Susanna Phillips News

Ticket holders may enjoy a special $45 prix-fixe menu at Bernard's (20 West Lane, Ridgefield), or a free glass of wine with dinner, the day of this event when tickets are presented; reservations suggested. The Live in HD Series are underwritten by Jeanne Cook, Anita and Nicholas Donofrio, Liz and Steven Goldstone, Marilyn and Joe Kreitz, Joanne and John Patrick, Starbucks Coffee, Sabina and Walter Slavin, Taylor Zemo Foundation, The Ridgefield Press and Whistle Stop Bakery.

On Saturday, March 29, at 7:30 p.m., the talented singers and pianist of The Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center 2013-14 ensemble will perform with members of the Lyric Opera Orchestra in works of Adams, Bizet, Copland, Donizetti, Gershwin, Gounod, Handel, Lehár, Massenet, Mozart, Ravel, Stravinsky, and Walton. Rising Stars in Concert is offered in celebration of an extraordinarily successful year of study and performance for these up-and-coming artists.

An exciting young cast stars in Franco Zeffirelli's breathtaking production of La Bohème, the most-performed opera in Met history. Italian star tenor Vittorio Grigolo makes his Live in HDdebut as the passionate poet Rodolfo, and Romanian soprano Anita Hartig makes her highly anticipated Met debut as his fragile lover, Mimì. Susanna Phillips sings the flirtatious Musetta and Massimo Cavalletti is the painter Marcello in this performance, led by Italian conductorStefano Ranzani. Featuring a cast of hundreds, a glorious onstage snow scene, and a detailed reconstruction of the Latin Quarter in Paris, this broadcast marks 15 million viewers for the Live in HD series, which now reaches 66 countries worldwide.

Following this afternoon's highly competitive semi-final competition, nine young singers will advance to the final phase of the Metropolitan Opera's 2014 National Council Auditions, America's most prestigious vocal competition. The selected finalists, chosen by a panel of experts from the classical music industry, will compete on the Met stage on Sunday, March 30at the Grand Finals Concert, with winners receiving individual cash prizes of $15,000 and the prestigious-and potentially career-launching-title of National Council Auditions Winner. The Grand Finals Concert begins at 3 p.m. and will feature Marco Armiliatoconducting the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra as each finalist performs two arias in contrasting styles. The concert will be hosted by tenorLawrence Brownlee, a former National Council winner currently at the Met rehearsing for Bellini's I Puritani. While the judges deliberate, another former winner, Susanna Phillips, who stars in three operas at the Met this season, will perform an aria from Mozart'sLe Nozze di Figaro. Tickets for the Grand Finals Concert may be purchased at the Met Box Office, by phone at 212-362-6000, or online at www.metopera.org.

One of America's most beloved sopranos, Christine Brewer, who won a George London Award in 1991, and 2013 George London Award winner Dominic Armstrong, called a 'clarion-voiced tenor' by The New York Times, will share the stage for the third and final event in the season's George London Foundation Recital Series. Pianist Craig Rutenberg joins the singers for the recital on Sunday, April 6, 2014, at 4:30 PM at The Morgan Library & Museum.

Tenor Michael Fabiano has been named the recipient of the ninth annual Beverly Sills Artist Award for young singers at the Metropolitan Opera. The $50,000 award, the largest of its kind in the United States, is designated for extraordinarily gifted singers between the ages of 25 and 40 who have already appeared in featured solo roles at the Met. The award, given in honor of Beverly Sills, was established in 2006 by an endowment gift from former Met board member Agnes Varis, who died in 2011. Ms. Varis was also the founding donor of the Met's Rush Ticket program. Fabiano was presented with the award at the Met today by Met General Manager Peter Gelb.

From today, February 21 to March 16, 2014, Carnegie Hall presents Vienna: City of Dreams, a three-week citywide festival featuring more than 90 events, all inviting audiences to discover the extraordinary artistic legacy of Vienna. The festival features symphonic and operatic masterpieces, chamber music, and lieder, as well as new sounds emerging from this historic cultural capital. In addition to music, Vienna: City of Dreams shines a spotlight on Vienna's visual art, film, architecture, politics, science, and history, creating an extensive look at a city that for centuries has drawn artists, dreamers, and innovators from all corners of the world to its dazzling intellectual and artistic life.

The Metropolitan Opera's 2014-15 season will feature 26 operas, three of them company premieres, in six new productions and 18 revivals showcasing the talents of the world's leading singers, conductors, and theater artists. The three operas that will have their first-ever Met performances, each staged by a director making his Met debut, are John Adams's The Death of Klinghoffer, conducted by David Robertson and directed by Tom Morris, opening October 20; Rossini's La Donna del Lago, conducted by Michele Mariotti and directed by Paul Curran, opening February 16, 2015; and Tchaikovsky's one-act opera Iolanta, conducted by Valery Gergiev and directed by Mariusz Treli?ski. Iolanta will be presented in a double bill with a new staging of Bartok's one-act Duke Bluebeard's Castle, also conducted by Gergiev and directed by Treli?ski.

To experience the grand spectacle of opera, which embraces the best of the performing arts, there is no need to go to the big city when you can see Puccini's La Boheme on Sunday, April 6, at 5 p.m. and Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte on Saturday, April 26, at 12:55 p.m., in the comfortable, intimate Ridgefield Playhouse. Close-ups and interesting camera angles afforded uniquely thru the power of an HD broadcast and exclusive behind-the-scenes tours and interviews make going to the opera a pleasure. For dinner-and-an-opera, Bernard's (22 West Lane, Ridgefield) is offering a special $45 prix-fixe menu, or a free glass of wine with dinner before or after these events, when tickets are presented; reservations suggested beginning at 5 p.m. Visit ridgefieldplayhouse.org for video previews of the Met Live in HD Series. This series is underwritten by Jeanne Cook, Anita and Nicholas Donofrio, Liz and Steven Goldstone, Marilyn and Joe Kreitz, Joanne and John Patrick, Starbucks Coffee, Sabina and Walter Slavin, Taylor Zemo Foundation, The Ridgefield Press and Whistle Stop Bakery.

Nadler, a member of the Met's music staff, has conducted 49 performances with the company since his debut in 1989. Later this season, he will conduct the February 15 performance of Dvo?ák's Rusalka. He has led Met performances of Verdi's Rigoletto, Un Ballo in Maschera, Aida, Don Carlo, and La Traviata; Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia; Wagner's Tannhäuser; Giordano's Andrea Chénier; Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps, Le Rossignol, and Oedipus Rex; Bizet's Carmen; Beethoven's Fidelio; Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin; Gounod's Roméo et Juliette; and Mozart's Die Zauberflöte.

Before seeing the Met's new production of Johann Strauss Jr.'s DIE FLEDERMAUS, directed by Jeremy Sams, on Saturday night, I listened to the afternoon's live broadcast of Mozart's THE MAGIC FLUTE. Both were written in German and performed in English to make them more palatable to their target audiences (Broadway musical lovers and young opera-goers-in-training, respectively). But, while the Mozart had its guts cut away, to shave the running time to 90 minutes without an intermission, the FLEDERMAUS went on--and on and on--for four hours. Both had the same result--and it was not good.

A new production of Johann Strauss Jr.'s New Year's Eve classic, the comedic operetta Die Fledermaus, will open at the Met tonight, December 31, with two Broadway stars appearing. Check out the excerpt from Act II of Johann Strauss's 'Die Fledermaus' with Jane Archibald (Adele), Anthony Roth Costanzo (Orlofsky), Christopher Maltman (Eisenstein).

A new production of Johann Strauss Jr.'s New Year's Eve classic, the comedic operetta Die Fledermaus, will open at the Met tonight, December 31, with two Broadway stars appearing. Check out the excerpt from the Act I trio of Johann Strauss's 'Die Fledermaus.'

A new production of Johann Strauss Jr.'s New Year's Eve classic, the comedic operetta Die Fledermaus, will open at the Met tonight, December 31, with two Broadway stars appearing. Check out a first look below!

A new production of Johann Strauss Jr.'s New Year's Eve classic, the comedic operetta Die Fledermaus, will open at the Met tonight, December 31, with two Broadway stars appearing.

A new production of Johann Strauss Jr.'s New Year's Eve classic, the comedic operetta Die Fledermaus, will open at the Met on December 31, with two Broadway stars appearing. Check out a preview video below!

A new production of Johann Strauss Jr.'s New Year's Eve classic, the comedic operetta Die Fledermaus, will open at the Met on December 31. Jeremy Sams, writer and creator of the Met's Baroque pasticheThe Enchanted Island, makes his company debut as director with the new staging, which is set in Vienna at the turn of the 20thcentury. Sams also contributes new lyrics for Strauss's work, which will be performed entirely in English; Tony Award-nominated playwright Douglas Carter Beane makes his Met debut with new dialogue. Adam Fischer conducts a cast of rising opera stars and Broadway performers. The cast is led by Susanna Phillips and Christopher Maltman as the unhappily married Rosalinde and Eisenstein; Jane Archibald as Rosalinde's feisty maid, Adele; Anthony Roth Costanzo as Prince Orlofsky; Michael Fabiano as Rosalinde's former lover, Alfred; Paulo Szot as the bumbling Dr. Falke; and Patrick Carfizzi as the prison superintendent, Frank. Broadway stars Danny Burstein and Betsy Wolfe make Met debuts as the drunken jailer, Frosch, and Adele's sister, Ida. Robert Jones is set and costume designer for the production, with lighting design by Jennifer Schriever and choreography by Stephen Mear in their Met debuts.

Puccini's La Bohème, the most-performed opera in Met history, will return to the repertory this season with 14 performances featuring a number of popular Met artists and rising stars in the leading roles. The opera opens January 14 with Joseph Calleja as Rodolfo, Maija Kovalevska as Mimì, Alexey Markov as Marcello, and Irina Lungu in her company role debut as Musetta. On March 19, Vittorio Grigolo returns to the role of his Met debut as Rodolfo, leading a cast that also includes Massimo Cavalletti in his first Met performances of Marcello and two debuting sopranos: Romanian Anita Hartig as Mimì and American Jennifer Rowley as Musetta. Susanna Phillips will reprise her Musetta on April 2 and 5, and Barbara Frittoli will sing Mimì on April 10, 14, and 18. Joshua Hopkins and Patrick Carfizzi share the role of Schaunard this season; Christian Van Horn, Nicolas Testé, and Oren Gradus sing Colline; and Donald Maxwell and Philip Cokorinos sing Benoit and Alcindoro. Stefano Ranzani will conduct all of this season's performances of La Bohème, which will be seen in Franco Zeffirelli's popular 1981 production. The April 5 matinee, starring Grigolo, Hartig, Phillips, Cavalletti, Carfizzi, Gradus, and Maxwell, will be transmitted live as part of the Met's Live in HD series, which now reaches more than 2,000 theaters in 64 countries around the world.

The Music Academy of the West will honor legendary mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne, the director of the Academy's renowned Voice Program who celebrates her 80th birthday on January 16, 2014, with special programming during its 2014 Summer Festival. The centerpiece of the Horne tribute programming will be a new production of Georges Bizet's immensely popular opera Carmen, one of the iconic mezzo's signature roles. Related programming next summer will include a screening of the 1954 musical film Carmen Jones, which features Horne's dubbed singing for actress Dorothy Dandridge. Additional events will be announced in the coming months.

Baritone Christian Gerhaher makes his Symphony Center recital debut with pianist Gerold Huber on tonight, December 4 at 7:30 p.m., performing Schubert's Winterreise. This recital opens the 2013/14 Symphony Center Presents Schubert Song series, an exploration of Schubert's most beloved compositions for voice performed by artists renowned for their interpretations of these masterpieces.