at Seattle Times

Georges Bizet's "Carmen" is a surefire way for any opera company to pack the theater, and that was certainly the case Saturday for Utah Opera's opening-night performance of this venerable and much adored opera.
And there is much to appreciate in this production, starting with Carmen herself.
— Read more at Deseret News

It is often said that we are the sum total of the decisions we make in our lives. Indeed, when Don Jose sheds his honor, his soul and even his mother for the beguiling gypsy, audiences generally hold him accountable for his poor choices even while dutifully mindful of the nature and power of his addiction. The Metropolitan Opera's new production of Carmen, starring Elina Garanca as one of the most vocally stimulating and visually alluring Carmens in recent memory, places Don Jose's self-destructive decisions into proper perspective: Under Garanca spell, this man had about as much a chance of staving off disaster as the bull in the toreador's arena. And he's not alone: By the second act I was prepared to give it all up (mother included) and follow Garanca to a remote gypsy hideaway in the mountains.
— Read more at David Abrams - cnycafemomus.com

Winter Opera St. Louis - formerly New Opera St. Louis - put its focus squarely where it belongs, on the music, in last weekend's production of Jules Massenet's Romantic tragedy "Werther," staged at Missouri Baptist University's theater.
— Read more at Sarah Bryan Miller - STLtoday.com

"There's no hip-hop, no soul singer trying to sing Mozart," Mitch Sebastian says from London of "The Opera Show," his vivid production that arrives in Baltimore this week. "You will hear your Verdi, Bizet, Mozart and some achingly sweet Handel. The music is not messed with."
It is, however, gussied up - choreographed, stylized, digitalized and dramatized into what a reviewer for the U.K.'s Independent described earlier this season as a "quirky operatic cabaret triptych." (The reviewer was won over by the experience.)
— Read more at Tim Smith - baltimoresun.com

Everyone's a critic!
An Upper West Side woman is fed up with the booming baritone in the brownstone next door -- even if he has played to international audiences and starred with the New York City Opera.
Elizabeth Connors and her young son haven't been able to sleep for months because of their neighbors' loud, "disturbing" opera singing and piano playing "at all hours of the day and night."
— Read more at NYPOST.com

Those of us who dearly love "La Traviata" and "Don Giovanni" and "Tristan und Isolde," among dozens of other operas, rarely tire of these masterpieces.
Then again, it's heartening to encounter works that don't come along often (or ever) for reasons of casting, cost, complexity or comparison with musical titans.
— Read more at Donald Roseberg - cleveland.com

Opera, said the Italian composer Rossini, could be truly wonderful if only there were no singers. What the creator of such opera classics as The Barber of Seville and Cenerentola would have made of the latest reality television show - Popstar to Operastar - is anyone's guess. But it has led to a chorus of disapproval in the rarefied world of divas and fat ladies and gentlemen.
— Read more at independent.co.uk

You would think Mitch Sebastian had done it all. The Irishman living in London had collaborated with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He created the international hit show "The Rat Pack-Live From Las Vegas." As a director and choreographer, he had won awards for his work on London's West End productions.
All of a sudden, though, a new preoccupation hit him.
Opera. "I wanted the new generation to realize that opera is for them, and has been for the last 400 years, since opera began," says Sebastian, who is 43. "The music is so profound, some of the best examples of what human beings can do.
— Read more at The Buffalo News

There are operas whose scores are hummable and whose tunes have worked their way into popular culture. And then there are operas that resist any sort of easy packaging -- operas that are, for lack of a better phrase, musical oddballs.
Robert Kurka's "The Good Soldier Schweik" is considered by some opera scholars to be one of the oddest ducks ever to grace a stage. Those who prefer their operas to color within the lines should take heed: The spastic, constantly shifting style of "Schweik" is bound to keep even the most experienced listeners on their toes.
— Read more at latimes.com

One of the hottest tickets in town this cold January is Utah Opera's "Carmen," a vibrant production that's a welcome respite from the dreary gray of a Salt Lake City winter. Saturday's sold-out opener would have been worth attending just for the fiercely committed performances of the two leads; happily, they were surrounded by top-notch singing, acting and playing in a strikingly handsome physical production.
— Read more at Salt Lake Tribune

IN 2001 Gotham Chamber Opera opened its doors at the Abrons Arts Center on the Lower East Side of Manhattan with what was billed as the American stage premiere of the teenage Mozart's moral allegory "Il Sogno di Scipione," set in the Temple of Heaven. Now, after nine years spent establishing a repertory of rarities from Monteverdi to Piazzolla, the company is preparing its next space adventure. The vehicle this time is Haydn's comedy "Il Mondo Della Luna" ("The World on the Moon"), to be presented, with unassailable if quixotic logic, in the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History beginning on Tuesday evening.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Sporting a trim white beard, his graying hair left long, Placido Domingo looks courtly even without his new Renaissance robes.
This Monday, the high-energy tenor enjoys his third debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

There is a moment in the third act of Massenet's Manon when the heroine is hoisted on the shoulders of her admirers as the unrivaled beauty of Paris. In the current version at the Vienna State Opera, that is totally Diana Damrau's moment
Anna Netrebko premiered this production nearly three years ago. She was wonderful. Beyond that, the Russian diva can do little wrong as THE love of the opera public, so any other singer clearly thinks twice before taking on the role - or should.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

In his overture to "Carmen," Bizet introduces a recurring motif that listeners have invariably associated with fate and with the fatal liaison of Carmen and Don Jose. The composer meant it to be played with the curtain lowered. Then, as the stage action proceeds, he develops it powerfully, bringing it back often, in hauntingly different versions: like a flash of lightning, like a slow but tremendous warning, like an irresistible undertow.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

[Former Minnesota Orchestra music director led a buoyant concert version of Stravinsky opera. ]
Did Stravinsky really hate his father, who was a prominent opera singer back in Mother Russia? Is this why the composer claimed for so many years to hate opera? And isn't it, therefore, one of the oddities of music history that the opera-hating Stravinsky ended up writing "The Rake's Progress," one of the few musical works for the stage to become a staple of the repertory in the second half of the 20th century?
— Read more at StarTribune.com

Rather than classic dinner-theater arias and duets like "La donna e mobile" (from Verdi's "Rigoletto") or "O soave fanciulla" (from Puccini's "La Boheme"), the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra is serving up a more substantial program of overtures, instrumental interludes and choruses at its "Best of . . . Italian Opera" Winter Festival.
With a well-chosen array of short works from the two aforementioned giants, as well as bel canto representatives Rossini and Donizetti, verismo's "Cav-Pag" duo Leoncavallo and Mascagni, and an improbably familiar Ponchielli selection, the NJSO had plenty of opportunities to shine during Thursday night's opening performance at the Morristown Community Theatre. So, too, did guest conductor David Wroe and the singing group Schola Cantorum on Hudson.
— Read more at NJ.com

Placido Domingo, conductor, steps into the pit of the Metropolitan Opera on Thursday evening for a performance of Verdi's "Stiffelio." Four days later Placido Domingo, singer, steps onto the Met stage to open a run of Verdi's "Simon Boccanegra."
And so it goes. After several weeks of grueling rehearsals, Mr. Domingo alternates conducting and singing in a month of performances. Hurricane Placido is blowing through town, a display of energy that is astonishing, yet by now routine, for a man who turns 69 on Jan. 21.
— Read more at Daniel J. Wakin - NYTimes.com

The Canadian Opera Company will host a recital featuring celebrated tenor Ben Heppner in Toronto this fall to make up for the opera star's withdrawal from the company's 60th anniversary concert last November.
Heppner, who maintains a busy international performance schedule, will return to Toronto for a solo appearance with piano at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts on Sept. 11, the company announced Thursday.
— Read more at CBC News

Dietmar Schwarz, the director of opera at Theater Basel, was today appointed to run Berlin's Deutsche Oper from 2012, succeeding Kirsten Harms.
Under Schwarz, 53, Basel was chosen last year as "Opera House of the Year" in the German-speaking world in a survey of critics by the opera magazine Opernwelt. He has been at the Basel theater since 2006. Before that, he was opera director at the Nationaltheater Mannheim.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

Gina Galati has a simple goal: to present well-sung productions of opera, in their original languages, at an affordable price.
This is her company's third season, and its first with a new name. Originally known as New Opera St. Louis, it's now Winter Opera St. Louis.
— Read more at Sarah Bryan Miller - STLtoday.com

The Veronica Dunne Singing Competition has a first prize of euro10,000 - but that might be just the beginning for the winner
PUT A WANNABE pop star in front of a jury, and you get The X Factor . Do the same with a wannabe opera singer, and you get something along the lines of the Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition.
— Read more at irishtimes.com

In 1993 the Metropolitan Opera presented its first production of Verdi's neglected opera "Stiffelio" as a vehicle for Placido Domingo. Without that star tenor in the demanding title role, and without James Levine conducting, the Met would not have taken a risk on the work, which had a dismal reception at its 1850 premiere in Trieste, Italy.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

The Washington National Opera's season announcement Tuesday made one thing clear: Recession is tough. The company's 2010-11 season makes the best of an ongoing financial crisis that reduced it to just five operas. And those operas, it seems, don't even represent the artistic vision of the WNO's director, Placido Domingo.
— Read more at Anne Midgette - washingtonpost.com

He is regarded as one of the greatest composers of our time. For 2010, Hans Werner Henze has dedicated a large piece to the Ruhr, one of Europe's Capitals of Culture this year. Deusche Welle met the composer in Essen.
— Read more at Deutsche Welle

Opera, the extravagant art, tends to flourish in times of financial excess, meaning that the ongoing financial crisis has caused considerable collateral damage to this most expensive art form. In response to the crisis, Washington National Opera drastically cut down and altered the current season, including the regrettable postponement of its American Ring Cycle.
— Read more at Charles Downey - DCist.com

A one-act, one-hour opera will portray years of small-town living.
The Northern Light Opera Company will present "The Old Maid and the Thief" in three performances the weekend of Jan. 15 at Hubbard's Long Lake Theater.
— Read more at DL-Online.com

The best of the past will come alive Jan. 30 when opera superstar Ruth Ann Swenson will be featured at the Napa Valley Opera House in a recital of songs especially chosen to celebrate the 130th anniversary of this historic theater.
And a lot of history still lingers within these walls. When you are next in the Opera House, take the winding stairway up to the balcony, drift down to the edge and run your fingers over the initials carved in the mahogany railing by spectators of yore. This is literally touching the past.
— Read more at napavalleyregister.com

The Metropolitan Opera has scant reputation as a cutting-edge institution, but it knows how to reap the benefits of technology. Since 1930 its Saturday broadcasts have converted untold numbers of listeners into rabid opera fans. And in 1977 a landmark telecast of "La Boheme" initiated PBS's "Live from the Met" series.
When four years ago the Met's new general manager Peter Gelb announced plans to transmit opera performances to movie theaters, many were skeptical. Hadn't Rudolf Bing tried that back in the 1950s? But the idea caught on big time and sent opera companies around the world scrambling to get their product into cinemas.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

The Washington National Opera announced in December that financial constraints would restrict the 2010-11 season to a mere five operas. On Monday, the company revealed, to no one's surprise, that those operas will be repertory staples that sell tickets: Verdi's "Un Ballo in Maschera," Donizetti's "Don Pasquale" and 14 performances of Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" (an opera that the company last did in 2006).
— Read more at Anne Midgette - washingtonpost.com

For those of us who had hoped the size zero debate might be confined to fashion magazines, there is depressing news from Rome. The Italian capital's opera house was the setting for a fresh scandal this month, when the 52-year-old soprano Daniella Dessi admitted that she had recently stormed out of rehearsals for Verdi's La Traviata after the veteran director Franco Zeffirelli made one too many unkind comments about her weight.
— Read more at The National

Four years into his tenure as general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, and midway through the first season he planned from scratch, Peter Gelb turns out to be neither the Destroyer of Worlds that some feared or the savior that others hoped. He's a pragmatic, flexible executive of the world's biggest and busiest performing-arts outfit, boldly leading from the middle. The high point of the fall was a searing staging of a modern rarity (From the House of the Dead) that had been thoroughly road-tested in Europe.
— Read more at Justin Davidson - New York Magazine

Milwaukee's Florentine Opera will open its next season with its first world premiere and its first opera performed in Spanish.
Set in a fictional South American country, composer Don Davis' action-packed "Rio de Sangre" includes the overthrow of a dictator, kidnapping, assassination and earthquake. (Read a synopsis at riodesangre.com.) In addition to a traditional orchestra, the performances here will feature a 10-piece onstage merengue band, according to a statement from the Florentine.
— Read more at JSOnline.com

The Coterie, a downtown opera-theater company devoted to developing contemporary music theater works, will present a reading of the one-act comic opera PRAIRIE DOGS by Rachel Peters (Stretch (a fantasia)) and Royce Vavrek (Dog Days) on Monday, January 18th, at 7pm at A.R.T./New York (520 8th Avenue, New York City). Keith Chambers will serve as music director, with Emma Griffin (Stretch (a fantasia)) providing stage direction.
— Read more at broadwayworld.com

It's Verdi's music that irresistibly draws opera lovers to "Il Trovatore" ("The Troubadour"), which boasts one hit tune after another. It has one of the world's most instantly recognizable choruses, the "Anvil Chorus"; a pair of soprano arias so gorgeous that they're regularly used as recital encores; a lyrical baritone solo ("Il balen"), and one of the challenges of the tenor world, "Di quella pira" with its final high C. (That C wasn't penned by Verdi, but has been interpolated by so many tenors that audiences at Milan's La Scala have booed its omission.)
— Read more at Seattle Times

The Lyric Opera opened the season with a starry yet lackluster Tosca last fall, undone by an over-parted Deborah Voigt and a vocally miscast Vladimir Galouzine.
Sunday afternoon, the Lyric went for Puccini round two, opening its second-cast January run of Tosca with a new trio of principals and a different conductor. Yet despite a more Italianate cast and some worthy moments, this Tosca too proved a serviceable rather than memorable performance of Puccini's shabby little shocker.
— Read more at Chicago Classical Review

"What a drag it is getting old," reads the opening line of The Rolling Stones' 1965 hit, Mother's Little Helper - a sentiment echoed, with greater subtlety perhaps, by the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier. But Saturday's Metropolitan Opera performance of the Strauss masterpiece - led by a handsome pair of singer-actresses who, at 50 years of age, not only sang beautifully but also captured so convincingly the demeanor and personae of much younger characters - suggests that in show biz, at least, it's possible to age without growing old (...just ask Mick Jagger and Keith Richards).
— Read more at David Abrams - cnycafemomus.com

The Metropolitan Opera in New York City, American opera's Parthenon, has been revamping its productions with controversial directors, modernized sets, enhanced theatrical technology, racy ad campaigns and younger, attractive singers, all in the name of keeping opera relevant.
Some audience members call it foul play, but at the same time, it's been centuries since opera enjoyed such a chic reputation.
— Read more at democratandchronicle.com

Robert M. Heuer, who assumed the leadership of what was then the Greater Miami Opera Association in 1985, celebrates his 25th anniversary at the helm of the Florida Grand Opera with a concert and on-stage black-tie dinner on Feb. 25 at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.
— Read more at MiamiHerald.com

It is not an unpleasant hypothesis: I find $5 million in an old pair of trousers and wish to fund a new production of, say, Wagner's The Flying Dutchman. My only stipulation is that so-and-so, who happens to be my compatriot, conducts.
"There is no such situation," Peter Gelb, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, said from New York this week. "All of the decisions that the Met makes in terms of casting are made purely for artistic reasons."
— Read more at montrealgazette.com

The Washington National Opera's most compelling, dramatic offering of last year was presented with no sets, no costumes and very little fanfare. Even within the company, the two concert performances of "Gotterdammerung" in November were viewed in advance as something of an embarrassment, a sad reminder of the complete "Ring" cycle that should have been, but was postponed indefinitely because of financial constraints imposed by the recession -- or simply by a long period of the company's living slightly beyond its means.
— Read more at Anne Midgette - washingtonpost.com

One hundred years ago this week, the ringing tenor voice of Enrico Caruso flew out over North American air waves from a live performance on the stage of New York's Metropolitan Opera.
Unfortunately those historic sounds didn't fly very far. American inventor Lee De Forest was demonstrating his invention of a new vacuum tube for radio use. He set up receivers in various public locations around New York and invited the public to tune in. His 500-watt transmitter managed to get the signal out to parts of Connecticut and New Jersey, but the microphones of the time were weak. Listeners couldn't make out many details as the singers roamed the stage during the operas I Pagliacci and Cavalleria Rusticana.
— Read more at Brantford Expositor

It was all over for one singer after world famous opera director Franco Zeffirelli called her a 'fat lady'.
Daniela Dessi, 52, saw red after Zeffirelli insulted her before she was due to take to sing in Verdi's opera La Traviata in Rome.
Ms Dessi quit the show after Zeffirelli said she was 'too portly to perform'.
— Read more at Mail Online

The adage says it ain't over till the fat lady sings. But call the lady fat to her face and it may be over sooner than you expect. The Italian soprano Daniela Dessi has walked out of a coming production of Verdi's "Traviata," saying that its director, Franco Zeffirelli, disparaged her weight and her age, The Times of London reported. At a news conference for his production of "La Traviata" at the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome, Mr. Zeffirelli said of Ms. Dessi, who was to sing the role of the ill-fated Violetta: "A woman of a certain age and plumpness is not credible in the character."
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Despite its low-key, earnest tone, Susan Froemke's documentary "The Audition" is a fascinating look inside the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, at which, over the years, thousands of opera singers have competed for a cash prize, the chance to sing at the Metropolitan Opera, and, ultimately, the launching of their operatic career.
— Read more at backstage.com

The University of Colorado at Boulder College of Music has suspended its 30-year presentation of summer musicals because of budget restrictions and potentially disruptive campus construction.
The popular program, called Colorado Light Opera, typically takes place in July and August and features student and community artists. Last year, it offered 10 performances of "Anything Goes" and 11 of "Oklahoma!," drawing an attendance of 4,800 people.
— Read more at The Denver Post

Seiji Ozawa, one of the biggest names in classical music for decades, "said Thursday that he has esophageal cancer and will cancel his concerts for the next six months to focus on treatment," the New York Times reports.
The 74-year-old Japanese conductor will miss the final portion of his eight-year tenure as chief conductor of the Vienna State Opera, AP reports. His contract expires in June.
— Read more at Tim Smith - The Baltimore Sun

Unless you're wearing a tutu, the latest news from Lincoln Center's David H. Koch Theater is pretty bleak.
Renamed for the tycoon who paid to renovate the decrepit space, the Koch is home to both the New York City Ballet and the New York City Opera.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

In the world of opera, it is rarely frowned upon if sopranos or tenors sport a few extra pounds. But before the curtain could go up in Rome on a production of Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata, the scales appeared to have tipped the other way.
Daniela Dessi, an established Italian soprano, walked out of the production after its director, Franco Zeffirelli, had publicly abused her about her weight and age. She had been due to play the role of Violetta, a lithe courtesan who expires from consumption in the arms of her lover Alfredo.
— Read more at Times Online

Carmen has led a cursed existence at the Metropolitan Opera - with the opera itself doing much of the cursing. Failure in the title role sent the great Rosa Ponselle into retirement and Waltraud Meier back to Wagner. The last two productions exposed creative decline among the respective directors, Peter Hall and Franco Zeffirelli.
— Read more at David Patrick Stearns - Philadelphia Inquirer

Go ahead and use the venerated childhood method of closing one eye and measuring with your thumb and index finger. From the upper reaches of the Metropolitan Opera's dress circle, Renee Fleming in "Der Rosenkavalier" looks about 4 inches tall.
The "cheap seats" there go for $105 a pop.
— Read more at Fresnobee.com

For the first time ever, the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, will be transformed into an intimate opera house with a performance of a rarely seen opera.
Using the Planetarium's 180-degree dome and projections, the Gotham Chamber Orchestra will combine live music and a laser light show for its production of "The World Of the Moon".
— Read more at NBC New York

The University of Colorado's College of Music is suspending its productions presented through the Colorado Light Opera this summer, citing budget concerns and foreseeing construction obstacles.
But, it's not over until the fat lady sings. The College of Music said the series could resume, and the dean of the college will also be announcing a new program in March.
— Read more at Boulder Daily Camera

Starting this year the New York City Ballet will be taking over full use of the Lincoln Center theater that it shares with New York City Opera for four weeks in September and October - severely curtailing the opera company's fall season - as part of an agreement that will give the opera some relief from its forthcoming building payments.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

French-Canadian conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin is riding high on a wave of kudos for his energetic and confident Metropolitan Opera debut last week in the company's new production of Carmen in New York.
The 34-year-old was part of the creative team that unveiled the company's gritty 1930s update of the beloved Bizet opera, starring Latvian mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca in the lead role.
— Read more at CBC News

La Cieca has just been entrusted with a veritable cornucopia of future lore about our beloved Metropolitan Opera. You must remember, my friends, future events such as these will affect you in the future. And what happens in the future stays in the future. Anyway, shall we?
— Read more at parterre box

[press release] The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and Clowes Memorial Hall of Butler University will host two competitions for the annual Metropolitan Opera National Council (MONC) this month.
The Indiana District Auditions will be Saturday, Jan. 9, at 1 p.m., in Bloomington's Musical Arts Center. A week later, Saturday, Jan.16, at noon, the Tri-State Regional Auditions -- including winners from the Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana District rounds -- will be held in Clowes Memorial Hall on the campus of Butler University in Indianapolis. Both events are free and open to the public; no tickets are required.
— Read more at IU News Room: Indiana University

Visitors to New York City's Hayden Planetarium get to learn about the mysteries of the universe through the space show "Journey to the Stars."
But later this month they will be treated to "The World of the Moon," a rarely seen opera by Joseph Haydn.
— Read more at WCAX.COM

Take that, Franco Zeffirelli.
Richard Eyre's brave new production of Carmen, which opened on New Year's eve, ignores old cliches and empty-headed excesses. The heroine does not vamp, and her hands avoid her hips. Micaela refuses to simper. Escamillo does not swagger. The chorus does not preen. The vistas are not crammed with irrelevant men, women, children and animals.
— Read more at Martin Bernheimer - FT.com

Well, I'll say this for British TV -- at least they recognize the existence and appeal of opera. The latest manifestation of a reality/talent show over there is called Pop Star to Opera Star, debuting Jan. 15 in ITV.
The gimmick: Pop singers are mentored in the art of singing a few opera arias. The mentors include one of today's big-name tenors, Rolando Villazon, on the mend from throat surgery that curtailed his booming career. His participation provides a remarkable level of respectability for this project.
— Read more at Tim Smith - The Baltimore Sun

Veteran operagoers love to say the best singing happened decades ago, as if the only great divas are deceased ones.
Oh, sure.
The 21st century's first decade is ending with a plethora of enterprising, accomplished diva discs that are driving the recording industry with lavish packaging, healthy sales, and often repertoire that nobody has heard of, much less heard.
— Read more at Ventura County Star

It's hard to argue that Juan Diego Florez is not the greatest tenore di grazia, it's either him or Tito Schipa, and even Placido Domingo himself anointed JDF as "el mas grande tenor ligero de la historia";...
— Read more at Opera Chic

[from press release] Scottish Opera is coming to a venue near you this February with its annual tour of Opera Highlights (previously Essential Scottish Opera) - a relaxed, informal, concert-style evening of well-known opera tunes and little-known gems.
Programmed by Scottish Opera's long-time Head of Music Derek Clark, the ever-popular tour is now in it's sixteenth year.
— Read more at scottishopera.org.uk

In January, the Metropolitan Opera will present its fifth and sixth Live in HD broadcasts of the season, transmitting live performances of Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier and Bizet's Carmen in high definition to theaters around the world. Der Rosenkavalier is scheduled for January 9 at 1:00 pm EST; Carmen follows on January 16 at the same time.
Superstar soprano Renee Fleming stars as the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, Richard Strauss's masterpiece set in 18th-century Vienna. Other headliners are Susan Graham as Octavian and Kristinn Sigmundsson as Baron Ochs.
— Read more at The Independent

A modern Carmen strode across the stage of the Metropolitan Opera on New Year's Eve as the company presented a smart new production starring Elina Garanca.
Latvia's young diva made her entrance as the insolent, free-spirited gypsy by kicking the woman ahead of her and spitting orange peel at the captain of the guards outside the cigarette factory in which she toils. After that, she relished washing the sweat from her face and feet using a handy bucket.
— Read more at Bloomberg.com

Blood is in evidence on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera long before a desperate and rejected Don Jose stabs Carmen to death at the conclusion of Georges Bizet's tale of sex and violence.
In fact, the first image we see in a striking new production by Richard Eyre that premiered on New Year's Eve is a jagged red streak running down the middle of a black curtain. That disturbing image carries over into a narrow opening between sliding panels that move to reveal the sets. And it shows up again on the elegant dress Carmen wears in the final scene.
— Read more at San Jose Mercury News

First there were one-hundred and twenty. Then there were ten. And then there were five - talented winners of valuable scholarships in the Palm Springs Opera Guild's Vocal Competition at the Annenberg Theater.
— Read more at The Desert Sun

Applications and CDs are being accepted for the annual Annapolis Opera Vocal Competition. All applicants must complete the online form at annapolisopera.org under auditions and vocal competition, and submit a CD. The deadline is Jan. 15.
— Read more at baltimoresun.com

[from press release] Madison Opera continues the 2009-2010 season with Benjamin Britten's haunting chamber-opera The Turn of the Screw in The Playhouse at the Overture Center for the Arts, Jan. 28 - 31, 2010. This is Madison Opera's first mainstage production of a Britten opera and the first opera to be produced in the newly renovated Playhouse, noted for its thrust stage and rich acoustics.
— Learn more at madisonopera.org

News break: "1711 Domenico Scarlatti, Aless' 6th child of keyboard sonata fame, also in opera biz: Tolomeo et Alessandro for Rome."
If that Monday tweet by the San Diego Opera seems out of date, not to worry: The company expects to eventually catch up.
Since early November, the San Diego Opera's director of education and outreach, Nicolas Reveles, has been tweeting the four-century-plus history of opera one 140 character tweet at a time. His twice-daily efforts have gained nearly 1,000 followers on twitter.com and attention from the media and other opera companies.
— Read more at SignOnSanDiego.com

We all know Bizet's "Carmen," or think we do.
Its familiarity is the greatest challenge to any company presenting it. The acclaimed English director Richard Eyre made this point repeatedly in interviews before the opening of his new Metropolitan Opera production of "Carmen." Without resorting to gratuitous touches and provocative changes to the opera, he said, he wanted to subvert the familiarity so that audiences would leave shocked and awed yet also touched by this 1875 masterpiece.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

The Metropolitan Opera's new production of Offenbach's "Contes d'Hoffmann" stirred up heated debate within opera circles for the company's decision to present a version of the score that fails to take into account recent research into the sources for this compromised score, left incomplete at Offenbach's death. The new production of Bizet's "Carmen" may also provoke some debate over questions of authenticity.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Ah, New Year's Eve! There's something wildly romantic about any evening where all of our new beginnings are uncorked with glass of bubbly, a countdown and the sound of a hundred noisemakers at the stroke of midnight. On Thursday, more than 170 were 10-9-8-ing away the aughts with an abfab evening of decade-ence during the Pittsburgh Opera's Auld Lang Syne celebration at the Carnegie Music Hall.
— Read more at Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Almost a century ago, Florence Foster Jenkins was a novelty act who showed surprising staying power. And now she is once again, thanks to a pair of stage comedies about opera's least talented diva.
In 2007, Judy Kaye reprised her role from Broadway's "Souvenir" for Arizona Theatre Company. Now Phoenix Theatre is lifting the curtain on "Glorious," by British playwright Peter Quilter. Both shows have become popular with troupes throughout the country.
— Read more at azcentral.com

You can now follow AllAboutOpera.com on Twitter!

On a cool night in the middle of November, the soprano Aprile Millo gave a recital at Rose Hall in the TimeWarner Center, celebrating her 25th anniversary with Opera Orchestra of New York. It was a strange, intensely moving evening, an effect amplified by my fever and the Dayquil I was freebasing to combat it.
— Read more at Zachary Woolfe - The New York Observer

As the crew checks the lighting and the lead singers relax in the wings, Los Angeles Opera director Eli Villanueva zeros in on a weak spot he noticed during the just-completed rehearsal. "You girls are looking good," he says as he joins a cluster of chorus members. They beam at him. "But in that last scene we need a little more attitude." They stare blankly. Villanueva tries a different approach. "You know when you're in line for tetherball and someone cuts in front of you? How do you feel?" Faces darken and shoulders tighten menacingly. "That's it!" Villanueva cries. "That's what we want." Clearly, this is a director who knows how to motivate his cast -- in this case, fourth-graders at Rockdale Elementary School in Eagle Rock. Villanueva and his colleagues are helping students put on "The Marriage of Figueroa," a whimsical blend of Mozart and California history, as part of an L.A. Opera program designed to teach the basics of opera and performance in a language children understand.
— Read more at latimes.com