Ken Howard News

SAG-AFTRA announced that members Marsha Hunt, Norman Lloyd, June Lockhart and Barbara Perry will be recipients of the SAG-AFTRA Founders Award for their historic contributions to the union. The special tribute will be presented Saturday during the SAG-AFTRA National Board plenary and honors early members of SAG-AFTRA's predecessor unions, SAG and AFTRA, who have provided meritorious service to fellow members. 

In honor of the 100th year of Veterans Day and the fifth anniversary of the founding of the Center for American War Letters at Chapman University, the play If All the Sky Were Paper is coming home to Chapman's Musco Center for the Arts stage for a special Veteran's Day performance on Saturday, November 10 at 7:30pm.

Two-time Emmy Award winning actor Loretta Swit was made an Honorary Member of The Lambs in recognition for his outstanding career in television theater and film, and for her charitable work with multiple organizations and as an animal rights activist. Past honorees include Matthew Broderick, Jim Dale and the late Ken Howard.

Short film SPARKY & BUTCH will premiere in The Louisiana Prize Fest, a festival celebrating film, music, and food in Northern Louisiana.

Short film SPARKY & BUTCH will premiere in The Louisiana Prize Fest, a festival celebrating film, music, and food in Northern Louisiana.

Puccini's La Fanciulla del West returns to the Metropolitan Opera for seven performances from Thursday, October 4, 2018.

Well, no one could accuse the opening of the Met's new season, with Darko Trasnjak's production of Saint-Saens' SAMSON ET DALILA, to Ferdinand Lemaire's libretto, of being drab. Starry, certainly. Over the top, definitely. Filled with feathers, absolutely. Call it “Crazy, Rich Philistines.”

For the first time in the history of the Met, Sunday matinees will become part of the weekly performance schedule, it was announced today as part of the recent agreement with the Met's musicians and chorus that was ratified today.

Season 12 of Great Performances at the Met concludes Sunday, September 9 at 12 p.m. on PBS (check local listings) with Cendrillon, Massenet's operatic take on the classic fairy tale Cinderella, starring Joyce DiDonato as the titular heroine and Alice Coote as Prince Charming, alongside Kathleen Kim as the Fairy Godmother andStephanie Blythe as Madame de la Haltière.

ARIADNE is an opera that shows the beauty of great voices and this cast had plenty to offer. Amanda Echalaz, whose voice has significant heft to it, sang Ariadne with beautiful rose velvet tones. She was a bit of a witch in the prologue, but in the opera, her voice rolled out over the audience like waves in the ocean. Offering pathos at the beginning, Echalaz's use of a tapestry of vocal color made her transition to Bacchus's lover credible

On July 28, 2018, 13 years after its premiere, Santa Fe Opera presented John Adams and Peter Sellars' DOCTOR ATOMIC. This new production featured bass-baritone Ryan McKinny as the volatile scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer. The opera, which takes place during the last few days before the first atomic bomb test, shows Oppenheimer battling with his mental demons as he tried to deal with the impending use of his scientific discovery to destroy an entire city and its inhabitants. McKinny showed the audience the human side of the scientific genius and I doubt that operagoers who saw his portrayal will soon forget it.

Daniela Mack is Isabella, an Italian pilot, who makes an emergency landing in Algiers and is captured by its ruler, the Bey. He wants an Italian girl for a wife but she loves Lindoro, the Bey's Italian slave. L'ITALIANA has lots of good bel canto singing and plenty of comedy to keep you smiling all evening. There are three more performances, Aug 3, 9 and 17.

MN: What would you like operagoers to know about DR ATOMIC? RMcK: I hope folks are able to arrive with an open heart and mind. As with any librettist Peter Sellars and composer John Adams collaboration, what we are creating is not traditional opera. In this case, it almost feels like a kind of ceremony-a celebration of this land and a display of mourning for what happened here in the desert 75 years ago.

Season 12 of Great Performances at the Met continues Sunday, July 8 on PBS (check local listings) with a rare Met performance of Rossini's masterpiece Semiramide, starring Angela Meade as the titular Queen of Babylon and Elizabeth DeShong as the warrior Arsace. Javier Camarena, Ildar Abdrazakov and Ryan Speedo Greencomplete the all-star bel canto cast.

Orpheus could charm the very stones with his lyre and his singing. Just such magic can be seen on the stage of Opera Theatre St. Louis when Jennifer Johnson Cano portrays the mythical superstar in the company's current production. She gives an utterly stunning performance.

Opera Theatre St. Louis continues its 43rd season of exceptionally fine opera with another world premiere. An American Soldier is their twenty-seventh such premiere, a record which sets OTSL among the forefront of producers of new opera in America.

AN AMERICAN SOLDIER--music by Huang Ruo and libretto by David Henry Hwang, directed by Matthew Ozawa--opened at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (OTSL) on June 3. The opera asks the powerful question: What does it mean to be an American? It is based on the true story of a young Chinese American, who enlisted in the Army during the war in Afghanistan and became victim of military hazing that led to his suicide. The artists spoke about the creation of the piece at the Guggenheim Museum's Works & Process series.

Opera Theatre St. Louis has produced many wonderful productions, and a handful of simply perfect ones. Their production of 'Regina' is among the latter.

On May 12, 2018, Los Angeles Opera presented a searing rendition of RIGOLETTO, Giuseppe Verdi's dark tale of curses and murder. Recently, General Director Placido Domingo said of this work, 'I can think of no opera that better demonstrates the power of deeply emotional music melded with incredibly gripping drama.'

BroadwayWorld has a first look at Bartlett Sher's production of Gounod's sumptuous Shakespeare adaptation of Romet et Juliette, which was a hit of the 2016–17 Met season (“a revelation” declared the Huffington Post). Now the sweeping tragedy returns with Ailyn Pérez and Charles Castronovo as the star-crossed young lovers. Plácido Domingo conducts.