Maria Nockin - Page 6

Emily Fons received a Grammy nomination for her work on the recording of Jennifer Higdon’s opera Cold Mountain. Fons has been lauded for her virtuosic abilities in the Baroque and Bel Canto repertoires and for the dramatic commitment and musicality she brings to modern works. She has performed with Santa Fe Opera, Seattle Opera, and many others.

On the weekend of  March 13 and 14, San Francisco Opera streamed its 2018 production of Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre to opera lovers around the world. Director Francesca Zambello moved the story to a modern time in which Wotan was a captain of industry and Hunding was a hunter with a house full of trophies, one of which was his fair-tressed wife.

On Friday evening March 12, 2021, Houston Grand Opera presented Live from The Cullen: Jack Swanson and Richard Bado in a wide-ranging recital of music by Robert Schumann, Leonard Bernstein, Roger Quilter, Kurt Weill, Franz Liszt, and Gioachino Rossini. Swanson can hold his audience spellbound with the magic coming from his voice and his eyes.

On March 11, 2021, Santa Fe Opera presented an online benefit concert for its renowned apprentice programs. Singing the concert were former apprentices mezzo-soprano Emily Fons, tenor Jack Swanson, and baritone Will Liverman. Fons sings an aria from The Haunted Manor, Liverman sings an aria from Pagliacci and Swanson sings 'What a Wonderful World.'

Mar 13 and 14, San Francisco Opera presents Wagner’s Die Walküre. Chief god Wotan fathers the hero Siegmund to regain control of the ring. But, when confronted with the futility of his dream, Wotan is forced to forsake not only his son but also his beloved daughter, the warrior-maiden Brünnhilde. Wagner’s opera has English supertitles. 

On Sunday afternoon March 7, 2021, The Boulder Opera Company of Colorado presented Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro to audiences in the theater and online. Stage Director Michael Travis Risner set the time in the present. He provided the necessities required by the story and allowed the cast to provide considerable amusement. 

On Saturday, March 6, 2021, San Francisco Opera did a wonderful thing. The company put the opening opera of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungen online, free to  the world of opera lovers and the universe of the curious. Anyone with access to the Internet can see the entire Ring on weekends in March, and I, for one, am extremely grateful. 

On March 5, 2021, Seattle Opera presented Mozart’s Don Giovanni to its worldwide online audience. Stage director Brenna Corner notes that the 1964 Hamlet on Broadway directed by Richard Burton inspired her to do this black-and-white film production and use it to communicate the opera’s basic premise. Corner says she intended to emphasize the drama.

Angelinos, join soprano and Shakespeare super-fan Katherine Powers on a romp through the Bard’s stories told in music. In each of her episodes, Powers calls an expert on her 'Shakespeare Hotline' and performs songs from his timeless works.

Los Angeles Opera’s digital short film, Death, is Nadia Hallgren’s nine-minute creative take on Paul Laurence Dunbar’s turn-of-the 20th century poem, entitled Death. Two crows in seemingly choreographed flight introduce scenes with myriad black birds circling the edge of a leafless forest.

LA Opera's newest digital short film, Death, unites the striking visuals of celebrated filmmaker Nadia Hallgren, the Emmy-nominated director of the Michelle Obama documentary Becoming, with the intriguing harmonies of composer Tyshawn Sorey, a recipient of the MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship.

On Sunday, March 21 at 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time,  San Francisco’s acclaimed Merola Opera Program, one of the most prestigious and selective opera training programs in the world, continues its Virtual Recital Series with Anything for Love and Honor, featuring dramatic tenor Issachah Savage, a 2013 Merola alumnus.

On February 14, 2021, Valentine’s Day, Pittsburgh Festival Opera presented seven singers in a romantic concert entitled Some Enchanted Evening.  James Lesniak and Robert Frankenberg provided thoughtful and supportive piano accompaniment and Festival Opera Board members added charming love stories.

In April, 2019, Pacific Opera Project performed Puccini’s Madama Butterfly 蝶々夫人 in Japanese and English at the Aratani Theatre, part of the Japanese-American Cultural Center of Los Angeles’s “Little Tokyo. With a new libretto by Josh Shaw and Eiki Isomura. See the film in which ll Japanese roles were sung in Japanese, English roles in English.

On the evening of February 10, 2021, The Broad Stage presented Breathing Free, an auditory and visual online love letter to freedom produced by Heartbeat opera to tell the stories of those who who have experienced various versions of its absence. Through an inquisitive collaborative process with a diverse community of artists, Heartbeat breaks down traditional barriers to reimagine opera for artists and audiences of the twenty-first century.

In celebration of Valentine's Day, on Saturday, February 13, at 5:00 P.M. PST, Russell Thomas, Los Angeles Opera’s new Artist in Residence, welcomes Ashley Faatoalia, Tiffany Townsend, Alaysha Fox and pianist Leonard Hayes to the On Now digital stage for the first episode in its After Hours series, 'Black Love.” Enjoy sweet renditions of works by composers such as H.T. Burleigh, Undine Smith Moore, and Margaret Bonds.

Ellen Reid and Roxie Perkins’ Lumee’s Dream, is the expansion of Lumee’s Act II short monologue sung while smoking outside a nightclub in p r i s m. She says she “hurls herself out the window” into the blue from which she eventually returns tired and wet. In the Dream, Lumee speaks of her favorite dream, her imagined reality.

The unforgettable world of Ellen Reid’s      p  r  i  s  m returns to LA Opera for two weeks. This time, the Pulitzer Prize-winning piece is streaming on your home screen.  Composer Reid and librettist Roxie Perkins' sobering story follows a mother and daughter as they explore the trauma of sexual abuse and the elasticity of memory that follows.

On January 28, 2021, Los Angeles Opera streamed a newly filmed version of Roxie Perkins and Ellen Reid’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera  p r i s m. An operatic tapestry, p r i s m tells of the psychological dreams, desires and struggles of Bibi, a sexual assault survivor.

Soldier Songs is a filmed opera that tells about the life and memories of a returning soldier. Composer and librettist David T. Little says Johnathan McCullough approached him about a production in an Airstream.