Michelle Bradley News

The Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts recently unveiled a new Volunteer Program. The program seeks candidates who have a passion for theater, live events, and engaging with others. Volunteers will work alongside the center's ushers and management staff in providing outstanding guest services for all who attend events at the Duke Energy Center.

San Diego Opera's safe return to indoor performances began last week with the first of three intimate concerts showcasing some of today's most exciting singers with a varied and diverse repertoire of opera, show tunes, spirituals, and zarzuela. The first concert, featuring mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe exploring the songs of Johnny Mercer, occurred this past Saturday to popular and critical acclaim.

The imposing mezzo soprano Stephanie Blythe is known for her roles in Wagner, Verdi and Stravinsky. Why would she begin a Balboa Theatre recital for the San Diego Opera with Johnny Mercer’s 'Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive?” Here’s what she said in a recent interview, “I’ve been a great fan of Johnny Mercer’s and I’ve been singing the music of his Great American Songbook for a very long time.” Rather than a concert-hall recital, Blythe was doing cabaret, and doing it far better than most of the opera singers who try to crossover. Her main problem had to be choosing which songs to include in her tribute to Johnny Mercer. He wrote 1500 of them, most often sticking to lyrics in collaboration with the A-list melodic composers of his era. At one point in the 40s he had five of the top ten on the popular radio show “Your Hit Parade.” (If you remember Snooky Lanson and Dorothy Collins, I wouldn’t mention it in your dating app bio.) Mercer’s honors include nineteen Oscar nominations with four wins. That got him a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Puccini’s majestic Turandot will return to the Met with nine performances beginning October 12, 2021, and five additional performances beginning April 30, 2022. Conducted by Marco Armiliato, Turandot features two of opera’s most thrilling voices sharing the title role of the legendary princess: Christine Goerke and Anna Netrebko.

San Diego Opera's safe return to indoor performances begins with three intimate concerts showcasing some of today's most exciting singers with a varied and diverse repertoire of opera, show tunes, spirituals, and zarzuela, as well as a number of surprises.

It would appear that acclaimed baritone Sidney Outlaw is having the busiest year of his career. In addition to starring as composer Antonio Salieri in Opera San José’s new virtual production of Rimsky-Korsakov’s 'Mozart and Salieri,' Outlaw will be performing 'Barber of Seville,' 'Porgy and Bess,' and 'La Bohème.' BroadwayWorld speaks with Outlaw.

David Bennett is now six years into his job as general director of the San Diego Opera Association. When hired, he faced shaky finances, a loss of major donors, and huge turnover in the membership of the board of directors. The new board hired him with the understanding that downsizing and reinvention of the organization were his priorities. Then, after getting off to a surprisingly good start, Bennett had the forced restrictions of COVID-19 to contend with. Perhaps a biblical plague of locusts is next?

San Diego Opera's safe return to indoor performances begins with three intimate concerts showcasing some of today's most exciting singers with a varied and diverse repertoire of opera, show tunes, spirituals, and zarzuela, as well as a number of surprises.

San Diego Opera has announced the winning proposals from the Company's second “Opera Hack,” a month-long online interdisciplinary event for music/theater and technology experts to explore how technology can be applied to the production, presentation, and consumption of opera.

San Diego Opera’s safe return to indoor performances begins with three intimate concerts showcasing some of today’s most exciting singers with a varied and diverse repertoire of opera, show tunes, spirituals, and zarzuela, as well as a number of surprises.

Melanie Margarum spent five years at the Carolina Theatre in Durham, where she started as an Event and Development Coordinator and was later promoted to Event Sales Director.

San Diego’s classical music scene coped with the COVID-19 invasion by trading shuttered concert halls for parking lots and online media. Appreciative bravos and bravas were replaced by either honking horns, flashing headlights or painful silence. The city’s Mainly Mozart was an early adopter of drive-in performances. Its first was in July of last year with an audience of 150 vehicles voicing raucous automotive approval for San Diego Symphony Concertmaster Jeff Thayer and seven musicians from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, including Concertmaster Martin Chalifour. The musicians, delighted to be playing in person under any circumstances, delivered lively versions of an early Mozart divertimento and the Mendelssohn octet.

San Diego Opera has announced its 2021-2022 season, which returns to theatres indoors, after a reduced 2020-2021 season that saw the Company perform innovative drive-in productions during the global coronavirus pandemic.

After the successful reimagining of its 2020/21 Season, Lyric Opera of Chicago greatly looks forward to welcoming audiences once again to the Lyric Opera House this fall for the start of the company’s 67th Season. 

PineCone is bringing live bluegrass music back to downtown Raleigh's Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts and local NC native, IBMA award winner and banjo virtuoso, Tray Wellington will help kick off the return of the Down Home Concert Series May 7 at 1pm in Moore Square.

Guests will once again grace the seats at the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, as the North Carolina Symphony welcomes small, socially distanced audiences to Meymandi Concert Hall for six performances this spring—in accordance with capacity regulations for in-person gatherings set by Governor Roy Cooper.

Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts and the African American Cultural Festival of Raleigh and Wake County (AACF) announce their new annual partnership which will feature four co-produced events. The events will focus on bringing the community together while honoring African American culture and heritage.

Broadway might be dark, but that doesn't mean that theatre isn't happening everywhere! Below, check out where you can get your daily fix of Broadway this weekend, January 30-31, 2020.

Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts and the African American Cultural Festival of Raleigh and Wake County announce Raleigh's First Annual Kwanzaa Celebration. The celebration will be filmed in the Meymandi Concert Hall and will air January 1st.

Dallas Black Dance Theatre and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra are uniting for a concert to support Project Unity on November 11, 2020.