Renee Fleming News

Today's episode features James Calleri, who, with his partners Paul Davis and Erica Jensen, owns Calleri Jensen Davis, a creative casting partnership. They have been awarded 16 Artios Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Casting.

Tony Award winner Alan Cumming and renowned journalist and singer Ari Shapiro are the dazzling stage duo the world has been waiting for. With unstoppable chemistry, endless charm, and talent for eons, the pair will be bringing their show Och & Oy! A Considered Cabaret to stages across the country. 

This debut studio album of Broadway Classics, arranged in a Jazz style. Among the revisited standards are Summertime (Porgy & Bess), Dat's Love aka Habanera (Carmen Jones), Bali Hai (South Pacific), People (Funny Girl), Hello, Dolly, My Funny Valentine (Babes in Arms), Stranger in Paradise (Kismet), I Could Have Danced All Night (My Fair Lady), I Enjoy Being a Girl (Flower Drum Song), and more!

Frazier arranged the musical numbers featured in this star-studded concert, which include “The Wizard and I,” “Defying Gravity,” “Popular, Wonderful,” “No Good Deed,” “For Good” and “As Long As You’re Mine.”

Soprano and Arts/Health Advocate Renée Fleming has launched Healing Breath: a series of breathing exercises shared by opera singers, actors and Broadway stars for anyone trying to regain breath after illness.

Centaurworld follows a war horse who is transported from her embattled world to a strange land inhabited by silly, singing centaurs of all species, shapes, and sizes.

Jason Robert Brown’s Drama Desk Award-winning musical, The Last Five Years, will now be opening at the larger Garrick Theatre for an extended limited season, previewing from 17 September, with an opening night on Thursday 23 September and now running until 17 October 2021.

Renée Fleming will perform a concert at Teatro Colon, Miércoles 29 Junio - 20:00 H.

Sarasota Opera has announced the initial lineup for the 2021 summer movie series, which will open with “La Cage aux Folles” on Saturday, June 5.

Multiple GRAMMY-nominated harpist Yolanda Kondonassis and The Cleveland Orchestra's principal trumpet Michael Sachs announce the world premiere video performance of Aaron Jay Kernis' Elegy . . . for those we lost. Kernis wrote this work just one year ago offering music to reflect, mourn, and remember those lost to the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is presented for the first time in this arrangement created especially for Sachs and Kondonassis.

Any of the wonderful mezzos who appear on the NY Festival of Song’s “How About Those Mezzos!” gala could easily be called “a girl singer” --as in “the females who used to sing with the Big Bands in the ‘40s”--as well under their usual hats as opera singers. The proof: There wasn’t an aria to be heard on the program (which will be available on demand through the end of the month), co-hosted by NYFOS chief Steven Blier and mezzo Rebecca Jo Loeb, an up and comer to watch. (Blier also supplied the piano accompaniment on a half dozen entries.) They sang everything from Edith Piaf, Reynaldo Hahn and Alberto Ginastera to Antonio Carlos Jobim and Irving Berlin, all in styles that sounded little like anything you might hear at the Met, Covent Garden or the Wiener Staatsoper. There were songs in French, English, Brazilian and Spanish, with the singers at home in everything they sang

On Sunday afternoon, the winners of what had been the Met’s annual National Council Auditions now, the Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition (charmingly emceed by Ryan Speedo Green), were named. This year’s Fab Five were Korean soprano Hyoyoung Kim (the Birgit Nilsson Award), soprano Raven McMillon (the Faith P. Geier Award), tenor Duke Kim (the Dominique Laffont Award), mezzo Emily Treigle (the Alton E. Peters Award) and mezzo Emily Sierra (the Noreen Zimmerman Award).

Dear Evan Hansen and Hamilton star Jordan Fisher and Hairspray Live!'s Dove Cameron will lead HBO Max's adaptation of Jennifer E. Smith 2019 young adult novel, Field Notes on Love, according to Deadline. The film will be adapted for the screen by Smith and Broadway veteran Lauren Graham.

The Charleston Gaillard Center has announced Lissa Frenkel as its new chief executive officer. She will begin her new role in July 2021. 'I look forward to building on the Gaillard Center's successes and leading the Charleston Gaillard Center team to expand the institution's identity as a world-class innovator in the performing arts in the region.'

After a critically acclaimed run at Southwark Playhouse last year and a highly successful worldwide stream with stream.theatre, Jason Robert Brown's Drama Desk Award-winning musical, The Last Five Years, will play a limited season at the Vaudeville Theatre, previewing from 17 September, with an opening night on 23 September and running until 13 October 2021. 

Berkshire Theatre Group has announced immersive outdoor experiences for summer 2021, with a casting sneak-peek. BTG will be releasing a complete season cast announcement at a later date. Berkshire Theatre Group will work in adherence with government guidelines and corresponding health and safety officials.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra will return to in-person performances later this year with its newly-announced 2021-22 season.

As I write this, mezzo soprano Emily Fons is driving from her home in Milwaukee to San Diego to rehearse the role of Rosina, the wife of roving-eyed count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville by Rossini. Three years ago Fons sang Cherubino here in the related comic opera The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart. The switch to the count's wife from Mozart's Cherubino, a 15-year-old boy and randy rival of the philandering count, is an indication of the mezzo's acting and vocal versatility. I discovered when we met via Zoom (what else?) that her adventurous openness to new roles is typical of the mezzo's approach to life.

This week on 32 Bar Cut: The Show features Kelli O'Hara! Kelli chats with Adrienne about hitting the pavement for her first auditions, her role as Katie in The Accidental Wolf, and how she's kept balance in her life as a Broadway star! Tune in at 1pm to watch the full episode!

Star of Les Misérables, Rob Houchen chats to us about his upcoming solo gig at Cadogan Hall, the first solo concert he's ever done.