Eve Gigliotti News

There’s more contemporary opera in New York these days than there used to be and I’ll drink to that. But there’s nothing else that does it with the panache of the PROTOTYPE Festival, the brainchild of Beth Morrison Projects and HERE.

The American Symphony Orchestra completes its 60th anniversary season on Friday, July 15, 2022 at 8 PM. The program, part of the Orchestra’s Vanguard Series and presented in a special collaboration with the Bard Music Festival, is conducted by Music Director Leon Botstein and features the U.S. premiere of Sergei Taneyev’s final work, At the Reading of a Psalm.

While I was watching the Met’s current beautiful yet somehow languid production of the Igor Stravinsky and WH Auden/Chester Kallman opera THE RAKE’S PROGRESS the other night--with only two more performances until it goes back into mothballs for probably many years--I couldn’t help wishing that the opera house was more like Broadway.

The American Symphony Orchestra celebrates its return to Carnegie Hall and its 60th anniversary season in 2021-22 on Friday, January 28, 2022 at 8 PM. The program, part of the Orchestra’s Vanguard Series conducted by Music Director Leon Botstein, features the U.S. premiere of Sergei Taneyev’s final work, At the Reading of a Psalm.

The American Symphony Orchestra celebrates its return to the stage and its 60th anniversary season in 2021-22 with four full-orchestra programs at Carnegie Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall, and a free opening concert titled Mahler in New York at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on December 16. The opening program focuses on composers whom Mahler had championed during his years in New York.

The Lady or the Tiger? In this case, both are Mussorgsky’s BORIS GODUNOV—just different versions of it. Which is the preferred one? (Or, more properly, “the preferred one of several,” including one that the composer’s friend, Rimsky Korsakov, fiddled with after his death.) The Met chose Mussorgsky's original, and shorter, version for its revival of the composer's most famous opera this season.

The popular idea of a 'Liederabend' – an evening of song – goes back to Schubertiads and the flowering of German Romantic poetry and song in the 1800s. These musical salons provided the artists and ruling-class intelligentsia of their day opportunity to co-mingle ideas, music, and personal passions.

Now, in celebration of the organization's belated five year anniversary, National Sawdust and The WNET Group's ALL ARTS present Contemplations from National Sawdust, a six-episode retrospective presenting an overview of National Sawdust's impressive past, ambitious present and hopeful future.

The popular idea of a 'Liederabend' – an evening of song – goes back to Schubertiads and the flowering of German Romantic poetry and song in the 1800s. These musical salons provided the artists and ruling-class intelligentsia of their day opportunity to co-mingle ideas, music, and personal passions.

The OBIE-winning HERE has announced programming for its HERE There Everywhere winter and spring 2021 season. The season launches with the ninth annual PROTOTYPE: Opera | Theatre | Now (January 8–16), the premier global festival of opera-theatre and music-theatre which has been completely re-envisioned in light of the COVID-19 crisis.

When performance spaces were shuttered, many companies shuttered their imaginations in solidarity with the rows of seats, choosing to hibernate until they could return to live, in-person events and allowing both to collect dust in the meantime.

On October 23-27, activist opera company White Snake Projects presents the world premiere of Alice in the Pandemic, a new virtual opera composed by Jorge Sosa.

Working Women connects the women of World War I, the women who fought for suffrage, and the women of today through the power of song, using archival footage alongside documentary-style music videos by filmmaker Lesley Steele.

Alice in the Pandemic, a new virtual opera from activist opera company White Snake Projects, led by creator and librettist Cerise Jacobs, represents an ingenious adaptation to the changed performing arts environment.

On May 29, 2020, Opera Philadelphia presented the digital premiere of Royce Vavrek and Missy Mazzoli's Breaking the Waves, a story based on the 1996 international film of the same name directed by Lars von Trier. Winner of the Music Critics Association of North America 2017 award for Best New Opera, the story took place in the 1970s at a seaside settlement in the Scottish Highlands.

Opera Philadelphia's adaptation of Lars von Trier's searing, Oscar-nominated 1996 film Breaking the Waves made its world premiere in September 2016. It has since earned the Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA)'s inaugural Best New Opera Award, an International Opera Award nomination for Best World Premiere.

OPERA America is inviting artists, administrators, trustees, and audiences to 'A Toast to 50 Years,' a celebration of opera's progress and of OPERA America's 50th Anniversary, taking place today, Friday, May 15, from 4:30 to 5:00 p.m. EDT.

Here's a look at how 'Light Shall Lift Us; Singers Unite in Song' (for OPERA America), a video project featuring 107 opera singers in “a song of hope and solidarity” by Paul Moravec and Mark Campbell, came together to help raise up the spirits of their communities as we deal with COVID-19. It went 'live' on May 14 at 1:30 pm EST.

National Sawdust, the non-profit arts institution based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, will launch Live@NationalSawdust, a free digital platform that will release weekly videos of concerts from the past five seasons, as well as professional development programming, and will include fundraising efforts for the institution and the artists involved.

Black, Brown, Beige and Every Other Shade Renowned author, journalist, and singer Celeste Headlee joins Opera on Tap's New Brew at Barbes in an evening of classical song by a diverse array of composers of color.