Patrick Carfizzi News

Opera Maine is inviting you to spectacular live singing and theater for its 29th season mainstage production of Cinderella (La Cenerentola) by Gioachino Rossini at Merrill Auditorium on Thursday, July 27 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, July 30 at 2:30 p.m.

The Metropolitan Opera has announced a 2023–24 season with the most new works in the company’s modern history. See show details, performances dates, and how to purchase tickets!

On Sunday evenings this November, Cincinnati Opera will partner with 90.9 WGUC, Cincinnati's classical public radio station, to broadcast select productions from its 2022 Summer Festival. Each broadcast will begin at 8 p.m. ET. You can listen on air at 90.9 FM and online at wguc.org.

Puccini’s thrilling masterpiece Tosca returns to the Metropolitan Opera for 15 performances, October 4, 2022–April 15, 2023.

Carlo Rizzi will return to The Metropolitan Opera to open the 2022/23 season, marking his 30th anniversary year with the Company.

This July 6 through 10, Cincinnati Opera continues its 2022 Summer Festival with two uplifting productions: the world premiere of Fierce (July 6, 9, 10 at SCPA's Corbett Theater), with music by William Menefield and libretto by Sheila Williams, and Gilbert and Sullivan's hilarious The Pirates of Penzance (July 7, 8, 10 at Cincinnati Music Hall).

Liudmyla Monastyrska will sing the title role of Puccini's Tosca during the 2022–23 season, replacing Hibla Gerzmava in four performances March and April 2023. As previously announced, Angela Gheorghiu will sing the April 8 and 12, 2023, performances.

Cincinnati Opera today shared updated cast, production, and schedule details for its 2022 Summer Festival, which will take place June 18 through July 31, 2022. After two seasons away, the company returns this summer to its longtime performance venues, Cincinnati Music Hall and the School for Creative and Performing Arts (SCPA).

Puccini's thrilling masterpiece Tosca returns to the Metropolitan Opera for 15 performances December 2, 2021-March 12, 2022. Check out video from the final dress rehearsal!

Watch as Elena Stikhina sings Tosca’s Act II aria from The Met's TOSCA. Puccini's thrilling masterpiece Tosca returns to the Metropolitan Opera for 15 performances December 2, 2021-March 12, 2022.

What is there to say about Puccini’s TOSCA that hasn’t been said in the last hundred-plus years since its premiere in Rome (to echo the locations in the opera)? It is a marvel of brevity, with librettists Illica and Giacosa shaving locations, characters and action from the original play, written by the French dramatist Victorien Sardou for the legendary actress Sarah Bernhardt, without sacrificing its impact. It has a gorgeous score, but for a grand opera, it is also quite intimate, with the action mainly revolving around three characters who carry their emotions on their sleeves and interact like their lives depend on it.

The Metropolitan Opera will welcome back its youngest opera lovers with a family-friendly holiday presentation of Mozart’s The Magic Flute for nine performances December 10, 2021–January 5, 2022. This English-language adaptation of the classic fairy tale, performed in a 115-minute abridged version, is a holiday treat for audiences of all ages.

Puccini's thrilling masterpiece Tosca returns to the Metropolitan Opera for 15 performances December 2, 2021-March 12, 2022. Check out video from the final dress rehearsal!

Puccini's thrilling masterpiece Tosca returns to the Metropolitan Opera for 15 performances December 2, 2021–March 12, 2022.

On October 22, 2021, Opera Philadelphia began streaming its rendition of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. This staging is a judiciously cut two-hour-and-forty-eight-minute production by Opera Philadelphia, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, San Diego Opera, and Palm Beach Opera. Each company is choosing its own conductor and cast.

September marks two years since Opera Philadelphia's orchestra, chorus, staff, and principal singers have gathered at the historic Academy of Music to produce opera. As the company works to bring live opera back to its longtime home, it continues to bring the art form into fans' homes by producing new operatic films and revisiting favorite productions streamed on the Opera Philadelphia Channel.

There are a number of parallels between the two operas I saw in Santa Fe (NM) this past weekend: The Benjamin Britten/Peter Pears treatment of Shakespeare’s A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM and the world premiere of the John Corigliano/Mark Adamo THE LORD OF CRIES. The first was, for me at least, an all-around, marvelous success, while the other was a disappointment.

The singing in this performance made it one of the best Figaros I’ve seen in many years. Despite singing recitative, vocal runs, and high notes with silvery tones for three and a half hours, Ying Fang as Susanna never sounded the least bit tired. Her character was a 20th century woman with dreams of equality. At the behest of conductor Harry Bicket, she and all the other leading artists decorated the repeats in their arias.

The San Diego Opera continued its quixotic foray into parking-lot adventures with The Barber of Seville by Rossini, social distancing once again forcing substantial changes to a production's length and cast size. Revisions to libretto, costumes, set and lighting went all out for a zany farcical effect that even many staid opera lovers of a certain age would eventually realize harkened back to the free-wheeling spirit of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in, complete with 'Sock it to me,' chicken jokes and Rowan's trademark closing 'Say goodnight, Dick.' This always said to his seemingly clueless partner Dick Martin. Lest you think it was a radically revised libretto, I offer assurances that most of the explicit references to the bygone TV show were displayed in hand-drawn lettering on cardboard placards held up by a man near the stage whose humble garb included a Santa Clause hat. This seemingly homeless but cheerful gentleman was teamed offstage with a gaggle of other extras. Some of them were chorus members, policemen and musicians usually on stage for Rossini's comic opera, but now, during difficult times, especially for opera directors and stage managers, they were singing, dancing and gesticulating wildly offstage, one of them mounted on a pickup truck.

Broadway might be dark, but that doesn't mean that theatre isn't happening everywhere! Below, check out where you can get your daily fix of Broadway this weekend, March 13-14, 2021.