Houston Grand Opera News

San Francisco Opera General Director Matthew Shilvock and Music Director Nicola Luisotti today announced plans for the 2017-18 repertory season. The Company's 95th season will open Friday, September 8 with a gala performance of Giacomo Puccini'sTurandot led by Maestro Luisotti and an international cast starring Martina Serafin, Maria Agresta and Brian Jagde.

Opera in the Heights, a cornerstone of Houston's vibrant performing arts community, has appointed Paige Myrick as Executive Director, and Eiki Isomura as Artistic Director, effective January 1, 2017.

Bring the whole family to see Cinderella en España-a universal rags-to-riches tale that explores the beauty of kindness and the ugliness of mistreating others. Seattle Opera will offer its new Spanish/English performance at both its annual Frost Fest on Feb. 4 at Cornish Playhouse, and onMarch 19 at Kirkland Performance Center; ultimately, the production will tour more than 40 elementary schools statewide.

???????Russian pianist Denis Kozhukhin will return to the Jones Hall stage for Gershwin & Rachmaninoff at 8 p.m. Jan. 27-28 and 2:30 p.m. Jan. 29.

Michael Mayer's 2013 production of Verdi's Rigoletto, set in a 1960s Las Vegas casino, returns to the Met January 20. Italian conductor Pier Giorgio Morandi makes his company debut leading Željko Lu?i? in the title role opposite Olga Peretyatko as Gilda and Stephen Costello as the Duke.

Houston Grand Opera expands its commitment to broadening the audience for opera with a 2017-18 season that includes the first presentations of Leonard Bernstein's classic musical West Side Story by a major American opera house and the world premiere of composer Ricky Ian Gordon and librettist Royce Vavrek's holiday opera The House without a Christmas Tree. HGO will present its first performances in a quarter century of two iconic works: Richard Strauss's revenge-filled Elektra with virtuoso sopranoChristine Goerke in the tempestuous title role and 2016 Richard Tucker Award-winner and HGO Studio alumna Tamara Wilson in her role debut as Chrysothemis, under the baton of HGO Artistic and Music Director Patrick Summers; and Bellini's grand-scale tragedy Norma showcasing the debut of stellar dramatic soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska in the notoriously difficult title role, with 2015 Tucker winner and HGO Studio alumna Jamie Barton as Adalgisa.

OPERA America, the national service organization for opera and the nation's leading champion for American opera, announces the details for the New Opera Showcase, taking place today, January 13 at 8:00 p.m. at historic Town Hall in the heart of New York City's Times Square.

Houston Grand Opera expands its commitment to broadening the audience for opera with a 2017-18 season that includes the first presentations of Leonard Bernstein's classic musical West Side Story by a major American opera house and the world premiere of composer Ricky Ian Gordon and librettist Royce Vavrek 's holiday opera The House without a Christmas Tree.

Houston Grand Opera (HGO) has chosen the semifinalists for the 29th annual Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers Concert of Arias, to be presented in the Cullen Theater at the Wortham Theater Center on January 27, at 7 p.m.

Lyric Opera of Chicago presents the thrilling story of a deadly love triangle set to Georges Bizet's most vivid and exciting music. No wonder it's so popular! Carmen heats up this winter in a new Lyric coproduction with two smoking-hot casts.

A veteran of diverse leading roles, Hurt is also an experienced concert and recital performer

On Sunday, February 12, 2017 at 7:30pm, Works & Process at the Guggenheim presents excerpts from Champion by five-time Grammy award-winning musician and playwright Terence Blanchard, who tells the true story of Emile Griffith in his haunting and visually stunning 'opera in jazz.' The work, which blew critics away when it premiered in 2013, explores the life of the closeted gay boxer whose knockout of a homophobic rival in the early 1960s let to unexpected tragedy. Washington National Opera Artistic Director Francesca Zambello will moderate a discussion with Blanchard, Deynce Graves and other members of the cast following performance excerpts.

It's a Saturday, 10:30 a.m., and the kids are already driving you nuts. Why not take them to an affordable, interactive sketch show created for the very purpose of entertaining your children? How about we offer you a cup of coffee too or, better yet, a mimosa! Parents and guardians: Rec Room is here to save your weekend...and maybe your life.

Theatre for a New Audience has announced the performance schedule, cast and creative team for director Arin Arbus's new staging of Thornton Wilder's comic masterpiece The Skin of Our Teeth, the first major New York production since 1998.

On Sunday, January 22, 2017 at 7:30pm, Works & Process at the Guggenheim offers a behind-the-scenes look at WAR PAINT, the new musical by librettist Doug Wright, composer Scott Frankel, lyricist Michael Korie, and director Michael Greif in advance of the Broadway opening on April 6, 2017.

The little OPERA theatre of ny (LOTNY) will produce the New York Premiere of Carlisle Floyd's Prince of Players at the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College, East 68th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues from February 23-26, 2017. 

OPERA America, the national service organization for opera and the nation's leading champion for American opera, announces the details for the New Opera Showcase, taking place on Friday, January 13 at 8:00 p.m. at historic Town Hall in the heart of New York City's Times Square.

General Director Placido Domingo announced that LA Opera's next production-Mozart's sparkling comedy The Abduction from the Seraglio, conducted by Music Director James Conlon-will take audiences on a delightful journey aboard the fabled Orient Express, thanks to a cleverly updated staging by director James Robinson.  BroadwayWorld brings you a first look below!

Celebrate the New Year with the Hawai'i Symphony Orchestra (HSO) and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony - a joyful celebration of music, community and hope - on Today, December 29 at 7:30 p.m. and Friday, December 30 at 7:30 p.m. Maestro JoAnn Falletta leads the HSO, performing with the O?ahu Choral Society and Artistic Director Dr. Esther S. Yoo, and nationally noted guest soloists Rachel Schutz, soprano; Charlene Chi, mezzo-soprano; Kip Wilborn, tenor; and Jeremy M. Wong, baritone. Considered by many to be the greatest piece of music ever written, Beethoven's final symphony has become a universal anthem of humankind, with a message of optimism and faith at the dawn of the New Year. Its majestic closing movement featuring Friedrich Schiller's poem "An die Freude" ("Ode to Joy"), with additions made by the composer himself, is a breathtaking experience. 

In the fall of 1987, Houston Grand Opera's world premiere of Nixon in China made political headlines and galvanized the opera world. Thirty years later, John Adams's trailblazing opera returns in a new-to-Houston production that sheds light on the electronic media's role in political history, just as a new media-savvy American president takes office.