Benjamin Britten News

As part of its major concert series downtown, Musiqa presents Myths & Legends, an exciting, premiere-filled concert at Zilkha Hall on January 10, 2015 at 7:30 PM.

Music for the holidays by composer Robert Sirota will be featured in a special holiday concert, Songs of the Season, presented by The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Avenue) in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium tonight, December 19, 2014 at 7pm. The Met Museum Presents concert will include performances by The Choristers of The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine led by conductor Malcolm J. Merriweather, soprano Mellissa Hughes, violist Nadia Sirota, and harpist Victoria Drake.

The 67th season of the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, under the leadership of General Manager Bernard Foccroulle, will present the world premiere productions of operas by Handel and Mozart; the French premiere of Jonathan Dove's children's opera The Monster in the Maze led by Sir Simon Rattle with the London Symphony Orchestra; and a revival of director Robert Carsen's acclaimed 1991 Festival production of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The Festival's major vocal presentations this season will also include Serbian composer Ana Sokolovi?'s unconventional one-act a capella opera Svadba (Marriage), and a double bill presenting Persephone,Stravinsky's melodrama for tenor, female narrator, choir, children's choir, dancers and orchestra, with Tchaikovsky's last opera, Iolanta.

Maggi Hambling, the first National Gallery Artist in Residence (1980-81), has established a reputation over the last four decades as one of Britain's most significant and controversial painters and sculptors. This autumn she returns to exhibit in Trafalgar Square for the first time in almost 35 years with a brand new series of paintings – Walls of Water – which have never been seen in public before.

After 16 years, the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University welcomes back Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH) to Chicago as part of its 125th Anniversary Season celebration, this weekend, November 21 - 23, 2014.

The University of Hartford's Hartt School presents the Calder Quartet, performing the second concert of the 2014-2015 Richard P. Garmany Chamber Music Series, at 7:30 p.m., in Millard Auditorium, University of Hartford, 200 Bloomfield Avenue, West Hartford.

Music has the power to touch the human spirit, transcending time, place, boundaries and language and spurring understanding and connection. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Manfred Honeck are deeply committed to music's ability to promote and spread a spiritual and universal message, and to that end invite the public to two free 'Music for the Spirit' concerts tonight, November 20 at 7:30 p.m. in Westminster Presbyterian Church in Upper St. Clair and on Saturday, November 22 at 8 p.m. at Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic High School in Cranberry.

Since it premiered at The Traverse Theatre in August 2013, ATC's production of The Events written by David Greig and directed by Ramin Gray has picked up a raft of awards, been selected as The Guardian's Best Theatre Production of 2013, has sold out two runs at The Young Vic, has toured nationally and internationally and has been staged in German and Norwegian at Schauspielhaus Vienna and Brageteatret in Drammen. In 2015 it will take another step on this extraordinary journey, as the production premieres in New York at the prestigious New York Theatre Workshop. Neve McIntosh who created the role of Claire returns to the production of the New York run and will be joined by Clifford Samuel who has played The Boy throughout 2014.

The Hall of Fame Playhouse of Bronx Community College once again plays host to one of the most powerful and joypops traditions of the borough, HANDEL'S MESSIAH FEATURING ORCHESTRA OF THE BRONX AND THE BRONX OPERA CHORUS UNDER THE DIRECTION OF CONDUCTOR AND ARTISTIC DIRECTOR MICHAEL SPIERMAN.

The University of Hartford's Hartt School presents the Calder Quartet, performing the second concert of the 2014-2015 Richard P. Garmany Chamber Music Series, at 7:30 p.m., in Millard Auditorium, University of Hartford, 200 Bloomfield Avenue, West Hartford.

Music for the holidays by composer Robert Sirota will be featured in a special holiday concert, Songs of the Season, presented by The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Avenue) in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium on Friday, December 19, 2014 at 7pm. The Met Museum Presents concert will include performances by The Choristers of The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine led by conductor Malcolm J. Merriweather, soprano Mellissa Hughes, violist Nadia Sirota, and harpist Victoria Drake.

The UMD Symphony Orchestra and UMD Concert Choir, under the direction of Edward Maclary, explore the meaning of life and loss in Brahms' German Requiem tonight, November 14 at 8pm in The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center's Dekelboum Concert Hall.

Ardani Artist proudly presents for the first time in the United States The Mikhailovsky Ballet of St. Petersburg, Russia for a special two week engagement today, November 13 - 23, 2014 at the David H. Koch Theatre (Lincoln Center) NYC. There will be four programs for this premiere engagement performed with a live orchestra.

Plácido Domingo, General Director of LA Opera, has announced updated details about the company's upcoming Figaro Unbound celebration, which explores the lasting legacy of French playwright Pierre Beaumarchais and the influential protagonist of three of his stage comedies: Figaro, the wily barber from Seville. LA Opera's programming of three operas based on the Figaro plays—The Barber of Sevilleby Rossini, The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart and the west coast premiere of The Ghosts of Versailles by John Corigliano, all conducted by LA Opera Music Director James Conlon—is the inspiration for Figaro Unbound, a three-month citywide celebration of the revolutionary spirit.

“Ideas of darkness and light, obscurity and illumination” are at the heart of the Benjamin Britten-William Plomer CURLEW RIVER. Called “a parable for church performance,” it was performed in New York at the Synod of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, as part of Lincoln Center's White Light Festival. This short but potent work is one part Japanese Noh theatre and another part English medieval mystery play, but altogether modern in its spirituality and visions of motherly love.

Enlighteningly mystical, compelled by the bleary-eyed madness of religious conviction, the deeply personal and moving testaments to the mysteries of the inner life were embodied magically throughout Great Britten. From the American premiere of Rejoice in the Lamb to Illuminations, the early 20th century music of Benjamin Britten unfolded as a touching four-part series of spiritual devotion and the loftiest of loves.

Today, November 1, 2014, Montclair State University will celebrate a decade of stellar performances at the Alexander Kasser Theater, a cultural institution that has garnered regional, national and international recognition for serving as a home for the world's most visionary talents and an incubator for the next generation of innovative performing artists.

LA Opera's production of Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas and Bela Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle, two riveting stagings of two disparate operas written more than two centuries apart that come together in a unique double bill, running for six performances from today, October 25 through November 15, 2014.