Diana Damrau News

The 2018-19 season of The Met: Live in HD will continue at the Warner Theatre on December 29 with an encore performance of Verdi's LA TRAVIATA at 12:55 pm in the Nancy Marine Studio Theatre. The 2018-19 season is sponsored by Viron Rondo Osteria. Please note that the previously scheduled pre-opera lecture for La Traviata has been cancelled.

American tenor Stephen Costello will sing the role of Alfredo in Verdi's La Traviata at the Metropolitan Opera on Wednesday, December 26, replacing Juan Diego Flórez, who is ill.

Gianandrea Noseda-Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO), Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and newly-appointed General Music Director of the Zurich Opera starting in 2021-returns to the Metropolitan Opera for the first time since 2017 to conduct a new production of Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur starring Anna Netrebko in her house role debut, December 31, 2018 through January 26, 2019. The 2018-2019 season marks Noseda's second as Music Director of the NSO, including a full schedule of subscription concerts that recently included critically-acclaimed performances of Britten's War Requiem in November and Mahler's Symphony No. 1 earlier this month. On May 19, 2019, Noseda will bring the NSO to Carnegie Hall in a program that includes Rossini's rarely-performed Stabat Mater.

The Royal Opera House presents a host of world premieres and debuts across ballet and opera in 2019, alongside a diverse range of free and ticketed Front of House events for all ages. 2019 also sees the first performances by The Royal Ballet and The Royal Opera in the newly refurbished Linbury Theatre, the West End's newest and most intimate theatre.

Greenbrier Valley Theatre, in a partnership with the Met: Live in HD, will be presenting Verdi's La Traviata via live stream on Saturday, December 15th, 2018.

I interviewed Diana Damrau when she had just done her first Violetta, her role debut in the Met's old Willy Decker production. It was a part she lusted over from the time she saw the 1982 Zeffirelli film, but was careful about taking on--waiting for the right time in her vocal development. That was nearly six years ago and the good news is that she has developed into a first-rate Violetta, sounding better than she has in some time, and looking every inch the glamorous (yet consumptive) courtesan.

On Saturday, December 15 at 1:00pm the Peterborough Players present, Live from the Metropolitan Opera, a screening of Verdi's La Traviata.

Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducts Michael Mayer's richly textured new production of Verdi's La Traviata for The Metropolitan Opera, featuring a dazzling 18th-century setting that changes with the seasons. Soprano Diana Damrau plays the tragic heroine, Violetta, and tenor Juan Diego Florez returns to the Met for the first time in five seasons to sing the role of Alfredo, Violetta's hapless lover. Baritone Quinn Kelsey is Alfredo's father, Germont, who destroys their love. See La Traviata in HD on the big screen at The Ridgefield Playhouse Saturday, December 22 at 12:30pm, part of Atria Senior Living Classical Series with support from Whistle Stop Bakery, underwritten by Jeanne Cook, Liz and Steven Goldstone, & Sabina and Walter Slavin.

Tenor Javier Camarena--who completes his run as Nadir, the love-struck tenor lead in Bizet's LES PECHEURS DE PERLES (THE PEARL FISHERS) this Saturday--isn't finished wow-ing Met audiences for the season. Not by a long shot. He's back in February to throw off those nine High Cs in “Ah, mes amis!” the show-stopping aria--that toast to love and camaraderie--in Donizetti's LA FILLE DU REGIMENT (DAUGHTER OF THE REGIMENT) that Luciano Pavarotti made famous for modern opera audiences.

The 2018-19 season of The Met: Live in HD will continue at the Warner Theatre on December 29 with an encore performance of Verdi's LA TRAVIATA at 12:55 pm in the Nancy Marine Studio Theatre. The 2018-19 season is sponsored by Viron Rondo Osteria. Please note that the previously scheduled pre-opera lecture for La Traviata has been cancelled.

Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducts Michael Mayer's richly textured new production, featuring a dazzling 19th-century setting that changes with the seasons. Soprano Diana Damrau plays the tragic heroine, Violetta, and tenor Juan Diego Florez returns to the Met for the first time since 2015 to sing the role of Alfredo, Violetta's hapless lover. Baritone Quinn Kelsey is Alfredo's father, Germont, who destroys their love. Later performances feature Anita Hartig, Stephen Costello, Artur Ruci?ski, and Placido Domingo.

Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducts Michael Mayer's richly textured new production of Verdi's La Traviata for The Metropolitan Opera, featuring a dazzling 18th-century setting that changes with the seasons. Soprano Diana Damrau plays the tragic heroine, Violetta, and tenor Juan Diego Florez returns to the Met for the first time in five seasons to sing the role of Alfredo, Violetta's hapless lover.

The Metropolitan Opera and WQXR, New York's all classical music station, announce ARIA CODE, a new 10-episode podcast series that pulls the curtain back on some of opera's most legendary arias.

We thought things were exciting last week, when Christian Van Horn brought his Mefistofele to the Met last week, getting all his exercise for the month in the athletic staging and nailing his first big role in the house. However, that was “business as usual” compared to the mid-performance debut, just a few days later, of baritone Alexander Birch Elliott, as Zurga, in Bizet's LES PECHEURS DE PERLES (THE PEARL FISHERS) in the opera's first performance of the season.

The Metropolitan Opera's new production of La Traviata, opening December 4, will be the first opera conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin as the Met's Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director. Soprano Diana Damrau, who made her acclaimed role debut as Violetta at the Met during the 2012–2013 season (with Maestro Nézet-Séguin on the podium), returns as the tragic heroine.

This Saturday, September 22, medici.tv will broadcast the National Symphony Orchestra's 2018–2019 season opening gala concert live from the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Music Director Gianandrea Noseda will lead the orchestra in a program designed to celebrate space, including Holst's The Planets and an NSO-commissioned work by award-winning composer Michael Giacchino. The concert will also feature guest artist Joshua Bell.

The Metropolitan Opera's award-winning series of live high-definition cinema simulcasts will begin its 13th season at the WYO on October 13, with the Met's grand production of Verdi's Aida, starring one of the world's most acclaimed sopranos, Anna Netrebko.

NSO Music Director Gianandrea Noseda leads the Orchestra on a journey exploring the link between image and sound. Three performances-Thursday, September 27,  at 7 p.m.; Friday, September 28, at 8 p.m.; and Saturday, September 29, at 8 p.m.-at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall include Sergei Rachmaninoff's The Isle of the Dead; Ottorino Respighi's Trittico Botticelliano; and Maurice Ravel's orchestration of Modest Musorgsky's Pictures from an Exhibition, originally composed for piano.

The Metropolitan Opera's annual Summer HD Festival, which presents free outdoor screenings of operas on Lincoln Center Plaza, will return for the tenth time this summer, with one screening each night from Saturday, August 25, to Monday September 3, 2018 (Labor Day). The series will present ten recent performances from the company's acclaimed Live in HD series of movie theater transmissions. As a prelude to the festival, the Marx Brothers' classic film, A Night at the Opera, will be presented on the plaza on Friday, August 24, in association with the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Watch a preview of Tony Award–winning director Michael Mayer's new production of Verdi's “La Traviata,” starring Diana Damrau and conducted by Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Opens December 4, 2018.