Ken Howard News

The Met's first new production since 1969 of Strauss's rich, romantic masterpiece stars Renée Fleming in one of her signature roles as the Marschallin, opposite El?na Garan?a as Octavian, the impulsive young title character, on Great Performances

On August 1, 2017, Santa Fe Opera presented Johann Strauss II's operetta, DIE FLEDERMAUS (THE BAT). The original German libretto was by Carl Haffner and Richard Genée. The audience heard it sung in an English translation by Ruth and Thomas Martin with dialogue adapted by Charles Ludlam from W. S. Gilbert's play ON BAIL. Gilbert based his play on a work by Meilhac and Halévy.

George Frideric Handel composed the opera seria, ALCINA, for a 1735 premiere at London's Covent Garden. Handel's anonymous librettist based his text on Riccardo Broschi's 1728 book for L'ISOLA DI ALCINA. Three years following its 1735 run, ALCINA was revived but after that it fell dormant until the twentieth century. On July 29, 2017, Santa Fe Opera premiered a co-production of ALCINA with the National Opera of Bordeaux and the Teatro Real of Madrid.

The Golden Cockerel was Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's last opera. He wrote it in 1905 as a satire on the Russian government of the time. As with many political satires, the libretto that Vladimir Belsky based on Pushkin's poem THE TALE OF THE GOLDEN COCKEREL can still make some points over one hundred years later. On July 28, 2017, Santa Fe Opera presented THE GOLDEN COCKEREL in a production by Paul Curran conducted by Emmanuel Villaume.

On July 21, 2017, Santa Fe Opera presented Ron Daniels' production of Gaetano Donizetti's bel canto work, LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR. Beginning with a storm and several huge rainbows, the open sides of Santa Fe Opera's Crosby Theatre allowed the audience to watch the sun set as the orchestra played the opera's overture. Based on Sir Walter Scott's novel, THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR, the opera tells the story of a young woman who loses her reason when forced to marry a man she does not love.

On July 22, 2017, Santa Fe Opera presented the world premiere of Mason Bates and Mark Campbell's opera THE (R)EVOLUTION OF STEVE JOBS. The new piece was co-commissioned by Santa Fe, Seattle, and San Francisco Operas. Director Kevin Newbury used a great deal of new technology in telling Jobs' story. In eighteen short scenes, a prologue and an epilogue, he covered important events in Steve's life by touching on specific dates in the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties and early twenty-first century. Since there is no intermission in this ninety-minute piece, the drama constantly builds to its eventual climax with the death of the hero, and the denouement leaves the audience to contemplate his values and the effect his life had on all of us.

Anna Netrebko reprises one of her most acclaimed roles as Tatiana, the naive heroine of Tchaikovsky's opera, adapted from Pushkin's classic verse novel. Peter Mattei stars as the title character, who rejects Tatiana's love until it's too late. Eugene Onegin airs on Great Performances at the Met Sunday, August 13 at 12 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). (In New York, THIRTEEN will air the opera at 12:30 p.m.)

Anna Netrebko reprises one of her most acclaimed roles as Tatiana, the naive heroine of Tchaikovsky's opera, adapted from Pushkin's classic verse novel.

In celebration of LGBTQ Pride Month, American Opera Projects (AOP) will make available to the public the video of their 2014 World Premiere production of the opera As One from June 23-30, 2017 on the AOP website.

In celebration of LGBTQ Pride Month, American Opera Projects (AOP) will make available to the public the video of their 2014 World Premiere production of the opera As One from June 23-30, 2017 on the AOP website.

As director of the company's apprentice program since 2005, David Holloway is a veritable fount of knowledge

The American premiere of The Trial has opened at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis. This is a very major event in opera. Franz Kafka's nightmare tale of Joseph K, trapped in an enigmatic trial for his life, has fascinated readers since it appeared in 1925. Composer Philip Glass read the novel as a youth and even then he yearned to write an opera based on it. But Glass kept that idea 'in his pocket' for sixty years. It was not until he received a commission from the Music Theatre Wales, the Royal Opera, Theatre Magdeburg and the Scottish Opera that Glass was able to fulfill that dream. The London premiere of The Trial opened in 2014.

The Opera Theater of St. Louis has opened the fourth and last production of it's forty-second festival season. It's Mozart's final opera, La clemenza di Tito, or (as it's billed for this English-language performance) simply Titus. Everything about this production - from its glorious voices and orchestral display to the set, costumes, lights and sound - is as near perfect as could be imagined.

What a show! Opera Theatre of St. Louis has opened The Grapes of Wrath, a work by Ricky Ian Gordon and Michael Korie. I have never in my life been more emotionally moved by an opera than by this glorious production.

You don't have to be transgender, or even an opera-lover, to be moved and haunted by AS ONE, the chamber opera by Laura Kaminsky, Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed having its local debut June 2 at the New Orleans Opera. It's a work that will reach anyone who has come to terms with growing up, learning to live with themselves, dealing with the short-comings of others. In other words, all of us.

Kristine Opolais stars in her first Met performances of her breakthrough role, the title character in Antonin Dvoák's Rusalka, in a critically acclaimed new staging, directed by Mary Zimmerman and conducted by Mark Elder, on GREAT PERFORMANCES AT THE MET Sunday, June 18 at 12 p.m. on PBS

I first heard tenor Roberto Alagna in the days when he was being touted as “The 4th Tenor”—chutzpah that only a record company could come up with, placing him in the hallowed company of Carreras, Domingo and Pavarotti. Fast forward more than 20 years and he's still here. As Cyrano, the soldier-poet with a nose that embarrasses him, in Francesca Zambello's attractive production, Alagna was wonderful—perhaps the best I've ever seen him.

For a new production that was supposed to mark a farewell for soprano Renee Fleming to a role (the Marschallin) if not to staged opera performance in general, Robert Carsen's version of Richard Strauss's DER ROSENKAVALIER at the Met seemed more of a farce and less a tale of regret about passing time than usual. And the “star” role seemed more of an aside than the center of it all.

The SAG-AFTRA National Board, meeting this weekend in Los Angeles at SAG-AFTRA Plaza, voted to set election and governance rules for the upcoming national convention.

Langan has performed with such opera luminaries as Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and Marilyn Horne