DVORAK'S RUSALKA

Beginning March 15, teachers, parents, and schools across the country will gain access to Des Moines Metro Opera's Virtual Opera Curriculum, an online music education series offered as part of the organization's OPERA Iowa programming. ...

If you need any convincing that a “simple” recital, with lots of breaks, isn’t easier for the performer than being in a full-fledged opera, you have only to look as far as Bulgarian soprano’ Sonya Yoncheva's concert--shown live from Germany on February 27 but still available on-demand from the Met’s website until March 12--to know that view is a fallacy. (And, of course, it’s a challenge for the accompanist as well, here, the well-schooled pianist Julien Quentin, who offered staunch support.)...

In the latest in the Met’s live, pay-per-view concert series from varied fascinating locales around the world, Radvanovsky boldly chose Verdi’s “Pace, pace” from LA FORZA DEL DESTINO as her “warm up”--a whopper of a piece under any circumstances--while Beczala went for the composer’s “Quando le sere al placido…” from LUISA MILLER to tune up his tonsils. The result gave us a good preview what lay ahead in the next 90 minutes....

In the midst of this COVID-19 crisis that is gripping the world--and keeping so many people in quarantine--the Metropolitan Opera managed to pull off a brilliantly executed music coup. It connected stars, chorus members and orchestral musicians in an “At-Home Gala”--a combination fund-raiser for the Met with wonderful entertainment. And the technology worked!...

The Metropolitan Opera's annual Summer HD Festival, which presents free outdoor screenings of operas on Lincoln Center Plaza, will return for the tenth time this summer, with one screening each night from Saturday, August 25, to Monday September 3, 2018 (Labor Day). The series will present ten recent performances from the company's acclaimed Live in HD series of movie theater transmissions. As a prelude to the festival, the Marx Brothers' classic film, A Night at the Opera, will be presented on ...