Samuel Ramey News

New York City Opera presents the New York premiere of HOPPER'S WIFE by composer Stewart Wallace, set to a libretto by Michael Korie.

The Tulsa Opera Board of Directors announces that Artistic Director Kostis Protopapas will depart the company at the end of the 2015-16 Season.

On Sunday, January 17, Opera Index will present its 37th Distinguished Achievement Award to Dolora Zajick, a true dramatic mezzo-soprano, acclaimed by The New York Times as “a mezzo in a class by herself,” at a gala evening beginning at 6 p.m. at JW Marriott Essex House, 160 Central Park South.

JCC Manhattan presents the fall season finale of PREformances with Allison Charney on Monday, December 14th at 12:30pm. In this unique concert series, you will hear celebrated classical musicians just before their performances on the world's most prestigious stages removing traditional barriers between performer and audience.

New York, NY (December 10, 2015) – OPERA NEWS Editor in Chief F. Paul Driscoll today announced the recipients of the 11th Annual OPERA NEWS Awards. This year's honorees — Joseph Calleja, El?na Garan?a, Waltraud Meier, Anna Netrebko, and José van Dam — will be feted at a black tie gala celebration on April 10th at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. 

Enjoy an old fashioned Irish holiday celebration when A Christmas from Dublin with the Three Irish Tenors comes to Mayo Performing Arts Center on Friday, December 4, 2015 at 8 pm. Tickets are $29-59.

Tulsa Opera opens its 68th season with a perennial audience favorite, Puccini's LA BOHÈME, this weekend, October 16 and 18 in the Chapman Music Hall of the Tulsa Performing Arts Center.

NYCO Renaissance, under the leadership of Roy G. Niederhoffer and Michael Capasso, was joined by the official committee of unsecured creditors for the New York City Opera case. They filed as a '“a monumental step forward” and “in the best interests of the debtor's estate and creditors.”  A plan will be submitted in the near future.'

Tulsa Opera opens its 68th season with a perennial audience favorite, Puccini's LA BOHÈME, on October 16 and 18 in the Chapman Music Hall of the Tulsa Performing Arts Center.

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra honors luminary opera singer Marilyn Horne at its Opening Night Celebration tonight, September 25, at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) in Newark.

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra honors luminary opera singer Marilyn Horne at its Opening Night Celebration on Friday, September 25, at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) in Newark.

?The 2015-16 season marks two milestones for the George London Foundation for Singers, which has been honoring, supporting, and presenting the finest young opera singers in the U.S. and Canada since 1971:  the 45th annual George London Foundation Awards Competition, which gives George London Awards to young singers each year; and the 20th year of its acclaimed recital series, which presents pairs of singers, both established stars and recent George London Award winners, at The Morgan Library & Museum.

Matthew Zelle has joined the executive team at Park Avenue Artists, the distinctive artist-management company. Zelle will hold the title of Executive Vice President at Park Avenue Artists (PAA), co-founded in 2011 by David Lai and Ross Michaels, who share the title of President.

JCC Manhattan presents PREformances with Allison Charney on Monday, April 13th at 7:30pm.

On Friday, May 15 at 8:00 p.m. in Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage, Carnegie Hall presents celebrated mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe in recital with pianist Warren Jones in a program of popular songs by Poulenc, Ferré, Brel, Britten, and Coward. One of the most respected and versatile artists of her generation, Ms. Blythe recently starred as Gertrude Stein in the world premiere production of Ricky Ian Gordon's Twenty-Seven, an opera commissioned for her by the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. In 2013, Innova Records released Ms. Blythe's first crossover album As Long as There are Songs, featuring selections from the Great American Songbook arranged together with pianist Craig Terry. Together Ms. Blythe and Mr. Jones have performed recitals in major concert halls across the United States.

?Music Institute of Chicago, now in its 85th year, hosts its annual gala Monday, May 11 at the Four Seasons Hotel Chicago, 120 East Delaware Place. The oldest community music school in Illinois and one of the three largest community music schools in the nation, the Music Institute is planning a celebratory evening highlighted by the presentation of the Dushkin Award to John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts President and former Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association President Deborah F. Rutter.

New York City Opera Renaissance will host a Gala Concert and Dinner to celebrate the life of the late Maestro Julius Rudel and his invaluable contribution to the New York City Opera as General Director and Principal Conductor from 1957 to 1979. Maestro Rudel passed away on June 26, 2014 at age 93. The Gala Concert will take place at the Rose Theater in the Time Warner Center, Broadway & 60th Street, New York, NY, this evening, March 9, 2015, at 7 pm.

New York City Opera was one of the great artistic treasures of New York. It was famously dubbed 'The People's Opera' by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia at its founding in 1943 and throughout its nearly 70 year history, the NYCO helped launch the careers of many of the world's greatest opera stars including Beverly Sills, Sherrill Milnes, Placido Domingo, Maralin Niska, Carol Vaness, Jose Carreras, Shirley Verrett, Tatiana Troyanos, Jerry Hadley, Catherine Malfitano, Samuel Ramey. Sills later famously served as the company's director and chief ambassador for the art form from 1979-1989. It also sought to produce an innovative choice of repertory, and provide a home for American singers and composers.

I am taken back to the first Opera I saw as a kid and the pomp and circumstance with wearing a tux and walking to the lavish theatre; this was when I fell in love with classical music. Often times we hear opera and other classical art forms are inaccessible to the people, but Houston Grand Opera's English translation of Mozart's THE MAGIC FLUTE (Die Zauberflote) proved that opera isn't a stuffy, highbrow art form for the bourgeois. THE MAGIC FLUTE premiered on September 30, 1791 at Emanuel Schikaneder's theatre, the Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna, and Mozart conducted the orchestra. The MAGIC FLUTE often referenced as a singspiel, is an opus with spoken dialogue which lends itself to the elements of classical musical theatre. The heart of this new work was an excerpt from the oriental genie tales collected by poet Christoph Martin Wieland but transitioned to have Masonic elements from the novel Sethos by Abbe Jean Terrasson.

New York City Opera Renaissance will host a Gala Concert and Dinner to celebrate the life of the late Maestro Julius Rudel and his invaluable contribution to the New York City Opera as General Director and Principal Conductor from 1957 to 1979. Maestro Rudel passed away on June 26, 2014 at age 93. The Gala Concert will take place at the Rose Theater in the Time Warner Center, Broadway & 60th Street, New York, NY, on Monday evening, March 9, 2015, at 7 pm.