Andrew Lieberman News

San Francisco Opera's 101st season continues May 30–June 30 at the War Memorial Opera House with the highly anticipated American premiere of Kaija Saariaho's final opera, INNOCENCE, along with Mozart's THE MAGIC FLUTE (DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE) and Handel's PARTENOPE, presented in award-winning productions.

When composer Rene Orth came across the story of investigative reporter Nellie Bly’s expose of the abuse of women at an asylum in New York at the end of the 19th century, she immediately knew that “this story needed to be told as an opera.” She was right. The result of her efforts, with the first-rate creative team including librettist Hannah Moscovitch, is 10 DAYS IN A MADHOUSE, a 90-minute work that opened Opera Philadelphia’s festival (this year, called O23) with its world premiere at the Wilma Theatre.

Experience the world premiere of Composer Rene Orth's 10 Days in a Madhouse at Opera Philadelphia. Grammy-winning baritone Will Liverman stars in this psychological opera based on Nellie Bly's story. Don't miss the premiering performances from September 21 to September 30.

The ensemble cast includes Sam Richardson (VEEP, DETROITERS), Milana Vayntrub (THIS IS US), George Basil (CRASHING), Sarah Burns (BARRY), Michael Chernus (TOMMY/CBS), Catherine Curtin (ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK), and Wayne Duvall (THE HUNT).

Bard SummerScape's 17th edition celebrates one of the most important female figures in classical music history, with seven weeks of music, opera, theater, dance, film and the SummerScape Spiegeltent, centered around the 31st Bard Music Festival, 'Nadia Boulanger and Her World.'

Complete casting, creatives, and more have been announced for New York Theatre Workshop's adaptation of Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov, for the previously announced production helmed by Sam Gold.

San Francisco Opera's 2020 Summer SeasonSan Francisco Opera presents a trio of masterworks spanning the 18th century to the present for its 2020 Summer Season at the War Memorial Opera House June 7a?"July 3. In an update announced today, Caroline H. Hume Music Director Designate Eun Sun Kim will conduct Giuseppe Verdi's Ernani replacing James Gaffigan who has withdrawn from the production due to family reasons. The summer season will also include George Frideric Handel's Partenope in Christopher Alden's popular production and the Bay Area premiere of composer Mason Bates' kaleidoscopic exploration of life, love and creativity, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs.

Winner of the Newcomer Award at the International Opera Awards in 2018, Barbora Horáková Joly brings her contemporary staging of Luisa Miller to the London Coliseum.

Thomas Wolfe--famed for his novels including “Look Homeward, Angel”--is also remembered for the quotable title of one of his short stories: “Only the Dead Know Brooklyn.” Judging my weekend at Opera Philadelphia's O19 opera festival, and its two world premieres, DENIS & KATYA and LET ME DIE, he could have also written “Only the Dead Know Philadelphia” (though it might have missed the priceless Brooklyn accents used in the story by this southern writer).

San Francisco Opera General Director Matthew Shilvock today announced repertory and casting for the Company's 97th Season, opening Friday, September 6, 2019, with a gala performance of Charles Gounod's Romeo and Juliet (Rom o et Juliette) starring tenor Bryan Hymel and soprano Nadine Sierra in Op ra de Monte-Carlo Director Jean-Louis Grinda's production. In keeping with the Company's time-honored tradition, the new season will be inaugurated with San Francisco Opera Guild's elegant, signature benefit and celebration, Opera Ball 2019.

The lack of visible doors in our view of the home of the title character of Heather Raffo's drama of an immigrant Christian Iraqi family in America, Noura, appears more and more to be a symbolic gesture once it becomes apparent that her story takes its cue from Henrik Ibsen's A DOLL'S HOUSE.

Playwrights Horizons (Artistic Director Tim Sanford, Managing Director Leslie Marcus) will, from today, November 12, through Thursday, November 15, accept entries for the Live for Five online lottery, giving out $5 tickets to the New York premiere production of Noura, from 9 Parts of Desire playwright and actor Heather Raffo and director Joanna Settle. The Washington Post deemed this "epic-feeling, nearly searing portrait of a woman torn between cultures and family" the "best premiere of the Women's Voices Theater Festival" when it made its world premiere in Washington, D.C. earlier this year. Produced in association with Shakespeare Theatre Company, it will be performed at Playwrights Horizons from November 27 to December 30. Playwrights Horizons created Live for Five in 2007 as part of their Arts Access program to reach out to those who may not be able to afford the cost of a full-price theater ticket. Since its inception, over 3,000 theatergoers have been able to attend the theater thanks to the initiative.

Playwrights Horizons presents the New York premiere of Noura, a new American drama from 9 Parts of Desire playwright and actor Heather Raffo, continuing her longtime collaboration with director Joanna Settle, November 27-December 30, in the Mainstage Theater at Playwrights Horizons

“I was, like many composers, not someone who was immediately in love with the human voice, the operatic voice, in new music,” says Lembit Beecher, whose opinion has definitely changed. He has become a powerful new force in the medium, with his new opera, SKY ON SWINGS, written with librettist Hannah Moskovitch and directed by Joanna Settle, opening the second year of Opera Philadelphia's Festival, O18, on September 20. It stars two formidable mezzos, Frederica von Stade and Marietta Simpson.

Giuseppe Verdi's epic opera is being staged for the first time in two decades at WNO and features a sterling cast in a grand production.

Introverts weren't exactly regarded as sexy, at least not as a norm, when Edward Albee's one-act classic 'The Zoo Story' premiered in 1958, launching the career of a playwright whose name became synonymous with the psychoanalyzation of privileged white American dysfunctionality.

Edward Albee's At Home at the Zoo: Homelife & The Zoo Story officially opened last night on The Irene Diamond Stage at The Pershing Square Signature Center (480 West 42nd Street between 9th and 10th Avenues). 

Heather Raffo's play is challenging, but ultimately rewarding.

The Signature Theatre (Paige Evans, Artistic Director; James Houghton, Founder) production of Edward Albee's At Home at the Zoo: Homelife & The Zoo Story has been extended one week, the company announced today. The production, which opens on February 21, will now run through March 18, 2018.

Signature Theatre (Paige Evans, Artistic Director; James Houghton, Founder) will host several special events at The Pershing Square Signature Center (480 West 42nd Street between 9th and 10th Avenues) this winter, the company announced today.