Eric Owens News

The Metropolitan Opera today announced its 2022–23 season, which features seven new productions, the most in ten seasons. Opening Night is September 27 with the company premiere of Cherubini’s Medea, starring soprano Sondra Radvanovsky in the title role alongside tenor Matthew Polenzani in David McVicar’s new staging, conducted by Carlo Rizzi.

After the successful first half of the 2021–22 season and a planned February break, the Metropolitan Opera will return with a slate of three new productions and 12 classic revivals for its spring season that runs February 28–June 11.

Music Director James Conlon will conduct three mainstage productions and Colombian-American conductor Lina González-Granados will make her company debut as Resident Conductor, the first Latina to hold a high-ranking conducting position with a major U.S. opera company. 

For the first time in company history, the Metropolitan Opera will present the original five-act French version of Verdi’s Don Carlos, with eight performances February 28–March 26. Verdi’s epic opera about doomed love during the Spanish Inquisition first premiered in French at the Paris Opera in 1867.

Jamie Barton will sing Eboli in this season’s new production of the original five-act French version of Verdi’s Don Carlos, replacing Elīna Garanča, who has withdrawn.

The New Jersey Symphony presents three weeks of January programs, with subscription programs featuring Grieg's Piano Concerto, co-commissions from Thomas Adès and Wynton Marsalis, Copland's Lincoln Portrait—with narration by celebrated bass-baritone Eric Owens—and more. The Symphony's annual Lunar New Year Celebration closes the month.

Anthony Freud, Lyric Opera of Chicago’s president, general director, and CEO, has announced the four soloists who will perform in the Sir Andrew Davis Conducts Beethoven 9 concert on Friday, April 1, 2022.

Following the success of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, which reopened the Metropolitan Opera and played to sold out houses, the company announced today that it will present Blanchard’s first opera, Champion, with libretto by Michael Cristofer, in April 2023.

Renowned international music conservatory Manhattan School of Music (MSM) welcomed Grammy-winning mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, “one of the brightest talents on the American opera scene” (San Francisco Classical Voice), and Grammy-nominated pianist Myra Huang, “among the top accompanists of her generation” (Opera News), to its faculty this fall. 

Named for the groundbreaking African American contralto, the Marian Anderson Vocal Award recognizes a young American singer in opera, oratorio, or recital repertoire with outstanding promise for a significant career. Earlier this year, Washington National Opera (WNO) named tenor Frederick Ballentine as the 2021 recipient and will present him in concert on Tuesday, December 7 at 7:30 p.m. in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.

There are so many things to like about the season’s revival of Gershwin’s PORGY & BESS, which was new in the 2019-2020 season, before Covid became the “song” that no one wanted to hear. PORGY on the other hand, is the music that everybody can take a liking to, with its fluid combination of opera, Broadway musical and versions of spirituals and Gullah folk music that nobody ever heard before. It has been best known for its songs, which have become “standards” in the Broadway songbook. The stylistic shifts in the complex, yearning, comic score are handled mightily by the Met’s game orchestra under David Robinson.

The Metropolitan Opera has posted a video from the final dress rehearsal of their production of Porgy and Bess. In the video, Janai Brugger sings Clara’s Act I aria 'Summertime', conducted by David Robertson.

The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess will return to the Met for 13 performances, October 31–December 12, 2021. The classic American opera features many artists from the triumphant 2019–20 production’s Grammy Award-winning cast. Eric Owens and Angel Blue star as the title couple, with conductor David Robertson on the podium.

The Glimmerglass Festival, the summer opera and musical theater festival, will return to its theater for its 2022 season after presenting this past summer’s performances completely outdoors in the aptly named festival, “Glimmerglass on the Grass.” 

Fathom Events is partnering with the Metropolitan Opera to bring The Met: Live in HD, the Met's award-winning series of high-definition live cinema transmissions, to movie theaters nationwide for its 15th season.

Though the Met’s season doesn’t technically start till the end of the month, the company started off with a pair of what French chefs might call “amuses bouches”—sort of tastebud teasers. The first was Mahler’s Second, which was done in the open air; the second was its first inside the hall:The Verdi Requiem, which was broadcast (and which I saw) live last Saturday on PBS.

Michelle DeYoung will be the mezzo-soprano soloist in the September 11, 2021, performance of Verdi’s Requiem, replacing Elīna Garanča, who is indisposed.  

Vancouver Opera is proud to welcome two new participants to the 2021-2022 Yulanda M. Faris Young Artists Program. Hillary Tufford and Amanda Testini will join returning artists Ian Cleary, Luka Kawabata, Amy Seulky Lee, and Jonelle Sills.

A cast change has been announced for the upcoming Washington National Opera production of Mozart’s “Così fan tutte.”

The Metropolitan Opera will present a pre-season performance of Verdi’s Requiem to commemorate the 20th anniversary of September 11. On Saturday, September 11, 2021, at 7:45pm ET, Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin will conduct the Met Orchestra and Chorus with a quartet of star soloists.