LA CENERENTOLA

OPERA America has announced the induction of seven exemplary artists, administrators, and advocates to the Opera Hall of Fame as the Class of 2023. They join a distinguished roster of previous inductees who are honored in OPERA America's National Opera Center....

​​​​​​​Ivo van Hove, the Tony Award–winning director of Broadway's A View from the Bridge, makes a major Met debut with Mozart's Don Giovanni (May 5–June 2), re-setting the familiar tale of deceit and damnation in an abstract architectural landscape and shining a light into the work's dark corners....

OPERA America has announced the winners of the inaugural Awards for Digital Excellence in Opera. The Awards for Digital Excellence in Opera recognize the best work created for digital platforms by individual producers and organizations in the U.S. and Canada, in four categories: Artistic Creation, Education/Enrichment Material, University/Conservatory Projects, and Noteworthy Projects....

Will Crutchfield’s gutsy Teatro Nuovo brought New Yorkers a chance to evaluate Rossini's MAOMETTO SECONDO the other day at Jazz from Lincoln Center’s Rose Theatre. Kudos to Crutchfield, who continues on his quest for the most authentic of the authentic in bel canto, even when the originals weren’t exactly smash hits to begin with. That includes MAOMETTO, which has had a quite checkered past....

Canadian bass-baritone John Relyea, who just ended a highly acclaimed run as Boris Ismailov in the Met's production of Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, will also be singing the role of the Grand Inquisitor in all of the Met's upcoming performances of Verdi's Don Carlo, which opens on November 3....

Hodge's other past roles include Colline in La bohème, Beo/Amatio di Nicolao in Gianni Schicchi, the Master of Ceremonies in Cendrillon, Mr. Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Mr. Gobineau in The Medium, Yundt in Curs Bryant's The Anarchists, and more....

Looks can be deceiving, as the New Year’s Eve edition of the Met’s “Live in Concert” series proved in abundance. But could even the talent of four wonderful singers--sopranos, Angel Blue and Pretty Yende and a matching pair of tenors, Javier Camarena and Matthew Polenzani-- breathe new life in a program filled with warhorses, from “Che gelida manina” from BOHEME to that Neopolitan classic, “O sole mio”? In a word: Yes. ...

Saturday night, I heard soprano Lisette Oropesa deliver an alternatingly delicious and desperately dramatic Violetta in Verdi's LA TRAVIATA at the Met. Less than a day later, she was the emcee at the GRAND FINALS CONCERT of the Met's National Council Auditions--where she was a winner herself in 2005 and “it changed my life,” she recalled--delivering the latest batch of opera babies into the big time....

Hailed as “a remarkably strong and diverse exploration of everything opera can be in the city (The New York Times),” the New York Opera Fest celebrates its fifth season with performances by 20+ local opera companies in all five boroughs of New York City....

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Mezzo Joyce DiDonato knows quite a bit about being Cinderella--after all, she's played the title characters in Rossini's CENERENTOLA and Massenet's CENDRILLON at the Met and other major opera houses. But it also appears she's a first-rate “fairy godmother,” as she proved with a group of emerging artists in a series of Master Classes in Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Room of the Resnick Education Wing last week....