The Philadelphia Orchestra announced its summer 2026 season, including residencies at Highmark Mann Center, Bravo! Vail, and Saratoga Performing Arts Center, plus Kimmel Center performances featuring THE WIZARD OF OZ live-to-film and a free Pride Concert.
The Crossing, the four-time Grammy-winning choir conducted by Donald Nally, will present THE MONTH OF MODERNS, a series of Philadelphia concerts featuring world premieres and works marking 250 years of American Independence.
Philadelphia's Highmark Mann Center announced its 50th anniversary season, featuring more than 50 performances, world premieres, and a $70 million campus transformation coinciding with America250 celebrations.
The Met’s new production of Vincenzo Bellini’s I PURITANI made its debut on New Year’s Eve, but I caught up with it at its third performance on January 6. I was glad I did--because it offered a cast with staggering singing abilities in four major roles that offered major demands, along with at least one minor one and the brilliant Met chorus under Tilman Michael. Simply put, soprano Lisette Oropesa, tenor Lawrence Brownlee, baritone Artur Rucinski and bass-baritone Christian Van Horn sang the pants off their roles, with Marco Armiliato conducting the fearless Met orchestra.
For all those operagoers tired of classics set in rodeos, Las Vegas or on a space station (Paris has a BOHEME of that ilk), Otto Schenk’s production for ARABELLA, with stage design by Gunther Schneider Siemssen, dating back to 1983, will be a relief. It features a return to “old Vienna,” including an Act II ballroom scene that’s as welcoming as a sacher torte.
Anyone familiar with Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prizer-winning THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY must be a bit bewildered at how a 700-page novel could be turned into a 3-hour opera. Or, for that matter, how a superhero named “The Escapist” could be sharing a stage this week with Puccini’s Turandot and Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
Opera on Tap has announced its upcoming Benefit Concert. This will serve as a vital fundraiser supporting Opera on Tap's Playground Opera and Opera Maker Lab education programs.
Check out photos from CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA and PAGLIACCI at Pittsburgh Opera. The operas will be performed November 9, 12, 15, and 17, 2024 at Benedum Center.
“This is not a cathartic tragedy or a tale of noble sacrifice. There are no admirable characters here, no moral lesson, no redemption, and no silver lining. There is only a merciless depiction of society’s dark side,” say the Met’s program notes for RIGOLETTO. I’m not so sure.
The Met performed the season’s first TALES OF HOFFMANN (LES CONTES D’HOFFMANN), by Jacques Offenbach, with libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carre, also a Sher production, and it was a different story.
National Sawdust will open its momentous 10th anniversary season with the world premiere production of Paola Prestini and Royce Vavrek's sensual and poetic new opera Silent Light from September 26-29.
When I first heard Kevin Puts’s gorgeous, melodic score for THE HOURS back in 2022, I was blown away, thinking it was almost too good to be true. Could it be a classic? I wanted to hear it again, though not too soon, to give it a chance to settle in its own skin. Lucky us—lucky me—that the Met brought it back so quickly. It reminded me that first impressions are sometimes on the mark.
While I’ve admired soprano Nadine Sierra’s before, she seemed to reach a whole new level with her glorious turn as Juliette in the season’s first performance of Gounod’s ROMEO ET JULIETTE at the Met the other night. She was vivid and a delight to watch as she inhabited the teenaged heroine of the piece. Perhaps it was her stage partner, French tenor Benjamin Bernheim, who egged her on to such heights, with his nuanced singing and boyish demeanor.
Get a first look at Puccini’s Madama Butterfly which returns to the Met stage for 16 performances, starting January 11.
Puccini’s Madama Butterfly will return to the Met stage for 16 performances, starting January 11.
The Dallas Opera announces the digital release of No One is Forgotten: An Immersive Opera, its first-ever 3D spatial opera recording, available now for streaming in Dolby Atmos Immersive Audio to subscribers of Apple Music and Tidal and in a stereo mix for non-subscribers. No One is Forgotten is available for purchase now.
Soprano Angel Blue’s Violetta didn’t seem as tragic as we’re used to seeing in Verdi’s masterwork and maybe that's right. She’s lived life on her own terms and if she’s dying of tuberculosis, well, c’est la vie. (After all, the source of the piece is French: the Alexandre Dumas fils “La Dame aux Camellias”).
The Metropolitan Opera has announced a 2023–24 season with the most new works in the company’s modern history. See show details, performances dates, and how to purchase tickets!
I’ve heard the opera a number of times at the Met over the years and this year’s run holds up with the most breathtaking of them. Despite the number of star performances among the magnificent ensemble currently being heard at the Met, the star of the show doesn’t have a single word to say or note to sing. It's the John Dexter production that does it.
The American Symphony Orchestra continues its 2022-23 season on January 27 with a program at St. Bartholomew's Church, a New York National Historic Landmark, exploring music for organ and orchestra by Camille Saint-Saëns and Dame Ethel Smyth. It features soloist Paolo Bordignon, organist and choirmaster of the church and harpsichordist of the New York Philharmonic, along with soprano Anya Matanovic, mezzo-soprano Eve Gigliotti, tenor Joshua Blue, and bass Adam Lau.
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