Though the classical music season is still young, it'll be tough for anything that lies ahead to compete with Friday night's performance at Carnegie Hall by Martha Argerich, who seemed to be having the time of her life, while showing total skill and control.
Yuval Sharon, founder and artistic director of The Industry, a Los Angeles based production company, is one of the new class of 24 Extraordinarily Creative People Who Inspire Us All, according to the MacArthur Foundation, and has been named one of the MacArthur Fellows better known as the genius
WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED, which made its NY debut in a pair of performances at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem last weekend, after its world premiere at Opera Philadelphia's O17 festival last month, is more than an opera or performance piece.
There are no happy endings for the poet Hoffmann (even in the solid hands of the charismatic tenor Vittorio Grigolo) or any of the women he fantasizes about in Offenbach's LES CONTES D'HOFFMANN (TALES OF HOFFMANN).
I wouldn't exactly call Matt Aucoin, 27, a show-off, even though he wrote the music and libretto for THE CROSSING--his 2015 opera having its NY debut at BAM's Next Wave Festival this past week--and conducted the performance as well.
The trio of soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, mezzo Joyce DiDonato and tenor Joseph Calleja promised a fine evening of singing for the Met's new NORMA and, for the most part, there wasn't much to quibble about.
Winston Churchill called Russia 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
Superficially, Wolfgang Mozart's THE MAGIC FLUTE (or DIE ZAUBERFLOTE for you purists) and David Hertzberg's THE WAKE WORLD couldn't seem less alike and, taken together, they stretch the definition of what makes an opera.
FOUR NIGHTS OF DREAM, composer/librettist Moto Osada's opera performed in its US premiere last week at the Japan Society, is based on a cornerstone of 20th century Japanese literature, 'Ten Nights of Dream' by Natsume Soseki.
The last of the new operas at the center of Opera Philadelphia's O17 opera fest is THE WAKE WORLD, a chamber piece written by composer/librettist David Hertzberg and directed by RB Schlather.
Tokyo and New York City are the two home cities of composer Moto Osada, whose new chamber opera, FOUR NIGHTS OF DREAM will have its North American premiere at the Japan Society in Manhattan on September 13, directed by Alec Duffy.
The last time the Met did Puccini's LA FANCIULLA DEL WEST--GIRL OF THE GOLDEN WEST--it was such a dispiriting affair that I was ready to write it off as past its expiration date.
Though the title role in Mozart's DON GIOVANNI goes to the fabled lady killer--and Mostly Mozart's production was lucky to have a first-rate Don in baritone Christopher Maltman--the opera is a real ensemble piece, with every one of a half dozen characters key to a successful performance.
There are opera festivals and then there are OPERA FESTIVALS, but none that promise to be the equivalent of Opera Philadelphia's O17, which opens on September 14 for a 12-day run.
Well, no one can accuse Mostly Mozart of being in a rut.
With Grammy-nominated American composer Mason Bates dipping his toe into full-length operatic waters for the first time--and star librettist Mark Campbell doing it for the umpteenth--the Guggenheim Museum's “Works & Process” series gave an extended peak into the development of their new opera, T
ACI, GALATEA E POLIFEMO (ACIS, GALATEA AND POLYPHEMUS)--which just opened a short run at Brooklyn's National Sawdust venue, ending on July 20, with star countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo--may be the most obscure Handel opera that you think you know but don't.
Chemistry in an opera performance is a funny thing.
Being an opera singer is a little like walking a tightrope without a net--no matter who you're singing with, you're out there on stage, alone, for the crowd to cheer but, also for everyone to hear each glitch or misstep in your singing.
Audiences at the New York Philharmonic have been known to come for the soloists and then slip out for the symphony.
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