John Corigliano News

Noted director Robert Lepage makes his Met debut with a technologically innovative new production of Hector Berlioz's masterpiece, La Damnation de Faust, opening on November 7. Music Director James Levine will conduct the first staging of the work at the Met since 1906, with Marcello Giordani in the title role, Susan Graham as Marguerite, and John Relyea as Méphistophélès.

The Met's acclaimed production of Puccini's Madama Butterfly, directed by the late Academy Award-winning film director Anthony Minghella, returns to the stage for twelve performances beginning Friday, October 24, 2008. Reprising their portrayals in the production this season are sopranos Patricia Racette and Cristina Gallardo-Domâs in the title role, tenors Roberto Aronica and Marcello Giordani as Pinkerton, and baritone Dwayne Croft as Sharpless. Patrick Summers conducts the opera for the first time at Met.

Noted director Robert Lepage makes his Met debut with a technologically innovative new production of Hector Berlioz's masterpiece, La Damnation de Faust, opening on November 7. Music Director James Levine will conduct the first staging of the work at the Met since 1906, with Marcello Giordani in the title role, Susan Graham as Marguerite, and John Relyea as Méphistophélès.

The Met's acclaimed production of Puccini's Madama Butterfly, directed by the late Academy Award-winning film director Anthony Minghella, returns to the stage for twelve performances beginning Friday, October 24, 2008. Reprising their portrayals in the production this season are sopranos Patricia Racette and Cristina Gallardo-Domâs in the title role, tenors Roberto Aronica and Marcello Giordani as Pinkerton, and baritone Dwayne Croft as Sharpless. Patrick Summers conducts the opera for the first time at Met.

Thanks to the generosity of one of its board members, the Metropolitan Opera announced today that a number of prime orchestra seats, usually $175 - $220, will be available for $30 for all nine performances of John Adams's Doctor Atomic. Agnes Varis, a managing director of the Met board, and her husband Karl Leichtman, have purchased $500,000 worth of some of the best orchestra seats for Doctor Atomic, so that they can be redistributed at this lower price.

For the first time, the Metropolitan Opera will present a work by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Adams: Doctor Atomic, his opera about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the atomic bomb. The piece is set in New Mexico in the summer of 1945, as scientists, led by Oppenheimer, and the military prepare to test the first nuclear bomb, events that will radically change the course and fabric of history. The new production, starring Gerald Finley in the title role, will open at the Met on Monday, October 13, at 8:00 p.m. When the opera premiered in San Francisco in October of 2005, The Guardian said, 'Adams's ecstatically lyrical writing and the music's visionary eloquence make this a modern masterpiece.' The New York Times later wrote that Doctor Atomic was 'the most complex and inventive of Mr. Adams's works, an engrossing operatic drama.'

Franco Zeffirelli's lavish production of Verdi's poignant masterpiece about love and sacrifice, La Traviata, returns to the Metropolitan Opera stage on October 20 for nine performances through November 20, 2008. Anja Harteros sings the title role for the first time at the Met.

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra will present a four week 'American Originals' festival, celebrating music written by American and European composers while living in America. The festival opens with a program of works by Bernstein, Barber and Rachmaninov on Thursday, October 30, 2008, and concludes with the Atlanta debut of a concert-staged production of John Adams' Dr. Atomic on Sunday, November 23, 2008.

Continuing its innovative use of electronic media to reach a global audience, the Metropolitan Opera introduces Met Player, a new subscription service that will make its extensive video and audio catalog of full-length performances available to the public for the first time online, and in exceptional, state-of-the-art quality. Beginning on October 22, 120 historic audio recordings and 50 full-length opera videos will be available during the first month of the new service, including over a dozen of the company's acclaimed The Met: Live in HD transmissions, known for their extraordinary sound and picture quality. New content, including HD productions and archival broadcasts, will be added monthly.

The Metropolitan Opera opens its 2008-09 season on September 22 with a gala performance that kicks off its 125th anniversary, starring Renée Fleming in three fully-staged scenes, including some of her most acclaimed portrayals. Costumes for Fleming have been specially created for each of the scenes in the Opening Night Gala by three of the world's legendary fashion designers: John Galliano, Christian Lacroix, and Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel.

Absurdist singer/guitarist Aldo Perez and company will host an evening of clown cabaret. The Renaldo Ensemble is a musical exercise in human ridiculousness and musically flits between bizarre episodes and silly antics.

Two of opera's leading sopranos - both acclaimed for their dramatic and vocal skills - sing the demanding title role in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor for the first time at the Met this season. In the opening performance, October 3, 2008, Diana Damrau - who last season became the first soprano to achieve the feat of singing both leading soprano roles in Mozart's Die Zauberflote, Pamina and the Queen of the Night, in the same Met season - sings the role of Lucia for the first time in her career. Polish tenor Piotr Beczala is her beloved Edgardo in his Met role debut.

When Erwin Schrott took on the title role in Mozart's Don Giovanni last year at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, The New York Times wrote: 'The surprise was the riveting Giovanni: the seductively handsome young Uruguayan bass Erwin Schrott, who boasts a strong, dusky voice and chiseled physique. Exuding charisma, he galvanized the audience with his unabashedly narcissistic portrayal.' Now Schrott, who sang the role when the Met toured Japan in 2006, is bringing his portrayal to the Met stage for the first time beginning Saturday, September 27.

Metropolitan Opera on SIRIUS Satellite Radio channel 78 launches its regular live broadcasts of the company's 2008-09 season with the Opening Night Gala starring Renée Fleming, which airs on Monday, September 22, 2008 at 6:30 p.m. The third season of Met Opera Radio on SIRIUS features four live broadcasts weekly as the Met celebrates its 125th anniversary with six new productions, including the company premiere of John Adams's Doctor Atomic, 18 revivals, and the season grand finale of Wagner's epic Ring cycle, conducted by Music Director James Levine.

The Metropolitan Opera opens its 2008-09 season on September 22 with a gala performance that kicks off its 125th anniversary, starring Renée Fleming in three fully-staged scenes, including some of her most acclaimed portrayals. Costumes for Fleming have been specially created for each of the scenes in the Opening Night Gala by three of the world's legendary fashion designers: John Galliano, Christian Lacroix, and Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel.

New York Festival Of Song (NYFOS, www.nyfos.org), co-founded and directed by pianists Steven Blier and Michael Barrett, who 'reinvented the song recital during the 1990's with daring and dramatic programming' (The New Yorker), announces its 21st season (2008-2009).

On Monday, May 19, 2008, The Westchester Broadway Theatre will again, be hosting the annual Cab Calloway Lifetime Achievement Awards for 2008.

WhatsOnStage.com reports Tony Award-winning Broadway actress, Kristin Chenoweth, will make her 'English National Opera debut in a new co-production, with Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris and La Scala in Milan, of Leonard Bernstein's Candide. Chenoweth will play the part of Cunegonde in the production which opens at the London Coliseum for a limited season of 13 performances from June 23.'

Jewish Community Centers of Chicago (JCC) will hold its annual Benefit Concert, featuring Grammy Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell, with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Monday, November 5 at 7:30PM at Symphony Center

On Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at 7 p.m., the New York Festival of Song celebrates with a benefit concert titled 'Too Marvelous for Words!,' a gala evening of Johnny Mercer songs.