Brooklyn Art Song Society (BASS) opens its seventh season on Friday October 7, 2016 with Fin de Siecle, the first of five concerts in the ambitious series Wien. This concert is the first in BASS's new primary venue, the Brooklyn Historical Society. Fin de Siecle features four composers who epitomize the opulence and decadence of late German Romanticism: Joseph Marx, Hans Pfitzner, Richard Strauss, and Alexander Zemlinsky. Highlights from the program include Pfitzner's extended masterpiece An den Mond and Richard Strauss's beloved Vier letze Lieder (Four Last Songs). The seven first-class performers include soprano Tami Petty (winner, Joy in Singing) and baritone Tobias Greenhalgh (Wiener Kammeropera). There will also be a pre-concert lecture by esteemed New York University professor Larry Wolff at 7:00 entitled "Art and Politics in Fin de Siecle Vienna."
Following her summer role debut in Santa Fe as Clairon in Richard Strauss's Capriccio, Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Susan Graham - hailed by Gramophone as 'America's favorite mezzo' - launched the 2016-17 season with Renée Fleming and Michael Tilson Thomas performing Rossini songs in the San Francisco Symphony's opening night gala.
Houston Grand Opera (HGO) will offer New Yorkers a preview performance of excerpts from a new opera based on the classic story and Frank Capra film It's a Wonderful Life on Sunday, November 6, at 7:30 p.m. at the Guggenheim Museum, as part of the museum's Works & Process program. The evening will include a discussion with the composer/librettist team of Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer, moderated by HGO Artistic and Music Director Patrick Summers.
Encompass New Opera Theatre and Gala Honorary Chairs Zoe Caldwell, Sheldon Harnick, John Kander, and Maury Yeston will honor legendary songwriting team LYNN AHRENS and STEPHEN FLAHERTY and playwright TERRENCE MCNALLY (Ragtime, Chita Rivera: A Dancer's Life, A Man of No Importance, and their upcoming Broadway musical, Anastasia) with a star-studded musical salute on Sunday, October 23.
Following her summer role debut in Santa Fe as Clairon in Richard Strauss's Capriccio, Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Susan Graham - hailed by Gramophone as 'America's favorite mezzo' - launched the 2016-17 season with Renée Fleming and Michael Tilson Thomas performing Rossini songs in the San Francisco Symphony's opening night gala.
The Dallas Opera is thrilled to announce the fourteenth in a series of free public simulcasts, this time involving a game-changing Dallas Opera production: Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer's critically acclaimed twenty-first century masterpiece: MOBY-DICK, starring world-renowned helden tenorJay Hunter Morris as Captain Ahab.
Washington National Opera (WNO) opens its 2016-2017 season with a new-to-Washington staging of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's masterpiece of romantic comedy-The Marriage of Figaro, September 22-October 2, 2016, in the Kennedy Center Opera House. One of opera's most enduring and beloved classics, The Marriage of Figaro tells an upstairs/downstairs story of love, lust, seduction, infidelity, and ultimately, forgiveness, all set to some of the most sublime and memorable music ever written.
Tenor Peter Marsh, who makes his Seattle Opera debut as the villainous Hexe in Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel next month, shares his insights on the subject
Three dazzling new opera productions are at the core of the inaugural Vancouver Opera Festival, April 28 to May 13, 2017. Full-scale productions of Giuseppe Verdi's late-career masterpiece Otello, featuring powerful tenor Clifton Forbis in the title role, and Jake Heggie's modern classic Dead Man Walking, with charismatic bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch as Joseph De Rocher, will be presented in the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.
On October 10, Soprano Melissa Wimbish makes her DCINY Artist Series solo debut recital at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, in a performance featuring the American contemporary vocal music of Jake Heggie, Andre Previn, Jessica Meyer, Tom Cipullo, and Gregory Spears. The concert highlights new contemporary vocal works including the world premiere of Meyers' Space In Chains.
A century's worth of treasures emerge from the shadows of both memory and history in this new CD, OUT OF THE SHADOWS: REDISCOVERED AMERICAN ART SONGS, out on digital Sept. 2 and physical CD on Sept. 9, 2016.
Washington National Opera (WNO) today announced full programming details for the fifth season of the American Opera Initiative, its comprehensive commissioning program that brings contemporary American stories to the stage while fostering the talents of rising American composers and librettists. For the first time, all of the program's world premiere operas will be presented during an American Opera Initiative Festival weekend, January 13-15, 2017 in the Kennedy Center Family Theater.
Works & Process at the Guggenheim is pleased to announce its fall 2016 season. Since 1984 the performing-arts series has championed new works and offered audiences unprecedented access to leading creators and performers. Each intimate program blends performance with stimulating conversation with the creators, and takes place in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's Frank Lloyd Wright-designed, 285-seat Peter B. Lewis Theater. Described by the New York Times as 'an exceptional opportunity to understand something of the creative process,' Works & Process is produced by founder Mary Sharp Cronson. A season preview video is available and further details can be found at worksandprocess.org.
Houston Grand Opera will present four pinnacles of the operatic repertoire during the company's 2016-17 season, which also features the highly anticipated world premiere of It's a Wonderful Life by composer Jake Heggie with libretto by Gene Scheer, and much-loved comedies by Donizetti and Mozart. Artistic and Music Director Patrick Summers will lead Gotterdammerung, the final installment of Wagner's epic Ring cycle, featuring a new generation of leading Wagnerians includingSimon O'Neill as Siegfried and Christine Goerke as Brunnhilde. HGO will bring back its popular production of Gounod's Faust, with the HGO debut of international star tenor Michael Fabiano in the title role partnered by Houston favorite Ana Maria Martinez as Marguerite, along with the role debut of prominent bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni as Mephistopheles. The company will celebrate the 30thanniversary of HGO's world premiere of John Adams's pivotal Nixon in China by presenting James Robinson's production, of which HGO is a co-producer, with HGO Studio alumnus Scott Hendricks as Richard Nixon and soprano Andriana Chuchman as his wife, Pat. Patrick Summers will conduct Verdi'sthrilling Requiem, which critics at the time termed "an opera in ecclesiastical robes," with soloists Angela Meade, soprano, in her HGO debut; Sasha Cooke, alto; Alexey Dolgov, tenor; and Peixin Chen, bass; and the HGO Orchestra and Chorus. HGO's 62nd season will open with a whimsical production of Donizetti's buoyant The Elixir of Love, featuring tenor Dimitri Pittas as Nemorino and HGO Studio alumna Nicole Heaston as Adina and led by the eminent English conductor Jane Glover, HGO's 2016-17 Lynn Wyatt Great Artist, in her first HGO appearance. Mozart's zany yet deeply emotive comedy TheAbduction from the Seraglio-featuring Russian coloratura soprano and HGO Studio alumna Albina Shagimuratova as Konstanze and leading American tenor Lawrence Brownlee as Belmonte in HGO's inventive 2002 co-production-will close the main-stage season.
A century's worth of treasures emerge from the shadows of both memory and history in this new CD, OUT OF THE SHADOWS: REDISCOVERED AMERICAN ART SONGS, out on digital Sept. 2 and physical CD on Sept. 9, 2016.
Known for staging “the ultimate in intimate productions” (The New York Times), On Site Opera begins their sixth annual season on September 29-30 with an evening of powerful monodramas including Dominick Argento's Miss Havisham's Wedding Night and Hector Berlioz's La Mort de Cléopâtre (The Death of Cleopatra) in the exquisite grand ballroom at The Harmonie Club. The evening stars soprano Leah Partridge as Miss Havisham and mezzo-soprano Blythe Gaissert as Cleopatra and features the string quintet SYBARITE5 at the center of a chamber orchestra. Conducted by OSO's Music Director, Geoffrey McDonald, and directed by the company's General & Artistic Director, Eric Einhorn, the site-specific production features lighting design by Shawn Kaufman and costume design by Fay Leshner. OSO invites audiences to join as Miss Havisham's wedding guests for the evening – there's champagne and cake for all!
