Giacomo Puccini News

Three riddles stand between love and death in Giacomo Puccini's last and most majestic opera, as Turandot returns to the Sarasota Opera House on Saturday, February 9, 2019 at 7:00pm. The passionate tale of intrigue and mystery is based on an age-old Persian fairy tale and set in legendary Peking. The Princess Turandot, sung by Kara Shay Thomson, is so desirable that men come from all over the world to win her love, and yet underneath her royal beauty beats a cold heart, turned bitter by desire to avenge the honor of an ancestor. The fearless prince Calaf, played by tenor Jonathan Burton, takes on the challenge posed by the three questions he must answer to win her hand in marriage. If he errs, he will lose his head just like countless princes before him. Will he outwit her, or will he face a gruesome death? Soprano Anna Mandina will play the faithful Liu, a slave girl loyal to Calaf's father Timur, sung by returning Sarasota Opera favorite, bass Young Bok Kim. The most outspoken of the three royal ministers, Ping, will be sung by baritone Filippo Fontana, returning after his celebrated performance as Figaro in Fall 2018's The Barber of Seville. Stephanie Sundine is the stage director of this critically acclaimed production of Turandot, which premiered in 2013, with Maestro Victor DeRenzi conducting. Turandot is one of the grandest operas to ever play the stage of the Sarasota Opera House, with 74 performers on stage and one of the largest orchestras assembled in opera house history.

Old meets new when Capitol City Opera Company (CCOC) presents the continuing saga of the Donati family in two comedic one-act operas, Giacomo Puccini's Gianni Schicchi and Michael Ching's Buoso's Ghost on Friday, March 22 at 8 p.m., Saturday, March 23 at 8 p.m., and Sunday, March 24 at 3 p.m. at Conant Performing Arts Center at Oglethorpe University.

Distinguidos tanto por sus interpretaciones de música antigua como contemporánea, la agrupación Solistas Ensamble del Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (INBAL), bajo la dirección de Christian Gohmer, arrancará su primera temporada 2019.

Sarasota Opera will celebrate its 60th Season when the 2019 Winter Opera Festival opens on February 9th with Puccini's Turandot. The festival will continue with Mozart's The Magic Flute, Verdi's Nabucco, and the premiere of a rare and delightful comic double bill: Donizetti's Rita (Two Men and a Woman) and Wolf-Ferrari's Susanna's Secret. Special events, lectures, recitals, and concerts continue through the season. Capping off the festivities will be the Diamond Anniversary recital and dinner on April 5th.

With a mix of new and traditional takes on opera, Seattle Opera unveils a 2019/20 Season that offers something for everyone. Audiences will experience new-to-Seattle productions of Rigoletto, Cinderella, and Eugene Onegin; the company premiere of Charlie Parker's Yardbird; and the return of a beloved classic, La boh me.

What do an ice princess, druids, a clown, artists, nuns, slaves, a jester, and a pharaoh have in common? They are all seen in a New Jersey Association of Verismo Opera production, just in time for the holiday season. If you missed a production, want to see a performance again, or are looking for a present for a special person, shop locally and give the gift of a Verismo Opera performance on DVD. Funds raised from the DVD sale support the New Jersey Association of Verismo Opera's work bringing grand opera and classical music to the community.

To celebrate the founding of Amore Opera in 2009, Artistic Director Nathan Hull has programmed six main-stage opera productions this season. Over the past decade, Amore has created a niche for itself in New York City's cultural realm, offering lively stagings of opera classics, neglected gems of the repertoire, appealing children's fare, and ever-popular Gilbert & Sullivan presentations in the well- appointed and intimate 200-seat Riverside Theatre at Riverside Church, 91 Claremont Avenue, (near 121st Street,) New York, NY 10027.

Sarasota Opera has been awarded a $50,000 Arts Appreciation Grant from the Gulf Coast Community Foundation. The grant offers unrestricted funding to area arts organizations in support of their artistic mission. This year's Arts Appreciation Grant will help support Sarasota Opera's 2018/2019 Season, which marks the company's 60th year of presenting world-class opera on the Southwest Florida Gulf Coast.

OPERA America, the national service organization for opera and the nation's leading champion for American opera, is proud to announce the 2019 finalists of the Robert L.B. Tobin Director-Designer Showcase, a biennial program offered as part of OPERA America's continuing commitment to foster emerging opera artists. The showcase, made possible through generous support from the Tobin Theatre Arts Fund, was established to bring promising talent to the attention of field leaders and connect up-and-coming directors and designers with those who are in a position to advance their careers.

Darren Lee Cole, producing director of the not-for-profit, SoHo Playhouse (15 Van Dam Street) is proud to announce this year's selections for this year's Fringe Encore Series, featuring the "Best of the Fests" from around the globe. This year's selections come from Fringe Festivals at Brighton, Edinburgh, Hollywood, Limerick, Orlando, Toronto and New York (to be announced soon) and will take place between November 6 - December 16, 2018. Tickets are $39/$25 and can be purchased by visiting www.fringeencores.org.

Henri Murger, the author of the original French book, described Bohemia as bordered on the North by hope, work, and gaiety, on the South by necessity and courage, and on the West and East by slander and the hospital. His characters, all based on real people he knew, wanted to free society of its strict bourgeois moral code and some of their ideas have taken root over the century and a half since the book's publication.

The much-acclaimed one-act opera, Sister Angelica (Suor Angelica), will be performed by The Catholic University of America's new Benjamin T. Rome School of Music, Drama, and Art, approaching the 100th anniversary of the work's premiere. The opera, written by Giacomo Puccini, will be directed by the Rome School's Opera Director and Voice Instructor, James Hampton.

Darren Lee Cole, producing director of the not-for-profit, SoHo Playhouse (15 Van Dam Street) is proud to announce this year's selections for this year's Fringe Encore Series, featuring the "Best of the Fests" from around the globe. This year's selections come from Fringe Festivals at Brighton, Edinburgh, Hollywood, Limerick, Orlando, Toronto and New York (to be announced soon) and will take place between November 6 - December 16, 2018. Tickets are $39/$25 and can be purchased by visiting www.fringeencores.org.

The much-acclaimed one-act opera, Sister Angelica (Suor Angelica), will be performed by The Catholic University of America's new Benjamin T. Rome School of Music, Drama, and Art, approaching the 100th anniversary of the work's premiere. The opera, written by Giacomo Puccini, will be directed by the Rome School's Opera Director and Voice Instructor, James Hampton.

The Hungarian National Ballet presents TURANDOT, which opened in September and runs through Nov. 25. 

La Sala Principal del Palacio de Bellas Artes será el escenario de la presentación, por segunda ocasión, de una de las orquestas más importantes a nivel mundial, la del Teatro Mariinsky, dirigida por Valery Gergiev.

The Adelphi Orchestra will feature Randall Mitsuo Goosby, Violin (First Prize winner of the Adelphi Orchestra Competition, First Prize winner of the Sphinx Competition ) in the rarely performed and defiantly triumphant Korngold Concerto for Violin in D major, Op. 35. Randall Goosby's performance of the Korngold Violin Concerto will be the centerpiece in a program entitled "From Vienna with Love" which will also feature Strauss's Overture to Die Fledermaus and concludes with the beautiful Symphony no 2 in D major by Brahms. The concert,  conducted by Richard Owen on Sunday October 27th at 7PM will take place at  NYC's historic Good Shepherd - Faith Presbyterian Church located in the heart of Lincoln Center. Tickets on sale now.

Met favorite Sondra Radvanovsky and rising star Jennifer Rowley share the title role of the volatile diva at the heart of Puccini's operatic thriller. Joseph Calleja brings his stylish tenor to the role of Cavaradossi, and Wolfgang Koch and Claudio Sgura share the role of the nefarious police chief Scarpia. Carlo Rizzi conducts Sir David McVicar's resplendent production.

San Francisco Opera presented Placido Domingo in concert on Sunday, October 21, 2018 at 2 p.m. The legendary artist returned to the War Memorial Opera House with Puerto Rican soprano Ana Maria Martinez, Mexican tenor Arturo Chacon-Cruz and the San Francisco Opera Orchestra conducted by Spanish conductor Jordi Bernacer for this sold-out performance of operatic scenes from Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata and Simon Boccanegra, along with arias and duets from Spanish zarzuelas.

San Francisco Opera today announced program details for the upcoming Placido Domingo concert on Sunday, October 21, 2018 at 2 p.m. The legendary artist returns to the War Memorial Opera House with Puerto Rican soprano Ana Maria Martinez, Mexican tenor Arturo Chacon-Cruz and the San Francisco Opera Orchestra conducted by Spanish conductor Jordi Bernacer for this sold-out performance of operatic scenes from Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata and Simon Boccanegra, along with arias and duets from Spanish zarzuelas.