For those of us who couldn't wait to hear mezzo Joyce DiDonato in a fully staged performance of Handel's AGRIPPINA—heading to Covent Garden in September and the Met
in February in different productions next season—she has given us a first-class preview at the Liceu in Barcelona. For a couple of weeks at the end of May, she tootled around major cities in Europe giving concert performances of the opera, one of Handel's first hits, from Christmas 1709 in Venice when he was finishing his sojourn in Italy.
The Metropolitan Opera's annual Summer HD Festival, presenting free outdoor screenings of operas in Lincoln Center Plaza, returns for the 11th time this summer, with one screening each night from Saturday, August 24, to Monday, September 2, 2019 (Labor Day). The series features ten performances from the company's acclaimed Live in HD series of movie theater transmissions, including performances from the 2018 19 season as well as some of the most popular transmissions from past years. Preceding the festival, on Friday, August 23, the classic movie musical Funny Face will be screened in the plaza, in association with Film at Lincoln Center. Funny Face features songs by George and Ira Gershwin, whose opera, Porgy and Bess, will be presented in a new production to open the Met's forthcoming 2019 20 season in September.
The little OPERA theatre of ny will present a FREE concert of scenes from American operas in collaboration with Bronx Opera and operamission. The concert will showcase the diversity of music and stories written for the opera stage by both native born and immigrant composers and librettists. The concert will take place outdoors on Governors Island in Nolan Park, in front of building 25. The performance is at 5pm and is FREE to the public. (Rain date: Sunday, June 23 at 4pm.)
San Francisco's acclaimed Merola Opera Program, one of the most prestigious and selective opera training programs in the world, commences its 62nd season with a showcase of the program's rising stars in the Schwabacher Summer Concert. A jaded courtesan longing for true love, star-crossed lovers, a comic marriage, a deal with the devil, and brothers separated at birth all take the stage as Merola's talented young artists bring some of opera's most exciting moments to life by performing scenes from La rondine, Lucia di Lammermoor, Die schweigsame Frau, Faust, and Il trovatore.
Beginning Wednesday, June 19, the Met will present Summer Encores, featuring select performances from the celebrated Live in HD series, in more than 400 movie theaters across the United States and Canada. The 2019 Summer Encores opens with Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, seen in Tony Award-winning director Bartlett Sher's acclaimed production, with tenor Vittorio Grigolo and soprano Diana Damrau as the star-crossed lovers. The series continues with the Met's classic production of Puccini's La Bohème; Rossini's comedy Il Barbiere di Siviglia with a winning cast led by mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, tenor Juan Diego Flórez, and baritone Peter Mattei; and Verdi's monumental Aida, with superstar soprano Anna Netrebko in the title role, opposite mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili as her rival, Amneris.
The 2019-20 season of events presented by the George London Foundation for Singers continues this legacy with two duo recitals featuring four George London Award winners, and the esteemed George London Foundation Competition.
The Metropolitan Opera has named soprano Lisette Oropesa as the winner of the 14th annual Beverly Sills Artist Award. The $50,000 award is given to extraordinarily gifted singers with rising Met careers. Given in honor of the legendary American soprano Beverly Sills, the award was established in 2006 by an endowment gift from the late Agnes Varis, a managing director on the Met's Board of Directors.
Mezzo Joyce DiDonato knows quite a bit about being Cinderella--after all, she's played the title characters in Rossini's CENERENTOLA and Massenet's CENDRILLON at the Met and other major opera houses. But it also appears she's a first-rate “fairy godmother,” as she proved with a group of emerging artists in a series of Master Classes in Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Room of the Resnick Education Wing last week.
The MET Orchestra returns to Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage for a series of three concerts this May and June. For the first concert on Saturday, May 18 at 8:00 p.m., Valery Gergiev leads the orchestra in Schumann's Piano Concerto featuring pianist Daniil Trifonov and Schubert's Symphony No. 9, Great. On Monday, June 3 at 8:00 p.m. new Music Director Yannick N zet-S guin leads The MET Orchestra for the first time at Carnegie Hall in a program of French works with mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard singing Dutilleux's Le temps l'horloge and Ravel's Sh h razade, alongside Debussy's La mer and Ravel's Daphnis et Chlo Suite No. 2. Maestro N zet-S guin returns the following week on Friday, June 14 at 8:00 p.m. with the orchestra and mezzo-soprano El na Garan a singing Mahler's R ckert Lieder on a program that also includes Bruckner's Symphony No. 7.
Carnegie Hall today announced that the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America(NYO-USA) will return to the BBC Proms in London for the first time since the orchestra's inaugural 2013 season, performing on Sunday, August 11, 2019 at 11:00 a.m. Conductor Sir Antonio Pappano will lead NYO-USA in Strauss's Eine Alpensinfonie and Berlioz's Les nuits d'été featuring mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato. The concert will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and filmed for delayed viewing on BBC Four TV, to air on Friday, August 16.
The Richard Tucker Music Foundation announced today that Lisette Oropesa has been named as the winner of the 2019 Richard Tucker Award. The soprano already headlines major productions worldwide, and after her recent house debuts in the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor at the Teatro Real Madrid and Royal Opera House, The Guardian declared: "The Cuban American soprano is sensationally good. She makes the stratospheric vocal fireworks … sound easy; indeed, her every note is part of a convincing portrayal of a complex character." Widely referred to as the "Heisman Trophy of Opera," the Tucker Award carries the foundation's most substantial cash prize of $50,000, and is conferred each year by a panel of opera industry professionals on an American singer at the threshold of a significant international career.
The Richard Tucker Music Foundation announced today that Lisette Oropesa has been named as the winner of the 2019 Richard Tucker Award. The soprano already headlines major productions worldwide, and after her recent house debuts in the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor at the Teatro Real Madrid and Royal Opera House, The Guardiandeclared: “The Cuban American soprano is sensationally good. She makes the stratospheric vocal fireworks … sound easy; indeed, her every note is part of a convincing portrayal of a complex character.” Widely referred to as the “Heisman Trophy of Opera,” the Tucker Award carries the foundation's most substantial cash prize of $50,000, and is conferred each year by a panel of opera industry professionals on an American singer at the threshold of a significant international career. Past winners include such luminaries as Stephanie Blythe, Lawrence Brownlee, Joyce DiDonato, Renée Fleming, Christine Goerke, Matthew Polenzani, and Deborah Voigt. Oropesa will be inducted into this who's who of American opera at the foundation's annual gala, a perennial highlight of the opera season, on Sunday, October 27, at Carnegie Hall.
While the cast for the season's revival of Mozart's LA CLEMENZA DI TITO looked good on paper, it didn't even hint at how good the singing was going to be at the Met this week. From top—tenor Matthew Polenzani, elegant and vibrant in the title role (“Se all'impero”), and the great mezzo Joyce DiDonato as Sesto (who delivers the opera's “hit” aria, “Parto, parto,” and more in opulent style)--to bottom, the cast delivered in every way possible.
Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato returns to Carnegie Hall's Resnick Education Wing for her annual much-anticipated series of master classes for young professional opera singers from Friday, April 12 through Sunday, April 14, 2019
Edinburgh International Festival returns for its 73rd year on 2 - 26 August 2019, bringing the best of theatre, music and dance from across the world to Scotland's capital.
Mozart's opera of ancient Rome, La Clemenza di Tito, returns to the Met starring Matthew Polenzani in the title role of the Roman emperor Tito, with Elza van den Heever as the vengeful Vitellia, who plots his assassination. Joyce DiDonato sings the trouser role of Sesto, Tito's most devoted friend, who is also in love with Vitellia. The trio of leading artists is reunited at the Met after their acclaimed performances together in the company's new production of Donizetti's Maria Stuarda in 2013. Emily D'Angelo and Ying Fang sing the roles of the lovers Annio and Servilia, Sesto's friend and sister, respectively, and Christian Van Horn portrays the captain of the Praetorian Guard, Publio. Lothar Koenigs conducts all six performances of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's 1984 staging, which runs March 30 through April 20, 2019.
On Sunday, April 14 at 2:00 p.m., Harry Bicket conducts Handel's Semele at Carnegie Hall with acclaimed baroque orchestra The English Concert. In this concert presentation, soprano Brenda Rae performs the title role, joined by mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong (Juno/Ino), bass Soloman Howard, (Cadmus/Somnus), tenor Benjamin Hulett (Jupiter), countertenor Christopher Lowrey (Athamas), soprano Ailish Tynan (Iris), tenor Brian Giebler (Apollo), and bass-baritone Joseph Beutel (Priest), along with The Clarion Choir (Steven Fox, Artistic Director).
Twenty-eight performers selected to compete for a chance to win top prizes of $20,000, $15,000, and $10,000; total prizes to exceed $75,000; an all-star team of musical theater, opera, and Kurt Weill experts to adjudicate semifinals and finals.
Mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught to sing Marguerite in Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra'S Damnation of Faust March 8-10 New York - International Irish mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught will step in this week with the acclaimed Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra at Heinz Hall, where she will perform Marguerite in the symphony's March 8 and 10 concerts of Berlioz's Damnation of Faust.
