Deborah Voigt News

Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival announced today that Broadway, film and television actor Dan Domenech will star as Che in Evita this summer at Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival. The production opens the Festival's 26th season.

Renee Fleming sings her final performances of one of her signature roles as the Marschallin in the Met's new production of Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, opening April 13. Robert Carsen directs the new production-the company's first new staging of the piece since 1969-with Sebastian Weigle conducting all performances. The starry cast includes El?na Garan?a in her company role debut as the Marschallin's young lover, Octavian, opposite Erin Morley as Sophie, the innocent young woman who comes between Marschallin and Octavian; Gunther Groissbock as Baron Ochs, the Marschallin's oafish cousin; Marcus Bruck in his Met debut as Sophie's father Faninal; and Matthew Polenzani as the Italian Singer. Kathleen Kim sings Sophie in the April 28 and May 1 performances.  

In connection with its twenty-year commitment to address a long-standing gender imbalance at podiums throughout the opera world, The Dallas Opera is delighted to announce that this year's annual reunion of the Fellows of the Linda and Mitch Hart Institute for Women Conductors at The Dallas Opera will take place at the famed War Memorial in San Francisco, California, in partnership with the San Francisco Opera.

Kaija Saariaho's L'Amour de Loin (“Love From Afar”), one of the most highly praised operas of recent years, airs on Great Performances at the Met Sunday, April 2 at 12 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). (In New York, THIRTEEN will air the opera at 12:30 p.m.)

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) will honor San Francisco Symphony Executive Director Brent Assink at its Spring 2017 Gala, taking place Tuesday, April 18. Serving as the symphony's executive director since 1999 and previously as general manager from 1990-1994, Assink is regarded as one of America's leading arts administrators.

The 34th season of Schwabacher Debut Recitals continues on Sunday,April 9 at 5:30 p.m. in the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater with mezzo-soprano Renee Rapier, bass Anthony Reed and pianist and San Francisco Opera Head of Music Staff John Churchwell. They will present The Woods: A Rom-Com Recital, a series of songs by American composers compiled by Reed into a narrative with original dialogue. The performance will be directed by first-year San Francisco Opera Adler Fellow Aria Umezawa.

 The 34th season of Schwabacher Debut Recitals continues on Sunday, April 9 at 5:30 p.m. in the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater with mezzo-soprano Renée Rapier, bass Anthony Reed and pianist and San Francisco Opera Head of Music Staff John Churchwell. They will present The Woods: A Rom-Com Recital, a series of songs by American composers compiled by Reed into a narrative with original dialogue. The performance will be directed by first-year San Francisco Opera Adler Fellow Aria Umezawa.

After a lavishly praised star turn in Washington National Opera's revival of Dead Man Walking this winter, Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Susan Graham turns to a U.S. tour in April of her equally successful and wide-ranging recital program, “Frauenliebe und -leben: Variations,” inspired by and centered on Schumann's iconic song cycle, with longtime recital partner Malcolm Martineau. She also joins a cast of the world's greatest opera luminaries to celebrate the Metropolitan Opera House's 50 Years at Lincoln Center in an Anniversary Gala; performs selections from Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn with the Met Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen in Carnegie Hall; and sings Berlioz's La mort de Cléopâtre, a staple of her signature French repertoire, with the San Antonio Symphony.

After a months-long series of competitions at the district, regional, and national levels, a panel of expert judges named six young singers as the winners of the nation's most prestigious vocal competition, the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. Each winner receives a $15,000 cash prize and the prestige and exposure that come with winning the competition that launched the careers of many of opera's biggest stars.

Susanna Phillips stars as Clémence, the Countess of Tripoli, opposite Eric Owens as Jaufré Rudel, a troubadour on a quest to find his perfect love, and Tamara Mumford as the Pilgrim who carries messages back and forth between them.  

The production will be conducted by MasterVoices' Artistic Director Ted Sperling and will feature previously announced stars Kelli O'Hara, Bill Irwin, Lauren Worsham, Christopher Fitzgerald - with Jonathan Freeman, Chris Sullivan, and Jeffrey Schecter just joining the lineup - alongside 130 singers of MasterVoices, with Orchestra of St. Luke's.

Following yesterday's highly competitive semi-final competition, nine young singers will advance to the final phase of the Metropolitan Opera's 2017 National Council Auditions, America's most prestigious vocal competition.

Marking their first U.S. performances together, this spring Grammy and ECHO Klassik Award-winning conductor Fabio Luisi tours five California cities with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra (DNSO), where he launched his tenure as Principal Conductor this season. At concerts in Santa Barbara (March 28), Palm Desert (March 29), San Diego (March 30), Costa Mesa (March 31), and San Francisco (April 2 & 3), he and the orchestra will perform Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder with star soprano Deborah Voigt, whom Luisi conducted as Brünnhilde in Robert LePage's 2011 “Ring” cycle at New York's Metropolitan Opera. The music of Danish composer Carl Nielsen, long a DNSO staple, will also be featured: the Helios Overture, and, exclusively in San Francisco, the Symphony No. 6. At the first four concerts, the program will be completed by the spring-infused First Symphony by Mahler, whose Ninth Symphony Luisi conducted at the DNSO's season-opening concerts last fall; in San Francisco, he will instead lead music by Beethoven – the “Eroica” Symphony and Violin Concerto, with Arabella Steinbacher as soloist – and Richard Strauss. Shortly after the tour, Luisi returns to California to conduct the San Francisco Symphony (April 27–29) before bringing his U.S. spring season to a close on the East Coast, where he looks forward to leading The Orchestra Now (TŌN) at Bard College (May 28).

In each of its seasons "PREformances with Allison Charney" turns the spotlight on the virtuosity of the concert series' extraordinarily talented collaborative pianist, Craig Ketter. When he assumes center stage onMarch 13th Mr. Ketter will take the opportunity to play the infrequently performed music of 20th century composer, pianist and conductor Viktor Ullmann. Over the past decade pianist Craig Ketter has collaborated with colleagues in "The Ullmann Project," bringing the music Viktor Ullmann and a lost generation of musicians stifled by the Nazi regime to a broader audience. As with all PREformances' special guests, Mr. Ketter's performance anticipates a special, future engagement - in this case, a recording project of the complete piano sonatas of Viktor Ullmann.

MasterVoices (formerly The Collegiate Chorale), celebrating its 75th Anniversary this year, will hold its annual Spring Benefit in support of its artistic programming and education and outreach initiatives at the Metropolitan Club, 1 E. 60th Street (at Fifth Avenue), on Thursday, March 30, 2017.

San Francisco Opera Center and the Merola Opera Program present the 34th season of the Schwabacher Debut Recitals, opening on March 26 and continuing through April 30.

San Francisco Opera Center and the Merola Opera Program present the 34th season of the Schwabacher Debut Recitals, opening on March 26 and continuing through April 30. The four-recital series offers music lovers an opportunity to hear opera's next generation of stars in the intimate and state-of-the-art Taube Atrium Theater in San Francisco.

The Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG) in partnership with The Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University (CBA) will launch the Mark Morris Dance Accompaniment Training Program, a new, innovative program to train and provide practical experience for dance accompanists.

The Juilliard Opera season continues with a concert version and a fully staged production of G.F. Handel's Agrippina, presented by Juilliard as part of Carnegie Hall's La Serenissima: Music and Arts From the Venetian Republic festival.

The winners of the 46th annual George London Foundation Awards Competition for young American and Canadian opera singers were announced at the conclusion of the competition's final round this evening, which took place in a front of an audience at Gilder Lehrman Hall at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.