John Holiday News

Under the leadership of General Director and CEO Susan T. Danis, Florida Grand Opera's 2017-18 season continues the upward trajectory of the past few seasons.

The Apollo Theater today announced details of its upcoming 2017-2018 season. Marking the first full season with Executive Producer Kamilah Forbes at the helm of the legendary theater's artistic and community programs, it will encompass commissions, premieres, and collaborations with local, national, and international artists working across a range of disciplines and genres-from dance and theater to jazz, soul, and opera.

Ars Lyrica Houston, the Grammy-nominated early music ensemble, announces its 2017/18 season: Artful Women: Muse, Heroine, Musician, and Patron features a wide range of musical works by, for, and about women.

New York Live Arts 2017 Live Ideas Gala, co-chaired by Sarah Arison, Slobodan Randjelovic, and Jon Stryker and with award-winning actors Kathleen Turner and Delroy Lindo as masters of ceremony, pays tribute to Live Arts' annual Live Ideas Festival. The Gala will take place at the Highline Ballroom, located at 431 W 16th Street, New York City on Monday, April 3 with a cocktail reception at 6:30pmfollowed by the dinner and program at 7:15pm.

Florida Grand Opera (FGO) General Director and CEO Susan T. Danis today unveiled plans for the company's 2017-18 season. Anchored by the theme 'Divas to Die For,' FGO's seventy-seventh season will boast a diverse range of works about women on dangerous emotional journeys.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Washington National Opera (WNO) today announced that countertenor John Holiday is the 2017 winner of the Marian Anderson Vocal Award.

The Glimmerglass Festival, which presents four mainstage productions of opera and musical theater every summer, rounds out each season with a schedule of guest appearances, concerts, public master classes, youth opera performances and more.

“The word and genre 'opera' is much broader and more inclusive in the 21st century than it was in the past,” says Huang Ruo, composer/co-librettist of PARADISE INTERRUPTED, his mesmerizing, tantalizing opera that was one of the opening selections of this year's Lincoln Center Festival.

The Glimmerglass Festival, which presents four mainstage productions of opera and musical theater as well as many events every summer, has released the details of its 2017 schedule.

Although the solstice doesn't officially appear for another week or so, the summer opera clock is already ticking. There's a plethora of performances going on all over New York City, in addition to interesting, entertaining and fascinating productions that are just a hop, skip and jump away. Among them: Lincoln Center's Lincoln Center Festival and Mostly Mozart and On Site Opera's West Village venue, to the more bucolic realms of Bard SummerScape in Dutchess County (NY) for Mascagni and Caramoor in Katonah (NY) for Rossini and Beethoven.

Single tickets to Lincoln Center Festival shows-highlights this year include legendary stars of Japan's all-female musical troupe, Takarazuka, in Takarazuka CHICAGO; Jonathan Pryce as Shylock in Shakespeare'sGlobe production of The Merchant of Venice; Balkan superstar Goran Bregovic and his raucous Wedding and Funeral Orchestra; and the National Ballet of Canada performances of Christopher Wheeldon's The Winter's Tale-will go on sale to Friends of Lincoln Center on April 1 and to the general public on April 11. The festival runs from Wednesday, July 13 through Sunday, July 31, 2016, with 49 performances by artists and ensembles from seven countries taking place in seven venues on and off the Lincoln Center campus.

Ars Lyrica Houston, the Grammy nominated early music ensemble, announces a 2016/17 season that mixes beloved masterworks of the Baroque with rare gems from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Fables & Follies opens on September 9 with an encore visit to the world of King Louis XIV, with Marc­Antoine Charpentier's comic chamber opera Les Plaisirs de Versailles. Handel's late masterpiece Jephtha will be offered twice, on October 15 and 16, and will feature a stellar cast of soloists plus the award-­winning Moores School Concert Chorale from the University of Houston. On December 31 a festive program rings in the New Year with cantatas J.S. Bach wrote specifically for this holiday. Bachanalia also includes Ars Lyrica's annual holiday gala and silent auction following the program.

Nigel Redden, Director of Lincoln Center Festival, today announced the line-up for the Festival, which runs from July 13-31, 2016. Artists and ensembles from seven countries, many of them making their Lincoln Center Festival debuts, will gather for the festival, now celebrating its 20th anniversary, and which continues its mission of presenting the finest classical and contemporary arts from around the world.  An array of 49 dance, music, and theater performances will animate seven venues on and off the Lincoln Center campus.

No more carping about out-of-tune singing (for the rest of 2015). No more bemoaning opera directors who don't seem to like the art of opera (for the next five minutes). No more worrying whether traditional opera will go the way of all flesh (for the next few days, at least). It's time to give up on my Scrooge tendencies and be thankful for the gifts that opera gave me, in and around New York this past year, alphabetically speaking.

On paper, Vivaldi's 1737 opera seria CATONE IN UTICA--involving a confrontation between Cato and Caesar--seems a big mess: The music from the first act is missing and musicologists can't agree what the third act should look and sound like, leaving Act II to make or break a performance of the opera. Opera Lafayette brought us a version that sometimes thrilled us, sometimes tantalized us, but always made us grateful for the performance, fluidly directed by Tazewell Thompson.

The Glimmerglass Festival, which presents four mainstage productions of opera and musical theater every summer, rounds out each season with a schedule of guest appearances, concerts, public master classes, youth opera performances and more.

The Glimmerglass Festival, which presents four mainstage productions of opera and musical theater every summer, rounds out each season with a schedule of guest appearances, concerts, public master classes, youth opera performances and more.

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y.  – The Glimmerglass Festival opened its third production of the 2015 season with Vivaldi's setting of Metastasio's poetic depiction of Cato the Younger.

LA Opera is collaborating with Classical KUSC 91.5fm to produce the ninth consecutive season of LA Opera On Air, a weekly broadcast series of LA Opera performances recorded live at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Beginning with Verdi's La Traviata, starring Nino Machaidze and Plácido Domingo at 10am on Saturday, May 16, 2015, the weekly series hosted by KUSC's Duff Murphy will feature five performances from LA Opera's 2014/15 season and a special encore broadcast of Jules Massenet's Thaïs from the 2013/14 season. The series will be broadcast locally on Classical KUSC 91.5fm, its repeater stations (see below) and also streamed live online at KUSC.org.

Excerpts from Paradise Interrupted, a new installation opera by artist Jennifer Wen Ma and composer Huang Ruo, will be performed in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's The Temple of Dendur in The Sackler Wing today, March 21. The Met Museum Presents performances offer a special preview of this work in progress before the world premiere at the 2015 Spoleto Festival USA in May. There will be two Metropolitan Museum performances at 3:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. Tickets start at $54 and are available online atmetmuseum.org/tickets or by phone (212) 570-3949. Tickets include Museum admission and are part of the Museum's 'Bring the Kids for $1' program.