Houston Grand Opera News

SOULSKIN Dance will present a brand new work SATIN & SWING as part of their 4th Season in San Francisco.

OPERA America, the national service organization for opera and the nation's leading champion for American opera, is pleased to announce the recipients of its 2017 National Opera Trustee Recognition Awards, selected from a record number of nominations. Now in their 10th year, these awards honor outstanding trustees of U.S. opera companies for their exemplary leadership, generosity and audience-building efforts on behalf of their respective organizations.

Please join BroadwayWorld and the SAG-AFTRA Foundation for a special live streamed career retrospective Q&A with Audra McDonald, SAG Award Nominee for Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill. 

Playwright Mashuq Deen (New Dramatists Fellow 2022) brings the story of his own transgender journey as a member of a traditional South Asian family and Playwright Catherine Filloux, winner of more than 40 awards for playwriting, activism and peace work, brings her latest work to the stage at New York City's first arts-advocacy festival of its kind, the International Human Rights Art Festival.

The Pepperdine University Flora L. Thornton Opera Program presents Mozart's masterpiece, Don Giovanni, sung in the original Italian, with English supertitles, at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday and Saturday, February 23 and 25, at Smothers Theatre on Pepperdine's Malibu campus.

Michael Mayer's 2013 production of Verdi's Rigoletto, set in a 1960s Las Vegas casino, returns to the Met January 20. Italian conductor Pier Giorgio Morandi makes his company debut leading Željko Lu?i? in the title role opposite Olga Peretyatko as Gilda and Stephen Costello as the Duke.

Are you ready for a new and improved version of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA? I love the original, which I first saw in California, when Robert Guillaume (star of Benson) played the role. Of course, I saw it in London's West End and on Broadway, but it's really fun to see the new version right here in Detroit. I know it's hard to believe that PHANTOM could ever be improved upon, but they've worked some magic. The chandelier is more spooky, the catacombs look more like a person actually lives there, the costumes are different, especially the stairway costume in part two - but in this version there is no grand staircase. This phantom uses a lot of pyrotechnics to accompany his magic. You will like the way they descend into the Phantom's lair; that bridge scene what shifted like a teeter totter has been replaced by really cool steps that protrude from dungeon walls. And the best part is at the very end, when the phantom vanishes; it's in a very different way, and I have no idea how he pulled it off.

Houston Grand Opera (HGO) will present the world premiere of Some Light Emerges, a chamber opera created by the acclaimed team of composer Laura Kaminsky and librettists Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed, on March 16 and 17 at 7:30 p.m., at the Ballroom at Bayou Place.

San Francisco Opera General Director Matthew Shilvock and Music Director Nicola Luisotti today announced plans for the 2017-18 repertory season. The Company's 95th season will open Friday, September 8 with a gala performance of Giacomo Puccini'sTurandot led by Maestro Luisotti and an international cast starring Martina Serafin, Maria Agresta and Brian Jagde.

Opera in the Heights, a cornerstone of Houston's vibrant performing arts community, has appointed Paige Myrick as Executive Director, and Eiki Isomura as Artistic Director, effective January 1, 2017.

Bring the whole family to see Cinderella en España-a universal rags-to-riches tale that explores the beauty of kindness and the ugliness of mistreating others. Seattle Opera will offer its new Spanish/English performance at both its annual Frost Fest on Feb. 4 at Cornish Playhouse, and onMarch 19 at Kirkland Performance Center; ultimately, the production will tour more than 40 elementary schools statewide.

???????Russian pianist Denis Kozhukhin will return to the Jones Hall stage for Gershwin & Rachmaninoff at 8 p.m. Jan. 27-28 and 2:30 p.m. Jan. 29.

Michael Mayer's 2013 production of Verdi's Rigoletto, set in a 1960s Las Vegas casino, returns to the Met January 20. Italian conductor Pier Giorgio Morandi makes his company debut leading Željko Lu?i? in the title role opposite Olga Peretyatko as Gilda and Stephen Costello as the Duke.

Houston Grand Opera expands its commitment to broadening the audience for opera with a 2017-18 season that includes the first presentations of Leonard Bernstein's classic musical West Side Story by a major American opera house and the world premiere of composer Ricky Ian Gordon and librettist Royce Vavrek's holiday opera The House without a Christmas Tree. HGO will present its first performances in a quarter century of two iconic works: Richard Strauss's revenge-filled Elektra with virtuoso sopranoChristine Goerke in the tempestuous title role and 2016 Richard Tucker Award-winner and HGO Studio alumna Tamara Wilson in her role debut as Chrysothemis, under the baton of HGO Artistic and Music Director Patrick Summers; and Bellini's grand-scale tragedy Norma showcasing the debut of stellar dramatic soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska in the notoriously difficult title role, with 2015 Tucker winner and HGO Studio alumna Jamie Barton as Adalgisa.

OPERA America, the national service organization for opera and the nation's leading champion for American opera, announces the details for the New Opera Showcase, taking place today, January 13 at 8:00 p.m. at historic Town Hall in the heart of New York City's Times Square.

Houston Grand Opera expands its commitment to broadening the audience for opera with a 2017-18 season that includes the first presentations of Leonard Bernstein's classic musical West Side Story by a major American opera house and the world premiere of composer Ricky Ian Gordon and librettist Royce Vavrek 's holiday opera The House without a Christmas Tree.

Houston Grand Opera (HGO) has chosen the semifinalists for the 29th annual Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers Concert of Arias, to be presented in the Cullen Theater at the Wortham Theater Center on January 27, at 7 p.m.

Lyric Opera of Chicago presents the thrilling story of a deadly love triangle set to Georges Bizet's most vivid and exciting music. No wonder it's so popular! Carmen heats up this winter in a new Lyric coproduction with two smoking-hot casts.

A veteran of diverse leading roles, Hurt is also an experienced concert and recital performer

On Sunday, February 12, 2017 at 7:30pm, Works & Process at the Guggenheim presents excerpts from Champion by five-time Grammy award-winning musician and playwright Terence Blanchard, who tells the true story of Emile Griffith in his haunting and visually stunning 'opera in jazz.' The work, which blew critics away when it premiered in 2013, explores the life of the closeted gay boxer whose knockout of a homophobic rival in the early 1960s let to unexpected tragedy. Washington National Opera Artistic Director Francesca Zambello will moderate a discussion with Blanchard, Deynce Graves and other members of the cast following performance excerpts.