Nina Stemme News

San Francisco Opera announces the installation of a new, permanent photography exhibition Looking Through the Lens: The Glory of San Francisco Opera, Past and Present. Located in the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera, the exhibition features 135 photos drawn from the newly formalized Edward Paul Braby San Francisco Opera Archive collections. Many of the photographs in the exhibition have never before been published, displayed or seen by anyone outside of the Company staff and archive volunteers. The retrospective marks the beginning of the Company's public celebration of San Francisco Opera's Centennial in 2022.

Elektra, Richard Strauss's blazing tragedy about an ancient Greek princess hell-bent on revenge, comes to THIRTEEN'S Great Performances at the Met.

The Warner Theatre is excited to announce its 2016-17 Met Opera: Live in HD Season, featuring 10 operas, 5 new to the series, and 2 encores, streaming live from the Met. A complimentary pre-opera lecture will be offered to all ticketholders in the Nancy Marine Studio Lobby for 45 minutes of pre-opera information and entertainment, 2 hours before broadcast. Full and Half Season Subscriptions are available.

When South African soprano Elza van den Heever made her debut at the Met, as Elizabeth I in Donizetti's MARIA STUARDA, it was something that was totally memorable in every way--not only for her intelligent and gorgeous bel canto singing but for the lurching gait that helped show her character as unbalanced. What does she have in mind for her role debut as Leonore, in Beethoven's FIDELIO, at the Caramoor Festival?

Puccini's final opera, Turandot, which is one of the most spectacular productions in the Met repertory, comes to THIRTEEN'S GREAT PERFORMANCES AT THE MET Sunday, June 12 at 12 p.m. on PBS.

In the third installment of the Washington National Opera's mammoth staging of Richard Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung at the Kennedy Center, a new Brunnhilde awakens, Fafner's dragon turns out to be more of a monster truck, and the titular star of the work, Siegfried, turns out to be much more of a jerk than you'd ever want him to be.

Washington National Opera (WNO) concludes its landmark 60th anniversary season with its first complete presentation of Richard Wagner's four-part The Ring of the Nibelung, perhaps the most challenging production to mount in all of opera. Three cycles of Wagner's epic will be presented from tonight, April 30 to May 22, 2016 in the Kennedy Center Opera House. These performances will be the first time the company has presented The Ring in complete cycles in its history, and they are the only complete cycles to be presented in North America in 2016. Conceived and directed by WNO Artistic Director Francesca Zambello and with the WNO Orchestra led by WNO Music Director Philippe Auguin, the production brings together an internationally renowned cast, including British soprano Catherine Foster (Brünnhilde, Cycles I & II), Swedish soprano Nina Stemme (Brünnhilde, Cycle III), American tenor Daniel Brenna (Siegfried), American bass-baritone Alan Held (Wotan/The Wanderer), and many other of today's great Wagnerian singers.

Washington National Opera (WNO) presents its first complete presentation of Richard Wagner's four-part Ring cycle. Three full cycles will be presented from tonight, April 30, to May 22, 2016 and will be directed by Artistic Director Francesca Zambello and conducted by WNO Music Director Philippe Auguin.

Shortly after conquering the opera world with his scandalous masterpiece Salome, Richard Strauss turned to Hugo von Hofmannsthal's recent adaptation of Sophocles's Electra for his next project. The resulting opera is an intense and still-startling work that unites the commanding impact of Greek tragedy with the unsettling insights of early-20th-century Freudian psychology. The drama unfolds in a single act of rare vocal and orchestral power.

The Met's new production of Richard Strauss's ELEKTRA is something to behold, with Vincent Huguet recreating the original by the late Patrice Chereau from France's Aix-en-Provence Festival. Starring the glorious Nina Stemme in the title role--and backed by the stellar performances of Waltraud Meier as Klytamnestra, Adrianne Pieczonka as Chrysothemis and Eric Owens as Orest--this is a cast that would be hard to better. Add to it conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen's insightful, propulsive performance with the great Met orchestra. And, yet, there was…something missing: catharsis--no burst of rapture and the urge to jump up and applaud.

Legendary director Patrice Chéreau's final work, an acclaimed staging of Richard Strauss's tragedy Elektra, comes to the Met April 14 with Esa-Pekka Salonen leading a cast headed by Nina Stemme in her first Met performances of the bloodthirsty princess.

The French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) and the Metropolitan Opera in association with the International Friends of the International Lyric Art Festival Aix-en-Provence will present the talk Discovering Chéreau'sElektra at the Metropolitan Opera, on Wednesday, April 6 at 7pm at FIAF's Florence Gould Hall.

Washington National Opera (WNO) concludes its landmark 60th anniversary season with its first complete presentation of Richard Wagner's four-part The Ring of the Nibelung, perhaps the most challenging production to mount in all of opera. Three cycles of Wagner's epic will be presented from April 30 to May 22, 2016 in the Kennedy Center Opera House. These performances will be the first time the company has presented The Ring in complete cycles in its history, and they are the only complete cycles to be presented in North America in 2016. Conceived and directed by WNO Artistic Director Francesca Zambello and with the WNO Orchestra led by WNO Music Director Philippe Auguin, the production brings together an internationally renowned cast, including British soprano Catherine Foster (Brünnhilde, Cycles I & II), Swedish soprano Nina Stemme (Brünnhilde, Cycle III), American tenor Daniel Brenna (Siegfried), American bass-baritone Alan Held (Wotan/The Wanderer), and many other of today's great Wagnerian singers.

The French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) and the Metropolitan Opera in association with the International Friends of the International Lyric Art Festival Aix-en-Provence will present the talk Discovering Chéreau'sElektra at the Metropolitan Opera, on Wednesday, April 6 at 7pm at FIAF's Florence Gould Hall.

Washington National Opera's Artistic Director Francesca Zambello announces the WNO's upcoming production of The Ring, a cycle of four epic operas by German composer Richard Wagner, April 30-May 22, 2016.  Peek into a WNO rehearsal room in the videos below!

The Metropolitan Opera's 2016-17 season, the 50th anniversary of its home at Lincoln Center, will feature 225 opera performances of 26 operas in a varied repertory that ranges from 18th century masterpieces to one of the most acclaimed operas in recent years. Repertoire for the company's 132nd season will include the Met premiere of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho's 2000 opera L'Amour de Loin, as well as new stagings of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, Rossini's Guillaume Tell, Gounod's Romeo et Juliette, Dvo?ak's Rusalka, and Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. A gala concert on May 7, 2017 will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the company's Lincoln Center location with performances by opera's leading stars honoring the Met's past and future. Ticket prices will not increase, remaining the same as in the current season, and audience development programs instituted by the company in recent years will continue.  

Giacomo Puccini's masterpiece, TURANDOT was first presented in 1926 at Teatro alla Scala in Milan. The dazzling opera, set in China, comes to the Peterborough Players theatre this Saturday, January 30th at 1:00pm. The dazzling Metropolitan Opera production will be shown LIVE from New York's Lincoln Center on the Players' big hi-def digital screen.

Sometimes, the Metropolitan Opera seems like an endless Puccini festival. It's particularly apparent this season, when top dogs LA BOHEME, TOSCA and MADAMA BUTTERFLY are joined by TURANDOT and MANON LESCAUT, which are not second drawer, though certainly less popular than the first three. (Let's see how that descriptor applies to the latter when Jonas Kaufmann steps on stage for the new production of LESCAUT.)

No more carping about out-of-tune singing (for the rest of 2015). No more bemoaning opera directors who don't seem to like the art of opera (for the next five minutes). No more worrying whether traditional opera will go the way of all flesh (for the next few days, at least). It's time to give up on my Scrooge tendencies and be thankful for the gifts that opera gave me, in and around New York this past year, alphabetically speaking.

New York, NY (December 10, 2015) – OPERA NEWS Editor in Chief F. Paul Driscoll today announced the recipients of the 11th Annual OPERA NEWS Awards. This year's honorees — Joseph Calleja, El?na Garan?a, Waltraud Meier, Anna Netrebko, and José van Dam — will be feted at a black tie gala celebration on April 10th at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.