Veronica Villaroel

For the past 27 years, acclaimed American soprano Lauren Flanigan and her longtime friend and collaborator Maestro Kamal Khan have been producing Comfort Ye... an annual operatic concert to raise food, and awareness specifically related to hunger, homeless, and underserved residents of the five boroughs.

Jason C. Tramm will conduct a concert version of Tosca, Giacomo Puccini's visionary and dramatic operatic masterpiece on November 16 at the South Orange Performing Art Center. Inspired by the French playwright Victorien Sardou's 1887 widely popular play 'La Tosca' (which stared the great Sarah Bernhardt in the title role) Puccini's exquisite music, propelled the veristic tale of an unlikely heroine into one of the most beloved and frequently performed operas of all time.

The Dicapo Opera Theatre presented a glittering all Puccini program to celebrate the composer's 150th birthday at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater. The program featured arias and scenes from all of Puccini's operas- from LeVilli through the last music he composed and orchestrated for Turandot- including the Opening Act II of Edgar, and selections from both the Brescia and La Scala versions of Madama Butterfly.