Jamie Barton News

Following yesterday's highly competitive semifinal competition, nine singers will advance to the final phase of the 65th annual Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, America's largest vocal competition. The winners will receive individual cash prizes of $15,000, while the remaining finalists will receive prizes of $7,500.

Twenty-one young opera singers who have won regional auditions around the United States will compete in the semifinal round of the country's leading vocal competition, the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, on Sunday, March 24. The closed semifinal competition, held on the Met stage before a panel of judges, will determine the select group of finalists who will advance to the final round of the competition-the Grand Finals, which is open to the public and will be held on the Met stage on Sunday, March 31.

The Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, America's longest running festival of new orchestral music, celebrates its 57th season, July 28 - August 11, 2019, with a remarkable women-centric season, featuring a series of relevant and forward-looking commissioned works. 

If Robert Lepage's production of Wagner's Ring Cycle (formally, DER RING DAS NIBELUNGEN) had worked as smoothly when it opened in 2010 as it did at this season's marvelous premiere of its prologue, DAS RHEINGOLD, on Saturday afternoon, there probably still would have been complaints--not about its focus on technology but on its traditional approach. Personally, i liked it.

Wagner's visionary initial installment of the Ring Cycle depicts the original sin of the theft of the sacred golden treasure, the vanity of the gods, the greed of the Nibelungen, the fratricide of the giants, and the building of Valhalla. Bass-baritone Greer Grimsley sings the role of Wotan, the conflicted lord of the gods. Mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton sings her first Wagner role at the Met as Wotan's embattled wife, Fricka.

Wagner's visionary initial installment of the Ring Cycle depicts the original sin of the theft of the sacred golden treasure, the vanity of the gods, the greed of the Nibelungen, the fratricide of the giants, and the building of Valhalla. Bass-baritone Greer Grimsley sings the role of Wotan, the conflicted lord of the gods. Mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton sings her first Wagner role at the Met as Wotan's embattled wife, Fricka.

Twenty of the world's most outstanding classical singers are today [4 March 2019] announced for BBC Cardiff Singer of the World 2019. The biennial competition returns to Cardiff between 15-22 June 2019 and audiences in the UK and beyond can follow all the live drama of the competition on BBC TV, radio and online.

The Met: Live in HD, the Metropolitan Opera's award-winning series of live high-definition cinema simulcasts, will begin its 14th season on October 12, with the Met's production of Puccini's Turandot, starring Christine Goerke in the title role, led by the Met's Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

The 2018-2019 Renee Fleming VOICES series continues withJamie Barton on Saturday, March 23, 2019, at 7:30 p.m. in the Terrace Theater. Accompanied by pianist Kathleen Kelly, Barton's one-night-only recital will feature classics from Haydn, Strauss, and Ravel while showcasing the voices of women, including works by composers Nadia and Lili Boulanger and Americans Elinor Remick Warren and Amy Beach. Barton's performance also features Love After 1950, a contemporary song cycle by Libby Larsen that uses offbeat vocal styles like blues, tango, and honky-tonk to evoke different moods. Tickets for this program are $49-$69.

Beginning June 5 and continuing through the 29th, San Francisco Opera presents a trio of extraordinary lyric works Georges Bizet's Carmen, George Frideric Handel's Orlando and Anton n Dvo k's Rusalka featuring powerful leading women in the title roles. Spanning three centuries and sung in French, Italian and Czech, the 2019 Summer Season repertory will occasion the Company debuts of four conductors, including two women, in productions that are new to the War Memorial Opera House stage. Some casting updates for the repertory were announced today and additional casting of supporting roles will be released at a future date.

The 2018-2019 Renee Fleming VOICES series continues with singer-songwriter Nellie McKay today, February 8, 2019, at 7:30 p.m. in the Terrace Theater. McKay's one-night-only solo set will include songs from her recent Sister Orchid, as well as others in her catalog. Tickets for this performance are $25-$35.

Houston Grand Opera (HGO) announced today the winners of the 31st annual Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers Concert of Arias, which took place in the Cullen Theater of the Wortham Theater Center. This is the third year the Concert of Arias was streamed live on Facebook, and the second for livestreaming on YouTube. The livestream was hosted by HGO Studio alumna Andrea Carroll. She is currently performing in The Pearl Fishers as Le la and placed first in the 2012 Concert of Arias. The winners were announced during the second portion of the program.

The Metropolitan Opera will present Richard Wagner's four-part masterwork Der Ring des Nibelungen in performances March 9-May 11, 2019.  This season's performances are the first time the Met has presented the inventive Robert Lepage staging in six seasons and are the only complete Ring cycles to be presented in North America in 2019. Marshaling the vast forces on stage and in the pit is the incoming music director of the Vienna State Opera, Philippe Jordan, who has conducted acclaimed Ring cycles in Paris and Zurich.

Houston Grand Opera (HGO) has selected the finalists for the 31st annual Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers Concert of Arias, to be presented in the Wortham Theater Center on February 1, 2019, at 7 p.m. A limited number of general admission tickets for the performance are available for purchase here. The program will also be streamed live on Facebook and YouTube for all to enjoy, inviting viewers to cast their votes for the Online Viewers' Choice Award.

As its programming for 2019/20 again affirms, the spirit of Wigmore Hall is exemplified by both continuity and renewal: artists who have enjoyed decades of association with the Hall and artists it has nurtured into the primes of their careers; the indispensable composers of the past and the innovators and improvisers of today; participatory projects for older people and for children; the irreplaceable immediacy of live concerts and their mediation through technology, bringing them to ever wider audiences via Wigmore Hall's own streaming service or via partners like the BBC.

Houston Grand Opera (HGO) will present its 2019-20 season with a broad repertoire of operas in productions that have never been seen by Houston audiences. The 65th season will open October 18, 2019, with Verdi's classic Rigoletto. Tomer Zvulun returns to direct the season opener after successfully opening the 2018-19 season with his production of The Flying Dutchman. American baritone Brian Mulligan sings his first Rigoletto leading an outstanding cast filled with renowned HGO Studio alumni, including Mexican tenor Arturo Chacon-Cruz as the Duke of Mantua and Armenian soprano Mane Galoyan as Gilda. Paired with Rigoletto is the North American  premiere of the dramatic oratorio Saul in a much-lauded and imaginative production by Barrie Kosky. Christopher Purves returns to the title role after his celebrated performance at the Glyndebourne Festival and is joined by countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen and Korean soprano Pureum Jo, both HGO Studio alumni.

The 2018-2019 Renee Fleming VOICES series continues with singer-songwriter Nellie McKay on Friday, February 8, 2019, at 7:30 p.m. in the Terrace Theater. McKay's one-night-only solo set will include songs from her recent Sister Orchid, as well as others in her catalog. Tickets for this performance are $25-$35.

This winter, The Atlanta Opera presents the company premiere of Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally's Dead Man Walking in an original production "of the very highest level" (Opera News) from General & Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun. Georgia native Jamie Barton - winner of the Beverly Sills Artist Award, Richard Tucker Award, and BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition - makes her eagerly anticipated role debut as Sister Helen Prejean, and Michael Mayes reprises the iconic portrayal of condemned murderer Joseph De Rocher that the composer himself has called "definitive," anchoring an all-star cast that also features Maria Zifchak, Wayne Tigges, Kevin Burdette, and Jay Hunter Morris. Marking the second presentation in Atlanta's mainstage season, the opera will be mounted in four performances led by Kentucky Opera principal conductor Joseph Mechavich at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre (Feb 2-10).

I caught up with rising star bass-baritone Christian Van Horn the other day, to find out what the devil was going on with his starring role in the Met's first performance of Arrigo Boito's MEFISTOFELE in almost 20 years. Were you nervous as hell (pun intended) on the first night, I asked Van Horn, winner of this year's prestigious Richard Tucker Award, in your role as the Devil?

Lyric Opera of Chicago's production of Verdi's Il trovatoreopens Saturday, Nov. 17, at 7:30pm. There are seven performances November 17 - December 9  at the Lyric Opera House, 20 N. Wacker Dr., Chicago. Tickets start at $39 and are available now at lyricopera.org/Trovatore or at 312-827-5600.