Houston Grand Opera News

Three sopranos will sing their first Met performances of the title role in Puccini's Madama Butterfly at the Met this season.

The Lark Play Development Center in collaboration with Mexico's National Fund for Culture and Arts (FONCA) is pleased to announce the 2013 Mexico/ U.S. Playwright Exchange Program. For the eighth year the Lark will host playwrights from Mexico and pair them with bilingual U.S. playwrights, actors, and directors for a ten day cultural exploration that establishes ongoing channels of communication between artists in both countries.

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Winter brings a trio of momentous house debuts for Richard Tucker Award-winner Stephen Costello. On the heels of headlining La bohème in his first appearances at Munich's Bavarian State Opera (Dec 15-23), he heads home to the States to make debuts at Houston Grand Opera, as the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto (Jan 24–Feb 9), and the Washington National Opera, where he revisits Ishmael/Greenhorn, the role he originally created, in the East Coast premiere of Jake Heggie's Moby-Dick (Feb 22–March 8). The tenor will then remain in DC to reprise his star turn as Nemorino in L'elisir d'amore (March 20-29). One of today's most compelling exponents of Donizetti's lovelorn peasant, Costello was the obvious choice to sing favorite Nemorino numbers at Lincoln Center's star-studded Richard Tucker Gala last month.

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The Music Academy of the West will honor legendary mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne, the director of the Academy's renowned Voice Program who celebrates her 80th birthday on January 16, 2014, with special programming during its 2014 Summer Festival. The centerpiece of the Horne tribute programming will be a new production of Georges Bizet's immensely popular opera Carmen, one of the iconic mezzo's signature roles. Related programming next summer will include a screening of the 1954 musical film Carmen Jones, which features Horne's dubbed singing for actress Dorothy Dandridge. Additional events will be announced in the coming months.

The Houston Symphony's December calendar features a special one-night-only performance as John Williams Joins Yo-Yo Ma tonight, December 5 at Jones Hall.

The December broadcasts of The New York Philharmonic This Week - the weekly radio series of concerts and recordings by the New York Philharmonic, hosted by Alec Baldwin - begin with Bernard Labadie returning to the Philharmonic to conduct Mozart's Requiem; J.S. Bach's Cantata No. 51, Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen!; and Handel's 'Let the Bright Seraphim' from Samson. The program's soloists will include soprano Miah Persson, mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, tenor Fre?de?ric Antoun, bass Andrew Foster-Williams, and Associate Principal Trumpet Matthew Muckey, joined by the New York Choral Artists directed by Joseph Flummerfelt. The following week Music Director Alan Gilbert conducts the New York Premiere of The Marie- Jose?e Kravis Composer-in-Residence Christopher Rouse's Oboe Concerto featuring Principal Oboe Liang Wang, and Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra and Don Juan, both featuring Concertmaster Glenn Dicterow in the concertmaster solos.

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American soprano Patricia Racette, known throughout the world for her portrayal of Cio-Cio-San (a.k.a. Madama Butterfly), will star in the Lyric Opera of Chicago production of Puccini's ever-popular masterpiece, Madama Butterfly, which opens at Lyric on Saturday, January 11. There will be six performances – Jan. 11, 14, 17, and 20 beginning at 7:30pm, and Jan. 23 and 26 beginning at 2pm.

Today, November 27 from 11:00 AM-1:00 PM, the holiday season will officially begin as hundreds of Houston children celebrate at the 26th annual Wortham Theater Center Tree Lighting Ceremony - a joyous festival held in the Grand Foyer of Wortham Theater Center downtown. This event is FREE and open to the public.

Nigel Redden, director of the Lincoln Center Festival, and Rebecca Robertson, President and Executive Producer, Park Avenue Armory, today announced that the two organizations will co-present The Passenger, Mieczyslaw Weinberg's uncompromising 1968 opera about the Holocaust, performed by Houston Grand Opera and directed by David Pountney, in its New York premiere performances July 10, 12 and 13 at Lincoln Center Festival 2014. Pountney's production will have its U.S. premiere on January 18, 2014 at Houston Grand Opera.

The Park Avenue Armory presents Holocaust Opera “The Passenger”, written by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, which will be hitting the Lincoln Center Festival this summer, according to the New York Times.

The Lark Play Development Center in collaboration with Mexico's National Fund for Culture and Arts (FONCA) is pleased to announce the 2013 Mexico/ U.S. Playwright Exchange Program. For the eighth year the Lark will host playwrights from Mexico and pair them with bilingual U.S. playwrights, actors, and directors for a ten day cultural exploration that establishes ongoing channels of communication between artists in both countries.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts presents American Voices hosted by Renee Fleming, a groundbreaking festival of performances, master sessions, and symposia celebrating the rich diversity of American singing, today, November 22-24, 2013. Curated and hosted by world-renowned American singer Renee Fleming, American Voices will bring together some of the biggest names in vocal music for a genre-spanning, landmark concert with the National Symphony Orchestra.

What's it like to be the most beautiful, most desired young woman who throws the wildest parties in all of Paris - and to be losing your life just as true love finally finds you? Welcome to the glittering, dark, hope-filled, doomed world of the Parisian demimonde, where the romantic tragedy of Verdi's La Traviata takes place.

Lyric Opera of Chicago's new production of Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata, opening on November 20 and continuing for nine more performances through December 20, will be performed absolutely complete, general director Anthony Freud announced today. Beginning with the company's inaugural season (1954), the work has been presented by Lyric in 13 seasons, but never with every note of Verdi's score included.

On Wednesday, November 27 from 11:00 AM-1:00 PM, the holiday season will officially begin as hundreds of Houston children celebrate at the 26th annual Wortham Theater Center Tree Lighting Ceremony - a joyous festival held in the Grand Foyer of Wortham Theater Center downtown. This event is FREE and open to the public.

The Metropolitan Opera and The Juilliard School present an evening of opera featuring Act I of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail; Stravinsky's rarely-performed one-act comedy Mavra; Act I, scene 1 of Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini; and Act I, part 2 of Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore in the fourth collaboration between the two institutions on Tuesday, February 11 and Friday, February 14, 2014 at 8 PM and Sunday, February 16, 2014 at 2 PM in Juilliard's Peter Jay Sharp Theater. Met Music Director James Levine conducts the Juilliard Orchestra and singers from the Met's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, as well as singers from the Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts at Juilliard. Director Edward Berkeley will stage the program in a semi-staged concert version.

The Dallas Opera thrilled audience members at this evening's “Composing Conversation” at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, when Dallas Opera General Director and CEO Keith Cerny made the surprise announcement that Mark Adamo, one of America's most successful and accomplished composer-librettists has agreed to create a new holiday opera for the 2015-2016 Season.