Cabaret audiences who fell head over heels for opera singer Janice Hall's 2010-2011 solo debut show—Grand Illusions: The Music of Marlene Dietrich—will get to fall in love all over again (and a new audience can become smitten for the first time) when Hall reprises her Award-winning show at the Metropolitan Room on September 13 at 7 pm, in the 12th installment of Stephen Hanks' monthly New York Cabaret's Greatest Hits Series (Associate Producer, Fr. Jeffrey Hamblin, MD). Hall's Marlene Dietrich show is directed by Peter Napolitano, with Matthew Martin Ward as Musical Director/Pianist and Ritt Henn on bass and ukulele.
OPERA America, the national service organization for opera and the nation's leading champion for American opera, is pleased to announce that Timothy O'Leary, general director of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, has been elected the new chairman of OPERA America's board of directors. He has been involved with OPERA America since 2006, when he participated in Leadership Advance, one of the organization's professional development programs. He joined OPERA America's board in 2011. O'Leary was elected chairman at OPERA America's recent annual business meeting — held during Opera Conference 2016 in Montreal — where eight new members were also elected to the board and three current members were re-elected to three-year terms.
If you're a fan of Puccini-esque music and the “magic realism” of the great Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Daniel Catan's FLORENCIA EN EL AMAZONAS may be for you. Others might find the opera--which had its New York premiere at New York City Opera's home at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Theatre--like falling into a production of “Alice in Puccini-land.” With an endless array of high-strung arias, it left no room for anyone to come up for air for 2½ hours, despite some first-rate performances.
?San Francisco Opera today announced that it has amended the list of international singers performing at the David Gockley Gala Concert on Thursday, June 16 to now include Sasha Cooke in lieu of Susan Graham, who has withdrawn due to illness. Cooke will sing in the Act III trio “Hab' mir's gelobt” from Der Rosenkavalier and Didon's aria “Ah! Je vais mourir…adieu, fière cité” from Les Troyens.
San Francisco Opera celebrates David Gockley's remarkable career and ten-year tenure as San Francisco Opera General Director with a gala concert at the War Memorial Opera House on Thursday, June 16 at 7 p.m. David Gockley retires from San Francisco Opera in July 2016, culminating a 45-year career as one of today's most important opera impresarios.
Lawrence Edelson, Artistic and General Director of Opera Saratoga, announced the program for the 2016 Summer Festival, which will run from May 28 through July 17, 2016. The season will feature three new productions at The Spa Little Theater in Spa State Park in Saratoga Springs, New York, along with a diverse slate of recitals and concerts at multiple locations in Saratoga Springs, Glens Falls, and Albany.
PITTSBURGH – A feast for the eyes and ears, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra pairs a majestic look at our planet with glorious music of John Adams and Richard Strauss during the BNY Mellon Grand Classics weekend on June 10 and 12.
New York City Opera concludes its 2016 season with the New York premiere of Florencia en el Amazonas by Daniel Cata?n. Performances are June 22, 23, 25, and 26 in Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Frederick P. Rose Hall. New York City Opera inaugurates O?pera en Espan?ol, a landmark initiative of productions of opera in the Spanish language, Baroque to the contemporary, from Spain and Latin America, as well as zarzuela. O?pera en Espan?ol introduces the opera-loving public to a neglected but significant repertoire and aims to expand City Opera's reach to new and Spanish-speaking audiences.
Upon the conclusion of the 20th year of its celebrated recital series, which was marked with a gala in April featuring some of opera's most prominent American and Canadian stars, the Foundation announces its 2016-17 season of events.
Houston, January 13, 2016—Houston Grand Opera (HGO) will present the world premiere of The Root of the Wind Is Water, a chamber opera by composer David Hanlon and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann, directed by Matthew Ozawa, on May 13 at 7 p.m. at the Wortham Theater Center and on May 15 at 7 p.m. at The Grand 1894 Opera House in Galveston. Presented under the auspices of HGOco, the company's community collaboration and education initiative, The Root of the Wind Is Water explores the impact of hurricanes on the Texas Gulf Coast through the eyes of the residents who call the region home. The opera will be HGO's 61st world premiere.
The Richard Tucker Music Foundation is thrilled to announce that soprano Tamara Wilson – whose “voice of steely beauty and great power” (Houston Chronicle) has already won international accolades – has been named as winner of the 2016 Richard Tucker Award. Dubbed the “Heisman Trophy of Opera,” the Tucker Award carries the foundation's most substantial cash prize of $50,000, and is conferred each year by a panel of opera industry professionals on an American singer at the threshold of a major international career. Featuring such luminaries as Renée Fleming, Stephanie Blythe,Lawrence Brownlee, David Daniels, Christine Goerke and Joyce DiDonato, the list of past winners reads like a who's who of American opera.
Lawrence Edelson, Artistic and General Director of Opera Saratoga, announced the program for the 2016 Summer Festival, which will run from May 28th through July 17, 2016.
Lincoln Center's American Songbook series doesn't usually cross the road to opera-land, but I'm glad it did, when it presented the Ricky Ian Gordon-Leonard Foglia chamber opera A COFFIN IN EGYPT with mezzo extraordinaire Frederica von Stade last week. Performed in Jazz at Lincoln Center's tiny Appel Room, EGYPT brought us up close and personal to von Stade--and her alter-ego here, 90-year-old Myrtle Bledsoe--and proved she still has “it” as a performer.
Six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald brings her acclaimed portrayal of Billie Holiday in the Broadway smash “Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill” to HBO, with the exclusive presentation scheduled to debut SATURDAY, MARCH 12
Houston Grand Opera (HGO) has chosen the finalists for the 28th annual Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers Concert of Arias, to be presented in the Cullen Theater at the Wortham Theater Center tonight, February 4, at 7 p.m.
Gershwin's opera PORGY AND BESS returns to La Scala November 13-23, 2016 in a semi-scenic version with a conductor that will probably surprise many people: Nikolaus Harnoncourt. The interest of the Austrian maestro for this title dates back to an encounter that an uncle of his, a member of the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Museum, had with Gershwin, who had been profoundly struck by a meeting with Alban Berg in Vienna at the end of the 1920s and considered Porgy to be “his Wozzeck”. Inspired by this story, Harnoncourt has restored, thanks to the collaboration of the Gershwin Foundation, all of the original material from the premiere. We shall therefore be hearing the most authentic version of Porgy and Bess, including a great deal of music influenced by the European avant-garde that is usually struck out but which makes the opera much stronger and dramatic. It is directed by Philipp Harnoncourt, the cast includes Kristin Lewis, Pumeza Matshikiza and Angel Blue.
Houston, February 2, 2016—Houston Grand Opera (HGO) has chosen the finalists for the 28th annual Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers Concert of Arias, to be presented in the Cullen Theater at the Wortham Theater Center on today, February 4, at 7 p.m. This year's finalists are:
Houston Grand Opera (HGO) has chosen the semifinalists for the 28th annual Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers Concert of Arias, to be presented in the Cullen Theater at the Wortham Theater Center on Thursday, February 4, at 7 p.m. This year's semifinalists are:
