Susanna Phillips News

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 pastiche The Enchanted Island, makes his company debut as director with the new staging, which is set in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century. 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.

From 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.

Jane Archibald will sing the role of Adele in all 14 performances of the new production of Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus at the Met this season. Christine Schäfer, originally scheduled to sing the first six performances of the opera, is ill and unable to travel to the Met for rehearsals. Archibald was originally scheduled to sing the final eight performances of the run.

The St. Louis Symphony will mark the centennial of Benjamin Britten's birth with two concert performances of the composer's haunting opera Peter Grimes: first at Powell Hall tonight, November 16, then at Carnegie Hall on November 22, the date of the late composer's 100th birthday.

Baritone Christian Gerhaher makes his Symphony Center recital debut with pianist Gerold Huber on Wednesday, 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.

Throughout its 2013-2014 season, Carnegie Hall pays tribute to composer Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) in celebration of the 100th anniversary of his birth.

The grand incomparable spectacle of opera returns to The Ridgefield Playhouse this fall with an impressive lineup broadcast from the Met Live in HD.Tonight, October 28, at 6:30 p.m., William Kentridge storms the Met in Shostakovich's The Nose.

The grand incomparable spectacle of opera returns to The Ridgefield Playhouse this fall with an impressive lineup broadcast from the Met Live in HD. First up is Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, starring diva Anna Netrebko with Mariusz Kwiecie, today, October 5, at 12:55 p.m.

The Met: Live in HD, the Metropolitan Opera's award-winning series of live transmissions to movie theaters, will feature 10 productions in the 2013-14 season, offering a significant portion of the Met season to opera lovers around the world.

Below is a preview of Jeremy Sams's new production of Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus, starring Susanna Phillips and Christopher Maltman, conducted by Adam Fischer. The production opens on December 31, 2013.

Check out the excerpt from Act I of Mozart's 'Così fan tutte,' conducted by James Levine in his first Met performance in two years.

Music Director James Levine returns to the Met podium after a two-year absence, greeted by a standing ovation to conducts Mozart's 'Così fan tutte' on September 24, 2013. Check out the video below!

Not many opera performances start with a standing ovation before a single note is sung, but the season's first COSI FAN TUTTE on September 24 was one of those rare occasions. It marked the return of conductor James Levine after a two-year absence, leading the performance from a motorized chair at a specially constructed podium. He had the orchestra—and the audience—in the palm of his hand.

After an absence of more than two years, Music Director James Levine returned to the Met podium in triumph last night, leading the season premiere of Mozart's Così fan tutte. Entering the orchestra pit, the maestro was greeted by a minute-long standing ovation and cheers from the packed house before launching into the performance. Levine, who had been sidelined by health issues, made his comeback with the Met Orchestra in concert at Carnegie Hall last May, but this was his first appearance at the opera house since the end of the 2010–11 season. “[He] led his beloved musicians like a man rejuvenated,” the Associated Press says. “This was prime Levine: a lithe, energetic, transparent account of Mozart's miraculous score, brisk but not rushed, polished and profound. His energy seemed never to flag throughout the long evening.”

Philadelphia Orchestra Music Director Yannick Nezet-Seguin and President and CEO Allison Vulgamore today announce the 2013-14 season of The Philadelphia Orchestra.

Soprano Susanna Phillips - winner of the Metropolitan Opera's Beverly Sills Artist Award in 2010 - is a singer who 'demonstrates rare stylistic fluency, canny pathos and dynamic finesse,' according to the Financial Times, which added: 'Susanna Phillips - remember the name.' The Alabama-born soprano has a higher profile than ever during 2013-14, including her sixth consecutive season at the Metropolitan Opera. Phillips starts her Met season tonight, portraying Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte under the baton of music director James Levine in his long-awaited return to the podium. The Dallas Morning News declared her to be 'a glorious Fiordiligi, her soprano honeyed and agile.' This Così runs until October 5, with a return in the spring; the final performance, onApril 26, will be transmitted to audiences worldwide in the Met's ever-popular Live in HD series. Phillips will also sing the role of Rosalinde in a new staging of Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus by two-time Tony Award-winner Jeremy Sams as part of the Met's New Year's Eve gala, with performances until February 22. At the Met again in April, she plays Musetta in Puccini's La bohème, reprising the role in which she made her house debut in 2008. After a recent Met performance, the New York Times said: 'Phillips sparkled as the sassy Musetta, her bright, nimble soprano tinged with a coquettish flair.' The April 5 La bohème will be her first Live in HD broadcast of the season. Phillips has been praised by the Aspen Times for her 'heart-tugging phrasing' in the role of Ellen Orford in Britten's Peter Grimes; she takes up the role again in a concert performance of Peter Grimes with David Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony, in Missouri and at Carnegie Hall on the composer's 100th birthday (Nov 22).

Stars of the Metropolitan Opera will perform selections from French operas and popular songs as the concluding event of the Taste of France show on Sunday, September 29 at 5 p.m. in Manhattan's Bryant Park. Taste of France, which takes place on September 28 and 29, is the world's largest event dedicated to France and will showcase the most renowned aspects of French technology, cuisine, lifestyle, tourism, beauty, and culture.

Soprano Susanna Phillips, a star of New York's Metropolitan and Chicago's Lyric Opera stages, will headline a concert at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, October 13, in Anderson Chapel at North Park University, 5149 N. Spaulding Ave., Chicago, to benefit the spring 2014 Bach Week Festival in Evanston and Chicago.

The St. Louis Symphony will mark the centennial of Benjamin Britten's birth with two concert performances of the composer's haunting opera Peter Grimes: first at Powell Hall on November 16, then at Carnegie Hall on November 22, the date of the late composer's 100th birthday.

The grand incomparable spectacle of opera returns to The Ridgefield Playhouse this fall with an impressive lineup broadcast from the Met Live in HD. First up is Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, starring diva Anna Netrebko with Mariusz Kwiecie, on Saturday, October 5, at 12:55 p.m.