The Metropolitan Opera's 2017-18 season will feature 220 performances of 26 works, including two Met premieres, one co-commissioned by the company and one an older masterpiece having its first Met performances; a variety of repertory favorites, three in new productions; and performances of Verdi's towering concert work for soloists, orchestra, and chorus, the Requiem. Of note, Broadway star Kelli O'Hara is set to return to the Met in Così fan tutte this season.
At last month's concert in Carnegie Hall, Joyce DiDonato was glorious musically but less-than-cheery philosophically--and that was before the guy in the White House started taking aim at arts and education funding. Taking the stage at Carnegie's Zankel Hall on Saturday, at THE MARILYN HORNE SONG CELEBRATION, Marilyn Horne was in a feistier frame of mind about the fight for our hearts, minds and souls--though she admittedly hadn't figured out a way for her personally to take on the battle . It seemed to me that the evening, with emerging singers and the great guest, was a pretty good way to get the ball rolling.
It didn't strike me until the lights were going down for the start of CARMEN last Thursday that this was the second night in a row that Met audiences were being transported to the same town in sunny Spain. Truth be told, “sunny” is hardly an adjective I'd hardly use to describe Bizet's tragedy in the shadow of the bullring, while it's just about right for dizzy events of Rossini's charmer, IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA, which I'd heard the night before.
Fresh from a triumphant turn as Didon in Chicago Lyric's production of Berlioz's Les Troyens, Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Susan Graham takes the concert stage this winter, performing selections from Canteloube's Chants d'Auvergne with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nezet-Seguin.
From January 16-21, 2017, Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute (WMI) presents The Song Continues, an annual series led by revered mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne that explores song repertoire through master classes and concerts with the goal of encouraging, supporting, and preserving the art of the vocal recital.
Returning to Carnegie Hall this year after more than 25 years, the Richard Tucker Gala—celebrating the current winner of the Richard Tucker Award, soprano Tamara Wilson, as well as the life and career of the famed tenor for whom it was named—was a grand night for singing.
The Richard Tucker Music Foundation's annual gala, one of the opera world's most star-studded evenings, returns home to New York's Carnegie Hall after an absence of more than a quarter of a century this Sunday, October 30, and for the first time, audiences both in the U.S. and abroad will have the opportunity to watch it live (6pm ET/3pm PT). Thanks to a new partnership with medici.tv, the gala concert will be webcast live free of charge both on medici.tv and on medici.tv's Facebook page, and made available for on-demand viewing for 90 days. In addition, the Richard Tucker Music Foundation continues its collaboration with WQXR 105.9 FM, New York's classical radio station, which will broadcast the performance to listeners in the New York metropolitan region and beyond on November 18 at 9pm ET/6pm PT. Both the medici.tv webcast and WQXR 105.9 FM radio broadcast are made possible in part by support from the Lloyd E. Rigler-Lawrence E. Deutsch Foundation.
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.
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.
Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) is perhaps the most famous 'opera buffa'- an informal style of comic opera developed to appeal to the lower classes in the early 18th Century.
One of the most highly anticipated events of the opera season, the Richard Tucker Music Foundation's annual gala returns home to New York's Carnegie Hall for the first time in more than a quarter of a century on Sunday, October 30.
The Harris Theater for Music and Dance has appointed Patricia Barretto as the new Executive Vice President, External Affairs effective immediately. After joining the Harris Theater executive team as Vice President of Marketing & Communications in 2015, Ms. Barretto's role will expand to oversee both the Marketing and Development departments.
Point/counterpoint: As if to set off its trio of Elizabethan tragedies by Donizetti, the Met is presenting two of the master's comedies. First up: DON PASQUALE, and it was a pip. (The other is L'ELISIR D'AMORE.) Too bad the Met underestimated its appeal, because it had a truncated run of only five performances. Judging by the audience reception, they could have done more--certainly if tenor Javier Camarena was at bat.
The International Opera Awards are pleased to announce the shortlist for this year's Awards. These were selected by the jury chaired by John Allison, editor of Opera magazine and classical music critic with The Daily Telegraph.
Donizetti's comedy Don Pasquale will return to the Met March 4 for a starry revival featuring Ambrogio Maestri in his first-ever performances of the title role, opposite Javier Camarena, who caused a sensation in his 2014 Met appearances in La Cenerentola, as the lovelorn Ernesto. Italian soprano Eleonora Buratto will make her Met debut as the bewitching Norina, opposite Levente Molnár as the two-faced physician, Dr. Malatesta. Maurizio Benini conducts Otto Schenk's 2006 production.
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.
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.
For the second time in two seasons, casting has made me reconsider a Met production that I'd written off as past its expiration date. The first was Diana Damrau and Javier Camarena in Bellini's LA SONNAMBULA. This time around it's the wonderful Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva, who breathed new life into the Willy Decker LA TRAVIATA. She's a marvel, both as an actress and a singer.
