The Santa Barbara Symphony has announced the appointment of three new members to its Board of Directors. Donald Foster, Principal Clarinet of the Santa Barbara Symphony and Chair of the Orchestra Committee, and Santa Barbara patrons of the performing arts and seasoned business executives Sam Hedgpeth and Dylan Minor.
Metropolitan Opera soprano Amanda Woodbury and pianist Aurelia Andrews, both of whom are graduates of the Los Angeles Opera Young Artist Program, will give a Living Room Recital on the LAO website Friday, May 29, at 4:00 PM Pacific Time. It will also be available later for those readers who cannot watch it live.
'Coming off its finest season in a decade... Chicago Opera Theater may be entering a golden age in its history,' writes Chicago Classical Review. This resurgence of artistic quality and audacious programming has been driven by the company's Orli and Bill Staley Music Director Lidiya Yankovskaya and Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson General Director Ashley Magnus, who announced the 2020/21 season on Wednesday evening via a digital reveal on Facebook and YouTube.
Los Angeles Opera always has interesting items online that help opera lovers keep up with their favorite art. Since the cancellation of Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, Music Director James Conlon has written a blog telling readers why it needs to be played and heard by audiences everywhere. The blog also gives us a clip from David McVicar's production at Scottish Opera. Theirs is the production that was to come to us in LA.
Long Beach Opera is bringing back its popular and relevant series of Community Conversations June 14, 21, and 28 that were inspired by the LBO world premiere production of The Central Park Five, which recently won the Pulitzer prize. These Conversations are available on facebooklive and archived following at www.longbeachopera.org.
Los Angeles Opera's website www.laopera.org has a plethora of short a?oeAt Homea?? recitals for opera lovers to enjoy during our time of theatrical drought. The newest entry is Theo Hoffman's program of Bernstein, Rachmaninov, Sondheim and Schubert. Accompanied either by Jeremy Frank's pre-recorded piano or by his own guitar, Theo treats listeners to a different song for each day of the week.
Karen Zacarias's hilarious play Destiny of Desire was set to end Milwaukee Rep's 2019/20 Season in the Quadracci Powerhouse. While the hope was to delay the production to June, that option is no longer possible.
Now that the Metropolitan Opera has had a major success with its At-Home Gala, there are other opera companies with similar ideas. The Florence May Festival, (Maggio Musicale Fiorentino), will offer its presentation on Friday, May 1, 2020, at noon. P.D.T. Since many opera lovers are working from home, the audience should be enormous.
Readers can find the opera performances at http://www.teatromassimo.it/teatro-massimo-tv-567/ Teatro Massimo of Palermo, one of Italy's southernmost points, is on the Mediterranean shore of Sicily. Along with ballets, childrens' shows and concerts, more than a dozen popular traditional operas are available to watch online. Don't miss the Teatro Massimo Gala.
In place of its previously scheduled Live Concert on April 18, The Verdi Chorus will offer its first online concert: a streaming of its Spring 2018 program The Force of Destiny led by Founding Artistic Director Anne Marie Ketchum. The concert will be launched online April 18 at 7:30pm on the Verdi Chorus website at https://www.verdichorus.org and will also be available on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/VerdiChorus/
It's never going to compete with the thrill of being part of the audience at a one-of-a-kind live performance, but there are a great many possibilities for enjoying filmed live opera performances that can be streamed for free online these days. The most exciting presentation to date is the Metropolitan Opera's At-Home Gala featuring artists singing from their own homes, or where they find themselves, on Saturday, April 25 at 1:00 pm New York time.
In place of its previously scheduled Live Concert on April 18, The Verdi Chorus will offer its first online concert: a streaming of its Spring 2018 program The Force of Destiny led by Founding Artistic Director Anne Marie Ketchum. The concert will be launched online April 18 at 7:30pm on the Verdi Chorus website at https://www.verdichorus.org and will also be available on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/VerdiChorus/
Recently, Los Angeles Opera has had to announce the cancellation of the final performance of Roberto Devereux on the main stage as well as both performances of Angel's Bone, which was to have been presented in partnership with Beth Morrison Projects at the Broad Stage. At present, the governor's closure order for Los Angeles remains in place through April 19, and the opera has not yet canceled additional performances. Noting that they are vigilantly watching for updates that would affect the remaining May and June performances, the company is still holding out hope. The priority is, of course, the safety of patrons and company members, so they're taking it one day at a time.
Placido Domingo has resigned from the opera union, and will contribute $500,000 to sexual harassment eradication programs, as well as a fund to help opera employees, according to ABC News.
Zachary James, Bass-Baritone, and Charity Wicks, pianist, will offer a recital of works composed by women at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Monday, November 30, 2020 at 7:30pm.
Company is officially in previews on Broadway! Following the engagement in London's West End, the new production of Sondheim and George Furth's landmark American musical, Company, directed by two-time Tony Award® winner Marianne Elliott comes to Broadway starring Tony and Grammy Award® winner Katrina Lenk as Bobbie and two-time Tony Award and two-time Grammy Award winner Patti LuPone as Joanne.