Stephan Kirchgraber News

Just two weeks after his 85th birthday, composer Joel Mandelbaum will conduct soloists and a full orchestra in excerpts from his opera The Dybbuk. The program will be presented first at Queens College, and then at Merkin Concert Hall in Manhattan.

Just two weeks after his 85th birthday, composer Joel Mandelbaum will conduct soloists and a full orchestra in excerpts from his opera The Dybbuk. The program will be presented first at Queens College, and then at Merkin Concert Hall in Manhattan.

Last performed by the company in 2011 at bergenPAC, Verismo Opera announces tenor Raúl Melo, a guest artist at the Metropolitan Opera for nine seasons, will premiere with the company and perform the role of Radames.

Jason C. Tramm will conduct a concert version of Tosca, Giacomo Puccini's visionary and dramatic operatic masterpiece on November 16 at the South Orange Performing Art Center. Inspired by the French playwright Victorien Sardou's 1887 widely popular play 'La Tosca' (which stared the great Sarah Bernhardt in the title role) Puccini's exquisite music, propelled the veristic tale of an unlikely heroine into one of the most beloved and frequently performed operas of all time.

Ever since Tosca, Puccini's "shabby little shocker," premiered at Rome's Teatro Costanizi on January 14, 1900 critics have decided the work, yet begged the question - what gives Tosca its universal appeal?

The New Jersey Association of Verismo Opera presents Giuseppe Verdi's timeless classic, Rigoletto, replete with beautiful music at the Bergen Performing Arts Center (bergenPAC).  Last performed by the company in 2010 at bergenPAC, Verismo Opera performs this important work of the operatic repertoire on Sunday, October 23, 2016, 3:00 p.m., at the theatre, located at 30 North Van Brunt Street, in Englewood, New Jersey U.S.A.  

As part of the New York Opera Fest, Brooklyn's scrappy Vertical Player Repertory ventured into Manhattan's Christ and St. Stephen's Church near Lincoln Center, bringing with it a true rarity: Giovanni Pacini's bel canto-ish MALVINA DI SCOZIA, which dates from 1851. And while it was good to hear a work that competed in its day with the operas of Bellini, Rossini and Donizetti (not to mention the up-and-coming Verdi), “rarity” isn't necessarily synonymous with “ready for prime time,” even in Vertical's spirited production.