Reginald Smith News

Cincinnati Opera concludes its 2022 Summer Festival July 21-31 with two powerful opera productions and one star-studded concert event.

On June 25, opera soprano Angela Brown received the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award from The Coalition for African Americans in the Performing Arts (CAAPA)

On June 25, opera soprano Angela Brown received the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award from The Coalition for African Americans in the Performing Arts (CAAPA) for her impactful career and personal commitment to diversity in role models, performers, educators, and audiences in the arts.

Continuing its mission to bring opera to every ZIP code of the city, Opera Memphis will present its 2022-23 season in venues and public spaces across Memphis and Shelby County.

In anticipation of its world premiere this July at Cincinnati Opera, former U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith and composer Gregory Spears (Fellow Travelers) will discuss their new opera Castor and Patience in a free performance preview event at the Library of Congress's Coolidge Auditorium, 101 Independence Avenue SE, Washington DC, on Thursday, May 12 at 7 pm.

Houston Grand Opera has announced its 2022–23 season, featuring a new production of Dame Ethel Smyth's rarely-performed masterpiece The Wreckers, the triumphant return of HGO-commissioned mariachi opera El Milagro del Recuerdo, the U.S. premieres of Opéra National de Paris and Royal Opera House's production of Werther and the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía of Valencia's production of Salome, and beloved HGO classics La traviata, The Marriage of Figaro, and Tosca.

I admire the plucky inventiveness of the San Diego Opera. On an annual budget of roughly three percent of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, it has managed to mount a consistently appealing and entertaining variety of productions, traditional and contemporary, in both good times and plague times. The latter even forcing an excellent performance of a much-edited La bohème in a hockey-rink parking lot with an audience seated in an armada of vehicles. But although it was an enjoyable performance over all, now and then I was glad to be wearing a California-mandated mask so that no one would know I was at the current Civic Center staging of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte.

San Diego Opera presents Mozart's Così fan tutte at the Civic Theatre in downtown San Diego, February 12-20, 2022.

Originally commissioned for Cincinnati Opera's 100th anniversary in 2020 and postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Castor and Patience receives its much-anticipated world premiere in July 2022.

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).

'I'm just Reggie from Atlanta' baritone Reginald Smith, Jr. explained during our hour-long discussion on Zoom. That may be how he would like to view himself, but it's hardly how most others do since he's also a Grammy winning opera star who's performed at the Met. Until high school, neither opera, much less the Met were in his plans. Then when 13 he saw an Atlanta Opera production of Tosca. 'A classical voice was not new to me.' But the spectacle of unamplified voices together with theatrical staging, an orchestra, and eye-catching scenery was a revelation. 'I vividly remember the show going along, the tenor comes out, the soprano. But when Scarpia made his first big entrance, I thought Whoa, that's a different voice. It just went, boom, you know, like, like an arrow right into my heart. And I thought, what is this person?'

Mozart's opera, Così fan tutte, opens on Saturday February 12, 2022 for four performances at the San Diego Civic Theatre. Additional performances are February 15, 18, and 20 (matinee), 2022. These performances mark the Company's safe return to the Civic Theatre since February of 2020 and the first time Così fan tutte has been presented by the Company since 2005 in a new production directed by “opera provocateur” Timothy Nelson.

Mozart's opera, Così fan tutte, opens on Saturday February 12, 2022 for four performances at the San Diego Civic Theatre. Additional performances are February 15, 18, and 20 (matinee), 2022. These performances mark the Company's safe return to the Civic Theatre since February of 2020 and the first time Così fan tutte has been presented by the Company since 2005 in a new production directed by “opera provocateur” Timothy Nelson..

Mozart's opera, Così fan tutte, opens on Saturday February 12, 2022 for four performances at the San Diego Civic Theatre. Additional performances are February 15, 18, and 20 (matinee), 2022. These performances mark the Company's safe return to the Civic Theatre since February of 2020 and the first time Così fan tutte has been presented by the Company since 2005.

The San Diego Symphony today announced its winter-spring 2022 concert season, offering 31 performances of classical and contemporary masterworks and chamber music from January 15 through May 28. Presented as “Hear Us Here,” the season will give the San Diego Symphony the opportunity to bring its music to a wider audience, with concerts performed at nine venues in the city and across the County, including the Symphony's newest venue, The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park.

Using Charleston's own ballpark - 'The Joe' - set in 1986 on the eve of game 7 of the World Series, this 90- minute drama, complete with vintage cars, a fireworks display, and a chamber orchestra, is told through references to mid-1980's America, while staying true to the classic story of doomed love.

Originally commissioned for Cincinnati Opera's 100th anniversary in 2020 and postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Castor and Patience receives its much-anticipated world premiere in July 2022.

San Diego Opera has announced its 2021-2022 season, which returns to theatres indoors, after a reduced 2020-2021 season that saw the Company perform innovative drive-in productions during the global coronavirus pandemic.

Cincinnati Opera will return to the outdoors for its reimagined 2021 Summer Festival, Summer at Summit. The season will take place July 11-31 at Summit Park, located in the heart of Blue Ash, Ohio, and will feature internationally renowned artists, the Cincinnati Opera Chorus, and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

After the success of its acclaimed fall offerings, now The Atlanta Opera presents an equally innovative spring lineup of live, in-person events, highlighted by the world premiere productions of new adaptations of two iconic operas.