Stephanie Blythe News

A friendly reminder! MasterVoices (formerly The Collegiate Chorale) continues the 2015-2016 season with Henry Purcell and Nahum Tate's tempestuous Baroque opera, DIDO AND AENEAS, on April 28, 2016 at 7pm and April 29, 2016 at 8pm at New York City Center, 131 W. 55th Street, New York City.

The Richard Tucker Music Foundation is thrilled to announce that soprano Tamara Wilson – whose “voice of steely beauty and great power” (Houston Chronicle) has already won international accolades – has been named as winner of the 2016 Richard Tucker Award. Dubbed the “Heisman Trophy of Opera,” the Tucker Award carries the foundation's most substantial cash prize of $50,000, and is conferred each year by a panel of opera industry professionals on an American singer at the threshold of a major international career. Featuring such luminaries as Renée Fleming, Stephanie Blythe,Lawrence Brownlee, David Daniels, Christine Goerke and Joyce DiDonato, the list of past winners reads like a who's who of American opera.

Houston, March 28, 2016—Houston Grand Opera (HGO) opens its spring repertory with Siegfried, the much- anticipated third installment of Wagner's epic Ring cycle, on April 16. The ground-breaking Ring by Carlus Padrissa of Catalan theater company La Fura dels Baus, with its cutting-edge visuals and acrobats in tableaux of human scenery, has thrilled Houston audiences and played to sold-out houses.

Anna Netrebko came out on stage in a shimmering white and silver gown with matching headband, looking like an Art Deco goddess in a poster by Alfonso Mucha. It's a look that suited her--not only because the Russian soprano has Bellini's NORMA on her Met schedule in the not-too-distant future, but because she's about as close to a goddess as the Met can conjure up these days (with maybe one or two competitors). And the audience ate it up.

The Tulsa Opera Board of Directors announces that Artistic Director Kostis Protopapas will depart the company at the end of the 2015-16 Season.

The complexities in the February production calendar have necessitated the Harris Theater for Music and Dance to reschedule SING, AMERICA!, featuring mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe. Blythe has graciously agreed to postpone to a later date.

Toronto –   The Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio, Canada's premier training program for young opera professionals, welcomes seven outstanding new artists for the 2016/2017 season: sopranos Danika Lorènand Samantha Pickett, mezzo-sopranos Emily D'Angelo, Lauren Eberwein and Megan Quick, baritone Bruno Roy, and pianist Stéphane Mayer. The seven artists join the Ensemble Studio in August 2016 and become part of an illustrious program that, since its inception in 1980, has launched the careers of over 215 Canadian singers, opera coaches, mainstage directors and conductors.

Mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe returns to Carnegie Hall with pianist Alan Louis Smith to lead an audience sing-slong concert, Sing, America!, on Saturday, January 23 at 2:00 p.m. in Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage as part of Carnegie Hall's annual series The Song Continues. Audience members have the opportunity to join in and sing along to some of America's most popular songs from the early 1900s including "Oh, You Beautiful Doll," "Let Me Call You Sweetheart," "By the Beautiful Sea," and many more.

No more carping about out-of-tune singing (for the rest of 2015). No more bemoaning opera directors who don't seem to like the art of opera (for the next five minutes). No more worrying whether traditional opera will go the way of all flesh (for the next few days, at least). It's time to give up on my Scrooge tendencies and be thankful for the gifts that opera gave me, in and around New York this past year, alphabetically speaking.

On Sunday, January 17, Opera Index will present its 37th Distinguished Achievement Award to Dolora Zajick, a true dramatic mezzo-soprano, acclaimed by The New York Times as “a mezzo in a class by herself,” at a gala evening beginning at 6 p.m. at JW Marriott Essex House, 160 Central Park South.

New York, NY (December 10, 2015) – OPERA NEWS Editor in Chief F. Paul Driscoll today announced the recipients of the 11th Annual OPERA NEWS Awards. This year's honorees — Joseph Calleja, El?na Garan?a, Waltraud Meier, Anna Netrebko, and José van Dam — will be feted at a black tie gala celebration on April 10th at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. 

From January 19 to 23, Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute (WMI) presents The Song Continues, an annual series led by renowned mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne, exploring song repertoire through master classes and concerts with the goal of encouraging, supporting, and preserving the art of the vocal recital. The series concludes with the Marilyn Horne Song Celebration, a recital featuring special guest artist soprano Nina Stemme on Saturday, January 23 at 7:30 p.m. in Zankel Hall. The evening's concert also features performances by soprano Julia Bullock, mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack, tenor Andrew Haji, bass-baritone Evan Hughes, and pianists John Arida, Keun-A Lee, Ken Noda, and Jennifer Szeto. Complete program information is listed below.

MasterVoices, formerly The Collegiate Chorale, was honored at the Martina Arroyo Foundation's11th Annual Gala.MasterVoices was recognized along with American couture designer Joanna Mastroianni and The Michel Maurel award-winner Ernst Rieser. Brian Kellow and Terrance McKnight hosted the gala, with performances by the young artists of Prelude to Performance, Jennifer Rowley, Michele Angelini and Cecilia Violetta Lopez (both featured in the October issue of Opera News), as well as other special guests.

New York Festival of Song opens a new season of NYFOS Mainstage with 'From Russia to Riverside Drive: Rachmaninoff & Friends,' featuring Rachmaninoff's ravishing romanticism and his American contemporaries - songs by Rachmaninoff, Ellington, Gershwin, Schillinger.

The award-winning soprano is admired for her ability to perform more than one role in Puccini and Verdi operas

Excerpts from Yunus Emre (1946), an oratorio composed by Ahmed Adnan Saygun, the most important Turkish classical music composer of the twentieth century, will be performed at Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall at 8 PM tonight, October 17, 2015 as part of MidAtlantic Opera and Seton Hall University's co-production entitled A Prayer for Peace. This rarely-heard piece will be sung in Turkish by the 100-voice Seton Hall University choir.

MasterVoices will hold its Fall Gala and Concert, featuring the THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE; OR, THE SLAVE OF DUTY at Le Parker Meridian and the New York City Center tonight, October 15, 2015.

MasterVoices will hold its Fall Gala and Concert, featuring the THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE; OR, THE SLAVE OF DUTY at Le Parker Meridian and the New York City Center on October 15, 2015.