Ildar Abdrazakov News

Met Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi leads the opening performances of Mozart's Don Giovanni, starring Simon Keenlyside in his first Met performances of the title role, which he has sung to acclaim with numerous leading opera houses. The principal cast, all of whom are making Met role debuts, also includes Hibla Gerzmava as Donna Anna, Malin Bystromas Donna Elvira, Serena Malfi as Zerlina, Paul Appleby as Don Ottavio, Adam Plachetka as Leporello, Matthew Rose as Masetto, andKwangchul Youn as the Commendatore. The October 22 matinee, with this cast, will be transmitted worldwide as part of the 11th season of the Met's Live in HD series, which now reaches more than 2,000 movie theaters in 70 countries around the world.

After hearing Leoncavallo's I PAGLIACCI, on New York City Opera's new double bill with Rachmaninoff's ALEKO, I'll never think of it the same way again.

41 days ago Haydn's Die Schöpfung was performed at the Großes Festspielhaus, opening the Ouverture spirituelle and thus the 2016 Salzburg Festival.

The Warner Theatre is excited to announce its 2016-17 Met Opera: Live in HD Season, featuring 10 operas, 5 new to the series, and 2 encores, streaming live from the Met. A complimentary pre-opera lecture will be offered to all ticketholders in the Nancy Marine Studio Lobby for 45 minutes of pre-opera information and entertainment, 2 hours before broadcast. Full and Half Season Subscriptions are available.

On the heels of her Tanglewood debut in Carmina Burana with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, fast-rising soprano Nadine Sierra—who, after four major debuts last season alone, is quickly becoming a fixture at important houses around the world—returns to New York to debut at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival on July 25, in an all-star opening night “operatic fantasy” called The Illuminated Heart. After an auspicious debut as Gilda at the Met last season, she returns this fall for a house role debut as Zerlina inDon Giovanni, and in the spring makes both her role and Live in HD debuts as Ilia in Mozart's Idomeneo under the baton of James Levine. Following last season's Paris Opera debut, she opens the 2016-17 season at the Palais Garnier with the role of Flavia in a new production of Cavalli's Eliogabalo. This is one of three Paris Opera productions to feature her this season: she also appears as Pamina in Die Zauberflöte and Gilda inRigoletto at the Opéra Bastille, where she sang her first Zerlina last season. Other highlights in the new season include a return to Zurich Opera—where she won acclaim for her 2015 house and role debuts as the title character in Lucia di Lammermoor—to sing her first performances as Elvira in Bellini's I Puritani.

The Metropolitan Opera's 2016-17 season, the 50th anniversary of its home at Lincoln Center, will feature 225 opera performances of 26 operas in a varied repertory that ranges from 18th century masterpieces to one of the most acclaimed operas in recent years. Repertoire for the company's 132nd season will include the Met premiere of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho's 2000 opera L'Amour de Loin, as well as new stagings of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, Rossini's Guillaume Tell, Gounod's Romeo et Juliette, Dvo?ak's Rusalka, and Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. A gala concert on May 7, 2017 will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the company's Lincoln Center location with performances by opera's leading stars honoring the Met's past and future. Ticket prices will not increase, remaining the same as in the current season, and audience development programs instituted by the company in recent years will continue.  

With half a century of stellar performances and universally-acclaimed artists to its credit, Lincoln Center's Great Performers series announces its 51st season.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) celebrates the 2015 holiday season with a wide variety of concert programming, from the traditional annual performances of Handel's Messiah with the Concert Artists of Baltimore to a one-of-a-kind experience that pairs world-class acrobats and gymnasts with music by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, in an exciting program titled Cirque de la Symphonie.

The Met came late to the trio of Donizetti operas about British queens, when it finally mounted ANNA BOLENA mounted for Anna Netrebko in 2011. This was long after Beverly Sills made her deal with the devil, trading her voice for the cover of Time Magazine, by singing Anne Boleyn, Mary Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I at New York City Opera. The Met is finally getting around to mounting its own take on the operas this season (the so-called Tudor Trilogy) not for Netrebko but for American Sondra Radvanovsky. As Anna, she delivers a thrilling, go-for-broke performance.

Taylor Stayton will sing the role of Percy in this evening's performance of Donizetti's Anna Bolena, replacing Stephen Costello, who is ill.

With the season's first performance of Donizetti's ANNA BOLENA--that's Henry VIII's Anne Boleyn to all you Masterpiece Theatre fans--at the Met, the big news is that it's soprano Sondra Radvanovsky's first part of the Tudor Trilogy, with MARIA STUARDA and ROBERTO DEVEREUX to come later in the season. Alongside her, as Jane (here, Giovanna) Seymour, Boleyn's successor as consort to Henry, is mezzo Jamie Barton, this year's winner of the Richard Tucker Award, a past winner of the Met Council Auditions (and many other major awards) and a sensation when she sang her first big role at the Met two years ago, Adalgisa in Bellini's NORMA.

This Saturday, September 26, American soprano Sondra Radvanovsky will begin her season-long quest to sing all three of the principal heroines in Donizetti's 'Tudor trilogy,' being presented in its entirety for the first time at the Met this season. In the first opera, Anna Bolena, Radvanovsky stars as the young queen Anne Boleyn, grasping to hold onto the throne of England. Later this season, Radvanovsky will also star as the devout and doomed Mary, Queen of Scots in Maria Stuarda and as the conflicted Elizabeth I in the first-ever Met performances of Roberto Devereux. Radvanovsky will be the first soprano since Beverly Sills in the 1970s to sing the lead roles in all three operas in the course of a single New York season.

San Francisco Opera today announced cast changes for the Company's new production of Gaetano Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, presented October 8–28, 2015, and for Mozart's The Magic Flute, presented October 20–November 20, at the War Memorial Opera House.

Jamie Barton will add a new role to her Met repertory this season when she sings Giovanna Seymour in Donizetti's Anna Bolena, replacing Elena Garana, who has withdrawn due to a death in her family.

The audited financial results for San Francisco Opera's 2013–14 season (FY14) were announced today by San Francisco Opera Association President Keith Geeslin: a deficit of $348,244 on an operating budget of $74,119,493. The Company's 91st season presented eight main stage works at the War Memorial Opera House in addition to numerous concerts, recitals, workshops and community engagement events attracting more than 271,954 individuals.

Acclaimed director Richard Eyre's production of Carmen stars Georgian mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili in the title role of the seductive gypsy, a part she has sung to acclaim at many of the world's leading opera houses. Aleksandrs Antonenko sings the obsessed soldier Don José, soprano Anita Hartig is Micaëla, andIldar Abdrazakov is the toreador Escamillo, led by Spanish conductor Pablo Heras-Casado. Carmen will be broadcast on THIRTEEN'S Great Performances at the Met Sunday, February 22 at 12 p.m. on PBS. (In New York THIRTEEN will air the opera at 12:30 p.m.)

Russian-born bass Ildar Abdrazakov makes his U.S. solo recital debut tomorrow, Thursday Jan 29, on the main stage of Carnegie Hall at 8pm. Joined by pianist Mzia Bakhtouridze, the singer will perform a program pairing works by Faure, Liszt and Ravel with Russian art songs by Glinka, Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky. The New York Times has described Abdrazakov's voice as "sturdy, dark and rich," adding that the "refinement and clarity" of his singing is what ultimately makes it "so moving."

Live From Lincoln Center - the pioneering, award-winning performing arts series - today unveiled programming for the second half of its 40th anniversary season on PBS.