Christopher Allen News

The season includes four mainstage productions at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, Carmen, La traviata, The Shining, and Sondheim on Sondheim in addition to live performances of the holiday classic, Amahl and the Night Visitors and the Kansas City premiere of Listen, Wilhelmina!, an imaginative children's opera at the Michael and Ginger Frost Production Arts Building. All Kauffman Center performances will be accompanied by the Kansas City Symphony.

I love seeing in the arts when a company takes a classic work and reimagines it for a modern audience. This often allows for more imaginative and innovative production that brings a brand new audience to your company. As they begin their 50th Season, Des Moines Metro Opera brings Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 'The Magic Flute' to the Civic Center Stage with Des Moines Performing Arts. If this show is any indication of what's to come from the 50th Season for Des Moines Metro Opera, then audiences are in for a not to be missed treat this summer.

Gounod's masterpiece of grand French opera, Roméo et Juliette, continues San Diego Opera's 2021-2022 season when it opens on Saturday, March, 26, 2022 for four performances at the San Diego Civic Theatre. Additional performances are March 29, April 1, and 3 (matinee), 2022.

Originally commissioned for Cincinnati Opera's 100th anniversary in 2020 and postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Castor and Patience receives its much-anticipated world premiere in July 2022.

Cincinnati Opera today shared updated cast, production, and schedule details for its 2022 Summer Festival, which will take place June 18 through July 31, 2022. After two seasons away, the company returns this summer to its longtime performance venues, Cincinnati Music Hall and the School for Creative and Performing Arts (SCPA).

Today, Crow's Theatre Artistic Director Chris Abraham and Executive Director Sherrie Johnson announced the casts for two Crow's Theatre Productions this season that include Kristen Johnson, Ahmed Moneka, Ali Kazmi, Craig Lauzon, and Eric Peterson. 

Originally commissioned for Cincinnati Opera's 100th anniversary in 2020 and postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Castor and Patience receives its much-anticipated world premiere in July 2022.

In La Voix Humaine, soprano Patricia Racette is enthralling as she engages with each twist and turn of the score as though it is an emotional punch. She created this role in several cities and in each she has pulled the audience into the immediacy of Elle’s predicament. The 40-minute musical work gives the soprano a wide range for expression.

Des Moines Metro Opera's General and Artistic Director Michael Egel announced today the repertory for the company's 50th Anniversary Season alongside the launch of the public phase of a $15 million fundraising campaign, 50 Next: Giving Voice to the Future.

Verdi’s Il Trovatore can be seen live online on Sunday, October 3 at 2:00 pm or on Wednesday, October 6 at 7:30 pm live streamed directly from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Streamed live, they will not be able to be re-visited. Access to these performances is $30.00, available by clicking on the link below.   LINK https://www.laopera.org/performances/2122-season-page/il-trovatore-3/

Shokat Projects will welcome the world-premiere recording of Georgia Stitt’s Hold Fast Your Dreams, performed by the wife-and-husband team, soprano Zoe Allen and conductor/pianist Christopher Allen. Hold Fast Your Dreams is the first single from the Allens’ upcoming album (out September 7, 2021), Beneath the Sky.

This fall, the star soprano takes her acclaimed interpretation of Elle from the stage to the screen in a new film adaptation of the French monodrama, streaming on the Opera Philadelphia Channel beginning on Friday, September 24.

The role of Elle, the lone character in Francis Poulenc's La voix humaine, has been called a true tour de force for Patricia Racette, who has brought her characterization of the one-act opera to life in productions in Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, and other cities over the past five years.

Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts has announced additional full capacity live music performances to take place this summer at the Filene Center. These performances are in addition to the previously announced celebrations surrounding Wolf Trap's 50th Anniversary Season.

Newly announced shows include Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit with Waxahatchee; Harry Connick Jr.; Indigo Girls with Ani DiFranco; Train with Vertical Horizon; Straight No Chaser; Lindsey Stirling; Pink Martini featuring China Forbes; Renée Fleming with the National Symphony Orchestra; and Yacht Rock Revue.

Lyric Opera of Chicago has announced additional programs to add to the variety of offerings in its reimagined 2020/21 Season. These include a concert honoring Sir Andrew Davis; a new approach to the annual Rising Stars in Concert by The Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center Ensemble and more.

Sarasota Orchestra will give families an opportunity to explore, discover, and play with a brand new edition of Music Moves Us. Starting Monday July 6, Music Moves Us: Education Edition will feature video content created and curated by Sarasota Orchestra musicians, faculty of the Sarasota Youth Orchestras, and community leaders in music education.

The San Diego Opera's first Detour Series performance this season belonged to the new Bel Canto Trio, starring tenor Joshua Guerrero, soprano Julie Adams, and bass-baritone Nicholas Brownlee. All are outstanding young award winners with impressive voices and resumes. Music director and pianist Christopher Allen was their accompanist.

Opera Omaha announces its third annual ONE FESTIVAL. The ONE Festival is a place for wild dreams, wilder execution, and exploration of those ideas on a grand scale. Programming is driven by the artists, not the executives. With an emphasis on experimentation and new worka?'yet not tethered to premieresa?'ONE fosters an environment that encourages and celebrates bold risks and transformative storytelling. At a glance, one might assume this is happening in NYC or LA; but this opera hothouse sizzles in the dead center of our country, far from the coasts. 

SWEAT is a work of social realism, that controversial genre of fiction, film, and drama that tries to be romance and documentary all in one. It casts light on an often ignored part of American society, that is, those disenchanted workers - and ex-workers - whose dreams have been disrupted by some thirty-odd years of decline in the country's once robust manufacturing industry. For those of us with a New York Times subscription, SWEAT will feel like a continuation of a familiar trope, a vivid illustration of an idea that's been described to us again and again, especially more frequently since 2016. SWEAT seems to be answering the question: Who are these angry, bitter people who have set the country on its current course, and how did they get that way?