Kate Lindsey News

On Sunday, June 14, San Francisco Opera begins a revival of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's sparkling comedy The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro) as part of the Company's 2015 Summer Season.

On Sunday, June 14, San Francisco Opera begins a revival of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's sparkling comedy The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro) as part of the Company's 2015 Summer Season. The production, featuring a stellar cast of dynamic, young singers, is conducted by Principal Guest Conductor Patrick Summers and continues through Sunday, July 5 at the War Memorial Opera House. In conjunction with these performances, San Francisco Opera returns to AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, for a free live simulcast of The Marriage of Figaro on Friday, July 3. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast onstage below!

The Metropolitan Opera's annual Summer HD Festival, which presents free outdoor screenings of operas on Lincoln Center Plaza each summer, will return with 10 screenings of performances featuring the company's leading artists in a varied selection of operas by Bartók, Bizet, Gounod, Mozart, Offenbach, Puccini, Tchaikovsky, and Verdi, running on consecutive nights from August 29 through September 7.

The shows must go on! Seattle Opera concludes its 2014/15 season with Richard Strauss' delightful opera-within-an-opera: Ariadne auf Naxos. A rich Seattleite is throwing a dinner party and asks his hired entertainment for the impossible: the capering troupe of comedians must combine their performance with an opera company's rendition of the mythical love and loss of the ancient Greek princess Ariadne. Comedy meets tragedy, and fireworks result!

I consider Mozart's DON GIOVANNI at the top of my list of favorite operas--the music starts to go through my head without much encouragement and gets stuck there. Yet, it's also one of the most problematic in performance, calling for a large group of A-list singers to do justice to the ripe and sometimes rollicking score--and frequently falling short. Luckily for current audiences at the Met, the cast is headed by Swedish baritone Peter Mattei, who already triumphed in Mozart at the Met this season in the new NOZZE DI FIGARO and there are enough other first-rate principals to make it work.

Alan Gilbert, music director of the New York Philharmonic, conducts Mozart's Don Giovanni with an internationally renowned cast led by Swedish baritone Peter Mattei, who is widely recognized as one of the world's foremost interpreters of the title role. South African soprano Elza van den Heever returns to the Met for the first time since her acclaimed debut two seasons ago as Queen Elizabeth I in Donizetti's Maria Stuarda. In Don Giovanni, she takes on the demanding role of Donna Anna, who seeks to exact revenge on the infamous rake who has killed her father. British sopranoEmma Bell returns as the lovelorn Donna Elvira and young American mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey adds a new role to her Met repertory as the ingenue Zerlina. Russian tenor Dmitry Korchak makes his Met debut as Anna's patient fiance, Don Ottavio, and Italian bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni returns as Don Giovanni's comic sidekick, Leporello, a role that won him plaudits at the 2011 premiere of this production by Michael Grandage. Czech bass-baritone Adam Plachetka makes his Met debut as Masetto, and veteran James Morris sings the role of the Commendatore, following his triumph as Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg earlier this season. Sets and costume designs are by Christopher Oram, lighting by Paule Constable, and choreography by Ben Wright. At the final performance on March 6, Jennifer Check will sing Donna Elvira, and Ievgen Orlov will sing the Commendatore.

Following the final performances in his celebrated Nielsen Project and his triumphant Verdi Requiem with the New York Philharmonic, Alan Gilbert returns to the Metropolitan Opera for the first time in seven years to conduct ten performances of Mozart's Don Giovanni, from tonight, February 4 to March 6, leading Mozart's retelling of the Don Juan legend in Michael Grandage's production.

Following the final performances in his celebrated Nielsen Project and his triumphant Verdi Requiem with the New York Philharmonic, Alan Gilbert returns to the Metropolitan Opera for the first time in seven years to conduct ten performances of Mozart's Don Giovanni, from February 4 to March 6, leading Mozart's retelling of the Don Juan legend in Michael Grandage's production.

Following the final performances in his celebrated Nielsen Project and his triumphant Verdi Requiem with the New York Philharmonic, Alan Gilbert returns to the Metropolitan Opera for the first time in seven years to conduct ten performances of Mozart's Don Giovanni, from February 4 to March 6, leading Mozart's retelling of the Don Juan legend in Michael Grandage's production.

Is there another staple of major opera houses that's as big a mess as LES CONTES D'HOFFMAN by Jacques Offenbach? If there is, I can't think of it--but it doesn't keep it from being wildly enjoyable in the right hands. The Met's current production is entertaining, in spite of itself.

Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann will return to the Met stage January 12, with Italian tenor Vittorio Grigolo in his first company performances of the title role, a poet whose attempts at romance are repeatedly thwarted.

On Monday, November 17, 2014 at 10:00 p.m., New York Festival of Song presents a special NYFOS After Hours celebrating the record release of CANCIÓN AMOROSA: SONGS OF SPAIN with Corinne Winters and Steven Blier. The album is released the same day on GPR Records, distributed by Naxos.

The Met: Live in HD, the Metropolitan Opera's award-winning series of live transmissions to more than 2,000 movie theaters in 65 countries around the world, will feature ten operas in the 2014-15 season, including all six new productions in the Met season. All ten performances, transmitted live from the Met stage, will feature the world's finest singers, conductors, and theatrical artists.

On Monday, November 17, 2014 at 10:00 p.m., New York Festival of Songpresents a special NYFOS After Hours celebrating the record release ofCANCIÓN AMOROSA: SONGS OF SPAIN with Corinne Winters and Steven Blier. The album is released the same day on GPR Records, distributed by Naxos.

I Capuleti e i Montecchi, the two act Italian opera by Vincenzo Bellini, is a delightful and tragic retelling fn those famous Shakespearean star-crossed lovers. Although the libretto (by Felice Romani) is based not on the original Shakespeare, but a combination of Italian adaptations, most notably the 1530 novella Giulietta e Romeo by Luigi Di Porto and the subsequent play by Luigi Scevola, and to a lesser degree the forgotten Nicola Vaccai opera.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, Joseph Kaiser will no longer be participating in the Sunday, September 21st performance of Voce: Rising Opera Stars in Recital. Paul Appleby (tenor) and Andrew Garland (baritone) will be joining Julia Bullock (soprano) and pianist, Steven Blier for the afternoon featuring French and American repertories.

With some of the greatest voices in opera gathering together for one night only in a red-carpet affair, Seattle Opera's Speight Celebration Concert and Dinner thrilled more than 2,500 fans at McCaw Hall and raised more than $1 million on Saturday, August 9.

After three decades, 92 productions, and more than 1,200 individual performances, Speight Jenkins is retiring from Seattle Opera in style! The company will celebrate the end of the Jenkins era, as well as its 50th anniversary, with three special events: the International Wagner Competition on Thursday, August 7, followed by Seattle Opera Day at MOHAI and the Speight Celebration Concert & Dinner featuring 15 of Seattle Opera's best loved singers on Saturday, August 9.

After 31 years of artistic excellence and inspirational leadership, General Director Speight Jenkins passes the baton to Aidan Lang this summer.