Alice Ford News

Serban Vasile will make his Met debut in this evening's performance of Verdi's Falstaff, replacing Franco Vassallo, who is ill.

During curtain calls for the Met's recent Cosi Fan Tutte, when conductor James Levine rotated his wheelchair so he could face the audience, a prolonged ovation shook the building. He looked overcome and, perhaps, surprised. Many thought this day would never come.

Classical Action: Performing Arts Against AIDS continues its 2013-14 Michael Palm Series of benefit house concerts in New York City with an intimate performance by rising-star soprano Angela Meade on Thursday December 12.

Patricia Racette and Sondra Radvanovsky will reprise their acclaimed performances of one of the most famous roles in opera, the heroine of Puccini's Tosca, at the Met this season. Racette sings the role beginning tonight, October 29, opposite Roberto Alagna as Cavaradossi and George Gagnidze as Scarpia.

Patricia Racette and Sondra Radvanovsky will reprise their acclaimed performances of one of the most famous roles in opera, the heroine of Puccini's Tosca, at the Met this season. Racette sings the role beginning October 29, opposite Roberto Alagna as Cavaradossi and George Gagnidze as Scarpia. Radvanovsky takes the role on December 11, singing with Marcello Giordani as Cavaradossi and Gagnidze as Scarpia. Two Italian conductors, Riccardo Frizza and Marco Armiliato, lead this season's performances of Puccini's celebrated tragedy. On December 20, Portuguese soprano Elisabete Matos sings her first Met Tosca, and on December 17, Brazilian tenor Ricardo Tamura makes his Met debut as Cavaradossi. The November 9 matinee of Tosca, starring Racette, Alagna, and Gagnidze, will be transmitted live as part of the Met's Live in HD series, which now reaches more than 1,950 theaters in 64 countries around the world.

The November 9 matinee of Tosca, starring Patricia Racette, Roberto Alagna, and George Gagnidze, will be transmitted live as part of the Met's Live in HD series, which now reaches more than 1,950 theaters in 64 countries around the world. Thirteen million tickets have been sold to opera lovers worldwide.

Angela Meade, the soprano whose 57 competition wins include the Metropolitan Opera's 2012 Beverly Sills Artist Award, returns to the company in two prominent productions this fall. She launches the new season with her first Met performances in the title role of Norma (Oct 24 & 28), having demonstrated “her nearly mind-blowing mastery of Bellini's most challenging music” (Washington Times) in the same part earlier this year. Then, under the baton of James Levine, she makes her role debut as Alice Ford in a new-to-the-Met production of Falstaff (Dec 6–Jan 11) that will be beamed to movie theaters worldwide in the Met: Live in HD series (Dec 14). Meade's abundant honors include the 2011 Richard Tucker Award, and she graces a special gala concert to celebrate the legendary tenor's centennial at Avery Fisher Hall (Nov 17). She also looks forward to making two important European debuts this season: in Italy, where she gives her first performances as Mathilde in Rossini's William Tell at the Teatro Regio di Torino (May 7-18), and at the Frankfurt Opera, where she sings her first Fidelia in concert performances of Puccini's Edgar (Feb 16 & 18).

Today, on the 200th birthday of Giuseppe Verdi, Plácido Domingoannounces the full casting and production details for LA Opera's upcoming production of Falstaff, Verdi's final opera based on Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor. 'All year long, opera houses around the world have been celebrating the bicentenary of Giuseppe Verdi, the greatest of all Italian composers,' said Mr. Domingo, LA Opera's General Director. 'In just a few weeks, we will unveil a new staging of Verdi's comic masterpiece, the crowning glory of his extraordinary career.'

The Met: Live in HD, the Metropolitan Opera's award-winning series of live transmissions to movie theaters, will feature 10 productions in the 2013-14 season, offering a significant portion of the Met season to opera lovers around the world.

Falstaff in love? Is the world his oyster? Not if these quick-witted housewives have their way, as Boston audiences will discover when Boston Midsummer Opera (BMO) presents its eighth season production, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Otto Nicolai's tuneful 1849 version of Shakespeare's humorous tale. This popular European opera, rarely seen in the United States, will be fully staged and costumed and presented at the Tsai Performance Center, Boston University for three performances only, today, July 24, 26 and 28. Director Antonio Ocampo-Guzman makes his BMO debut and nationally acclaimed conductor Susan Davenny Wyner will lead the BMO orchestra. The opera will be sung in an English translation by John Moriarty, and is the first professional production of this opera in New England.

The Metropolitan Opera will celebrate its longtime Music Director James Levine's 70th birthday with two full days of special programming on Met Opera Radio (Sirius XM Channel 74). The weekend-long marathon will feature 14 classic Levine performances, hand-picked by the maestro himself, beginning on Saturday, June 22 and continuing through midnight on Levine's birthday, Sunday, June 23. The first broadcast, at 6 a.m. Saturday, will be a 1991 performance of Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera starring Luciano Pavarotti; the celebration will conclude at 12 a.m. on Monday, June 24 with a 1994 performance of Verdi's rarely heard Stiffelio, starring Placido Domingo in the title role. Complete details, including complete casting and original broadcast dates for all 14 performances, are below.

Falstaff in love? Is the world his oyster? Not if these quick-witted housewives have their way, as Boston audiences will discover when Boston Midsummer Opera (BMO) presents its eighth season production, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Otto Nicolai's tuneful 1849 version of Shakespeare's humorous tale. This popular European opera, rarely seen in the United States, will be fully staged and costumed and presented at the Tsai Performance Center, Boston University for three performances only, July 24, 26 and 28.

Angela Meade - who earlier this month added Washington National Opera's Artist of the Year honor to her 2012 Beverly Sills Artist Award and her 2011 Richard Tucker Award - is looking forward to a starry summer. The soprano portrays Donna Anna in the Cincinnati Opera production of Mozart's Don Giovanni (June 13, 15), with Verdi performances to follow at the Caramoor International Music Festivalin Katonah, NY (June 27, July 6), Bravo! Vail with the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin (July 13), and the Grand Tetons Music Festival under Donald Runnicles (July 26-27).

Internationally renowned soprano Patricia Schuman will step in for Nancy Gustafson as the Duchess of Argyll in Opera Philadelphia's June 2013 Company Premiere of Powder Her Face by Thomas Ades.

Last night, Houston's Opera in the Heights opened their production of Giuseppe Verdi's FALSTAFF. The mirthful and comedic opera is the last production of their 2012-2013 season, but the most exhilarating aspect of the production is seeing an opera performed so intimately. This was my first time to visit Lambert Hall, and I was simply blown away by how close to the action I was, even in the last row of the Orchestra level. Opera in the Heights provides a novel and intriguing way to experience opera that I, and I'm sure many others, are simply unaccustomed to.

Dialogues des Carmelites, Poulenc's opera about a group of nuns whose faith is tested under the Terror of the French Revolution, will return to the Met repertory on May 4 for the first time since 2002. In role debuts, Isabel Leonard will sing the naive aristocrat Blanche de la Force and Patricia Racette will sing Madame Lidoine, the imposing Prioress of a Carmelite convent. Felicity Palmer will reprise her portrayal of the ailing Madame de Croissy, a role she sang to acclaim in the most recent Met revival of the opera. Louis Langree conducts his first Met performances of the work, with a cast that also includes Elizabeth Bishop as Mother Marie, Erin Morley as Sister Constance, and Paul Appleby as Blanche's brother, the Chevalier de la Force. The opera will be presented in John Dexter's acclaimed 1977 Met premiere production.

She releases Poeme d'un jour, her debut solo album presenting French and Spanish songs, on the Opus Arte label (May 28 in the U.S., see full track list below).

In honor of this year's Verdi bicentennial, there will be a number of upcoming opportunities to hear her perform the great Italian composer's music. The first of these takes place this Monday, April 8, when Meade - winner of the 2011 Richard Tucker and 2012 Beverly Sills Awards - stars as Giselda in a concert performance of I Lombardi at New York's Lincoln Center.

The Metropolitan Opera's 2013-14 season will feature many of the world's greatest singers, conductors, and theater artists in 26 operas, including six new productions, of a varied repertory that ranges from the Baroque era to the 21st century. Met Music Director James Levine will return to the Met podium for the first time in two years, conducting three operas with which he has long been associated: a new production of Verdi's final masterpiece Falstaff, Mozart's Cosi fan tutte, and Berg's Wozzeck. Met Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi will be conducting two operas in the 2013-14 season, Rossini's La Cenerentola and Puccini's Madama Butterfly.

The Metropolitan Opera's 2013-14 season will feature many of the world's greatest singers, conductors, and theater artists in 26 operas, including six new productions, of a varied repertory that ranges from the Baroque era to the 21st century. Met Music Director James Levine will return to the Met podium for the first time in two years, conducting three operas with which he has long been associated: a new production of Verdi's final masterpiece Falstaff, Mozart's Cosi fan tutte, and Berg's Wozzeck. Met Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi will be conducting two operas in the 2013-14 season, Rossini's La Cenerentola and Puccini's Madama Butterfly.