OPERA PHILADELPHIA

Opera Saratoga has announced a high stakes 2024 season! The summer festival features three sure bets - three new productions at Universal Preservation Hall running from June 27 to July 7....

Having previously partnered in 2016 and 2017 on the New York premieres of the contemporary operas Charlie Parker's Yardbird and We Shall Not Be Moved, The Apollo and Opera Philadelphia have announced a new, multi-year partnership that will support the creation of new operatic work by Black artists....

David T. Little's GRAMMY-Nominated 'Black Lodge' opera film, with libretto by Anne Waldman, streams live on YouTube. Watch the new 'Electric Cerberus' music video....

OPERA America has revealed the winners of the 2023 Awards for Digital Excellence in Opera...

Opera Saratoga announces its 2024 season featuring 'Guys and Dolls,' 'Così fan tutte'. The festival will run from June 27 to July 7 at Universal Preservation Hall. All access passes go on sale on December 4....

OPERA America has announced Opera Passport by OPERA America, a new North American ticket discount exchange program among opera companies in the United States and Canada. ...

According to creator and star tenor Karim Sulayman, UNHOLY WARS, a 70-minute opera pastiche that made its debut on Saturday at Philadelphia Opera’s O23 Festival, “stitches together a collection of baroque music centered around the Middle East and the Crusades, examining the separation of the human race based on creed and color.” The result was a creative multi-visual/musical work with dance, drawing heavily on Monteverdi’s IL COMBATTIMENTO DI TANCREDI E CLORINDA, supplemented by Baroque arias an...

When composer Rene Orth came across the story of investigative reporter Nellie Bly’s expose of the abuse of women at an asylum in New York at the end of the 19th century, she immediately knew that “this story needed to be told as an opera.” She was right. The result of her efforts, with the first-rate creative team including librettist Hannah Moscovitch, is 10 DAYS IN A MADHOUSE, a 90-minute work that opened Opera Philadelphia’s festival (this year, called O23) with its world premiere at the Wi...

OPERA America has announced the election of Susan G. Marineau as the 14th chair of its Board of Directors....

World-renowned opera singer and Indianapolis-native Angela Brown will reprise her role of singing 'God Bless America' during pre-race ceremonies for the 107th Running of the Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge on May 28. She last performed the beloved patriotic tradition for the 101st Running of the Indianapolis 500 in 2017....

In an opera filled with gorgeous music, it’s hard to beat the end of LA BOHEME’s Act One, with the trifecta of arias about young love. If only tragedy and sadness weren’t going to catch up with the central pair, Mimi and Rodolfo, and their friends, in the succeeding three “tales from the Bohemian life” (as the work’s source material was called). But wait. Director Yuval Sharon to the rescue, with a version that just finished a successful run at Opera Philadelphia, playing out the story in revers...

​​​​​​​Ivo van Hove, the Tony Award–winning director of Broadway's A View from the Bridge, makes a major Met debut with Mozart's Don Giovanni (May 5–June 2), re-setting the familiar tale of deceit and damnation in an abstract architectural landscape and shining a light into the work's dark corners....

Opera Saratoga's board of directors has announced that Mary Birnbaum has been named the company's new general and artistic director. She succeeds former General and Artistic Director Lawrence Edelson, whose eight year tenure concluded at the end of the 2022 season. Birnbaum is the tenth general director in the Opera Saratoga's celebrated history. ...

OPERA America has announced the winners of the inaugural Awards for Digital Excellence in Opera. The Awards for Digital Excellence in Opera recognize the best work created for digital platforms by individual producers and organizations in the U.S. and Canada, in four categories: Artistic Creation, Education/Enrichment Material, University/Conservatory Projects, and Noteworthy Projects....

Will Crutchfield’s gutsy Teatro Nuovo brought New Yorkers a chance to evaluate Rossini's MAOMETTO SECONDO the other day at Jazz from Lincoln Center’s Rose Theatre. Kudos to Crutchfield, who continues on his quest for the most authentic of the authentic in bel canto, even when the originals weren’t exactly smash hits to begin with. That includes MAOMETTO, which has had a quite checkered past....

O22, as Opera Philadelphia's festival was called this year, wasn’t exactly “something old, something new” but more like big fat sandwich cookie. On one side, there was a kind of “traditional” contemporary opera, Hosokawa’s THE RAVEN , a big filling of Rossini’s OTELLO opera seria in the middle, and finished with the Little-Waldman BLACK LODGE, a rock opera that was half ear-blasting concert performed live, half film....

OPERA America announces its latest support of women composers with Commissioning Grants to seven opera companies across the country through its Opera Grants for Women Composers program. ...

After their first, full, in-person season in over a year, AVA has announced their 2022/23 opera season! With last season's productions being called a 'complete triumph from its start to its finish' (Chestnut Hill Local), AVA's 88th season is sure to delight opera audiences....

OPERA America has announced the second round recipients of the 2022 Opera Grants for Women Stage Directors and Conductors. The program incentivizes companies to hire women in these key artistic roles. These hires enrich the production and performance of new operas and works from the inherited repertoire; introduce audiences to the talent and insight of new artists; and inspire future generations of creative artists who identify as women....

Can we talk—about live opera in New York and elsewhere on the East Coast in the coming months?...

Opera Saratoga and Proctors Collaborative announce a free New Year's Eve concert at Universal Preservation Hall (UPH) in Saratoga Springs, featuring Broadway and Opera Star Zachary James with pianist Laurie Rogers. ...

The Leadership Intensive exemplifies OPERA America's long-standing commitment to identify and encourage the field's most promising administrators who will help move opera forward for years to come. ...

On the Los Angeles Opera website, tenor Russell Thomas and collaborative pianist Kyung-Mi Kim present a program of song that includes Schumann's song cycle, Dichterliebe (Poet's Love),  Handel's aria “Total Eclipse” from Samson, and love songs by Adolphus Hailstork and Robert Owens that was filmed recently at Spivey Hall in Atlanta, Georgia. ...

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....

When I interviewed David T. Little several years ago, he told me he told me that he “didn't even realize [SOLDIER SONGS] was an opera until [opera entrepreneur] Beth Morrison clued him in.” He probably didn’t realize it was a film either, until Singer-Director Johnathan McCullough brought him the idea--and Opera Philadelphia raised the funds to make it over for its new opera channel. The results are painfully spectacular....