Quinn Kelsey News

The Canadian Opera Company opens its 2015/2016 season with Verdi's enduring masterpiece, La Traviata. This sumptuous new COC production is set in the demi-mondeof glittering 1850s Paris, evoking the social realities, rhythms and debauchery of a rapidly changing society. 

Toronto – The Canadian Opera Company opens its 2015/2016 season with a work of dazzling beauty, Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata.  This operatic classic returns to the COC stage in a lush new production for 11 performances at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts tonight, October 8, and Octoer 13, 16, 17, 21, 24, 29, 30, November 1, 4, 6, 2015.

The Canadian Opera Company opens its 2015/2016 season with Verdi's enduring masterpiece, La Traviata. This sumptuous new COC production is set in the demi-monde of glittering 1850s Paris, evoking the social realities, rhythms and debauchery of a rapidly changing society.

Toronto – The Canadian Opera Company opens its 2015/2016 season with a work of dazzling beauty, Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata.  This operatic classic returns to the COC stage in a lush new production for 11 performances at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts on October 8, 13, 16, 17, 21, 24, 29, 30, November 1, 4, 6, 2015.

Toronto – When the Canadian Opera Company's Free Concert Series in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre returns for its 2015/2016 season this fall, over 400 artists from diverse artistic backgrounds will share their talents in one of Toronto's most vibrant and intimate cultural hubs. The season begins on Tuesday, September 22 with a highly anticipated performance by the rising stars of the COC Ensemble Studio singing their favourite arias and art songs.

CHICAGO - American mezzo-soprano J'nai Bridges is one of 20 international finalists for the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World 2015 competition. Bridges, a third-year member of The Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago, is currently portraying Vlasta in Lyric's mainstage premiere of Mieczys?aw Weinberg's The Passenger.

The Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago celebrates its 40th season with its annual Rising Stars in Concert program tonight, March 21, at 7:30pm at the Civic Opera House. The talented singers and pianist of the 2014-15 ensemble will perform with members of the Lyric Opera Orchestra in works of Bellini, Berg, Berlioz, Bizet, Debussy, Donizetti, Floyd, Gounod, Handel, Korngold, Mozart, Puccini, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Rossini. Rising Stars in Concert is offered in celebration of an exceptionally successful year of study and performance for these up-and-coming artists.

The Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago celebrates its 40th season with its annual Rising Stars in Concert program Saturday, March 21, at 7:30pm at the Civic Opera House. The talented singers and pianist of the 2014-15 ensemble will perform with members of the Lyric Opera Orchestra in works of Bellini, Berg, Berlioz, Bizet, Debussy, Donizetti, Floyd, Gounod, Handel, Korngold, Mozart, Puccini, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Rossini. Rising Stars in Concert is offered in celebration of an exceptionally successful year of study and performance for these up-and-coming artists.

CHICAGO - American mezzo-soprano J'nai Bridges is one of 20 international finalists for the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World 2015 competition. Bridges, a third-year member of The Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago, is currently portraying Vlasta in Lyric's mainstage premiere of Mieczys?aw Weinberg's The Passenger.

The audited financial results for San Francisco Opera's 2013–14 season (FY14) were announced today by San Francisco Opera Association President Keith Geeslin: a deficit of $348,244 on an operating budget of $74,119,493. The Company's 91st season presented eight main stage works at the War Memorial Opera House in addition to numerous concerts, recitals, workshops and community engagement events attracting more than 271,954 individuals.

Baritone Quinn Kelsey has been named the recipient of the tenth annual Beverly Sills Artist Award for young singers at the Metropolitan Opera. The $50,000 award, the largest of its kind in the United States, is designated for extraordinarily gifted singers between the ages of 25 and 40 who have already appeared in featured solo roles at the Met.

For the second time in two seasons, casting has made me reconsider a Met production that I'd written off as past its expiration date. The first was Diana Damrau and Javier Camarena in Bellini's LA SONNAMBULA. This time around it's the wonderful Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva, who breathed new life into the Willy Decker LA TRAVIATA. She's a marvel, both as an actress and a singer.

Toronto – The world premiere of a new Canadian work was one of the many operatic highlights revealed today at the public launch of the Canadian Opera Company's 2015/2016season at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. The COC's 65th season is once again comprised entirely of company productions, four of which are new to Toronto audiences, and features the COC's first mainstage world premiere since 1999, COC premieres of opera rarities and the revival of classic masterpieces.

The role of Giorgio Germont in Verdi's La Traviata will be sung by American baritone Quinn Kelsey on January 14 and by Russian baritone Alexei Markov on January 17, 21, and 24, replacing Ludovic Tézier, who is continuing to recover from an illness.

American baritone Quinn Kelsey will sing the role of Giorgio Germont in the first three performances of La Traviata tonight, December 11 and December 16 & 19, replacing Ludovic Tézier who is ill. Tézier is expected to return to the role for the remaining performances.

American baritone Quinn Kelsey will sing the role of Giorgio Germont in Verdi's La Traviata on December 22, 27 matinee, 30, January 7 and 10, replacing Ludovic Tézier, who is continuing to recover from an illness. Tézier is expected to return to the role January 14 for the opera's final four performances this season.

La Traviata will return to the Met stage December 11 with two rotating casts of stars, all of whom are singing their first company performances of the principal roles. Latvian soprano Marina Rebeka, who made a notable debut as Donna Anna in the 2011 new production of Mozart's Don Giovanni, brings her acclaimed Violetta to the Met for the first time in the opening performances, with American tenor Stephen Costello as her impetuous lover Alfredo. Later performances will feature Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva—currently starring in her first-ever staged performances of Mimì in Puccini's La Bohème—as Violetta, opposite Italian tenor Francesco Demuro as Alfredo. The role of Giorgio Germont, Alfredo's father, will be shared by American baritone Quinn Kelsey and French baritone Ludovic Tézier. Marco Armiliato will lead all performances of Verdi's romantic tragedy this season. Willy Decker's acclaimed production had its Met premiere in 2010.

American baritone Quinn Kelsey will sing the role of Giorgio Germont in the first three performances of La Traviata on December 11, 16, and 19, replacing Ludovic Tézier who is ill. Tézier is expected to return to the role for the remaining performances.

Lyric Opera of Chicago celebrated its glorious history and future Saturday, November 1, with a star-studded 60th Anniversary Concert at the Civic Opera House beginning at 6:30pm - sixty years to the day after the company officially launched its very first season.

Lyric Opera of Chicago celebrated its glorious history and futureSaturday, November 1, with a star-studded 60th Anniversary Concert at theCivic Opera House beginning at 6:30pm – sixty years to the day after the company officially launched its very first season.