Richard Strauss News

The Glimmerglass Festival, Central New York's opera and musical theater company, has announced its 2014 season.

The Metropolitan Opera will celebrate its longtime Music Director James Levine's 70th birthday with two full days of special programming on Met Opera Radio (Sirius XM Channel 74). The weekend-long marathon will feature 14 classic Levine performances, hand-picked by the maestro himself, beginning on Saturday, June 22 and continuing through midnight on Levine's birthday, Sunday, June 23. The first broadcast, at 6 a.m. Saturday, will be a 1991 performance of Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera starring Luciano Pavarotti; the celebration will conclude at 12 a.m. on Monday, June 24 with a 1994 performance of Verdi's rarely heard Stiffelio, starring Placido Domingo in the title role. Complete details, including complete casting and original broadcast dates for all 14 performances, are below.

Angela Meade - who earlier this month added Washington National Opera's Artist of the Year honor to her 2012 Beverly Sills Artist Award and her 2011 Richard Tucker Award - is looking forward to a starry summer. The soprano portrays Donna Anna in the Cincinnati Opera production of Mozart's Don Giovanni (June 13, 15), with Verdi performances to follow at the Caramoor International Music Festivalin Katonah, NY (June 27, July 6), Bravo! Vail with the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin (July 13), and the Grand Tetons Music Festival under Donald Runnicles (July 26-27).

On Saturday, June 1Tony Award-winner Tommy Tune took the stage at The Town Hall (123 West 43rd Street) to offer 'Steps in Time' - A Broadway Biography in Song & Dance, highlighting his nearly 50-year career as an actor, dancer, singer, theatre director, producer, and choreographer. Check out photos from the event below!

To learn early about just-booked shows, become a Palladium "Friend." Learn more about the Friends with Benefits membership program, by visiting www.mypalladium.org, drop by or call the Box Office (727) 822-3590, Wednesdays -Fridays, noon to 3 p.m. and three hours prior to every performances.

Brighton Fringe has launched its 2013 programme online, offering a huge variety of 685 shows (and counting) with 3275 performances and 210 premieres in 178 venues with 38 international acts and 220 home-grown Brighton shows which makes it the richest and largest yet. Not only this but this year England's biggest arts festival lasts longer, running an extra week from tonight, 4 May to 2 June to incorporate both spring bank holidays and half term.

On Saturday, June 1 at 8pm, 9-time Tony Award-winner Tommy Tune will take the stage at The Town Hall (123 West 43rd Street) to offer "Steps in Time" - A Broadway Biography in Song & Dance, highlighting his nearly 50-year career as an actor, dancer, singer, theatre director, producer, and choreographer.

When Fabio Luisi took up his post as General Music Director of the Zurich Opera last fall, he helped launch a new era, marked by bold productions and inspired artistic collaborations. For the great Swiss opera house's newly announced 2013-14 season, he continues to build on this auspicious start. As the Intermezzo blog reports, "Zurich's programming is showing an increasingly adventurous touch," and Luisi has succeeded once again in attracting some of today's most visionary directors and conductors - with such young stars as Mikko Franck, Teodor Currentzis, Cornelius Meister, and Pavel Baleff - and in drawing together first-rate casts that juxtapose living legends like Cecilia Bartoli, Edita Gruberova, Anne-Sofie von Otter, Rene Pape, and Nina Stemme with emerging singers on the cusp of international stardom. Anchoring the new season are eleven new productions, 18 revivals, and six orchestral concerts. Having just won a Grammy Award for his leadership of Wagner at the Metropolitan Opera, in Zurich Luisi sets his sights on this year's other great operatic bicentennial, with four operas by Giuseppe Verdi. The conductor himself will play a major part in the new season, premiering important productions of Fidelio and Aida, as well as leading four programs with the Philharmonia Zurich and revivals of Don Carlo, Les contes d'Hoffmann, and Bellini's La straniera. By way of a prelude to the upcoming season, the company's new take on this bel canto classic will form the centerpiece of Luisi's summer in Zurich, which also sees him directing Rigoletto, Der Rosenkavalier, and concerts of Schumann's orchestral and choral music.

When temperatures rise outside, it heralds the beginning of Side Door Summer at the Palladium! In the intimacy of our award-winning, candlelit Side Door, we cool down our audiences with some of the hottest rising blues, jazz, exotica and rock stars. And before we give Hough Hall its well-deserved summer breather, we close out our mainstage season with the St. Pete Opera, and two huge jazz shows - Kurt Elling and later Bob James/David Sanborn.

Renowned soprano Renee Fleming completes her Carnegie Hall Perspectives series with two concerts in Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage, tonight, April 26 and May 4.

The New York Choral Society (NYCS) announced today that award-winning stage and screen star Kathleen Turner will introduce Ralph Vaughan Williams's A Sea Symphony at Carnegie Hall on April 25 with a reading of the moving and evocative text written by the American poet Walt Whitman.

The Celebrity Series of Boston announced its 2013-2014, 75th anniversary season today, marking 75 years of bringing the world's greatest performing artists to Boston. Celebrity Series has a deep commitment to presenting vocal recitals by some of the most renowned singers in the genre, and the 2013-2014 season includes recitals by: soprano Deborah Voigt, baritone Gerald Finley, soprano Natalie Dessay, tenor Nicholas Phan and baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky.

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra's 44th season concludes with a flourish as Alisa Weilerstein, lauded by The New York Times as a 'brilliant young American cellist,' performs Shostakovich's thrilling Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, Op. 107, originally composed for legendary cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, on Saturday, May 18, 2013, 8 pm, at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, and Sunday, May 19, 2013, 7 pm, at Royce Hall, UCLA. Music Director Jeffrey Kahane, who conducts the program and has long been committed to championing artists early in their careers, also presents the US premiere of up-and-coming French composer Hugo Gonzalez-Pioli's The Love of Zero, an intriguing bassoon concerto, featuring LACO Principal Bassoon Kenneth Munday and played with Robert Florey's avant-garde 1927 short silent film of the same title. Gonzalez-Pioli, whose work adds a touch of Hollywood to the program, is a 2012 graduate of USC's prestigious Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program.

The Canadian Opera Company's 2013 spring season marks the return of celebrated Canadian director Atom Egoyan with his searing, critically acclaimed COC production of Richard Strauss's Salome.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a new $2.5 million grant to The Cleveland Orchestra to support artistically ambitious programming with special emphasis on opera and ballet, as well as collaborations with guest artists. This gift - the largest to the Orchestra in the Foundation's history - supports the type of programming and partnerships that challenge and expand the Orchestra and help distinguish the Orchestra from its peers.

Carnegie Hall presents conductor Christian Thielemann leading the venerable Staatskapelle Dresden in two concerts in Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage this April. Tonight, April 17 at 8:00 p.m., Maestro Thielemann conducts an all-Brahms program, featuring the composer's Symphony No. 4, Academic Festival Overture, and the Violin Concerto with acclaimed violinist Lisa Batiashvili. Earlier this year, the Deutsche Grammophon label released a new recording featuring Ms. Batiashvili's performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto with MR. Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden.

The Yale School of Music's acclaimed YALE IN NEW YORK series presents 'SERENADE & METAMORPHOSIS,' the third of four evenings in its 2012-2013 season, tonight, April 12, 2013 at 7:30PM in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall.

Subscriptions are now on sale for the Columbus Symphony's 2013-14 Masterworks and Pops seasons.

Soprano Kathleen Battle performs at Mayo Performing Arts Center on Saturday, May 4, 2013 at 8 pm. Tickets are $49-79.

NY1 Anchor Roma Torre hosted the free concert event Spotlight on Town Hall last night, March 28, which also featured a special performance from Smash star and Tony-nominee Jeremy Jordan. Also included were performances from the Broadway productions of Chicago and The Phantom of the Opera, Off-Broadway's Avenue Q, The New York City Gay Men's Chorus and The Town Hall Broadway's Rising Stars Chorus. Check out photos from the special event below!