In search of new audiences, the Met has followed Terence Blanchard’s FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES with the jazz musician/composer’s first opera, CHAMPION, the story of closeted boxer Emile Griffith’s rise and fall from grace. Honestly, never have I heard people whose usual venues are Madison Square Garden, Yankee Stadium and Monday Night Football on ESPN talk about how they “wanted to see the new opera at the Met.”
Philadelphia Theatre Company will produce Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, written by Lanie Robertson with musical arrangements by Danny Holgate. See performance dates and learn how to purchase tickets!
Audiences are invited to step back in time to a seedy Philadelphia bar in 1959 for the final performance of jazz icon Billie Holiday. Philadelphia Theatre Company (PTC) is proud to produce Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill, written by Lanie Robertson with musical arrangements by Danny Holgate.
Go inside rehearsals of Lady Day at Philadelphia Theater Company with all new video. Lady Day is written by Lanie Robertson, with musical arrangements by Danny Holgate, and direction by Jeffrey L. Page.
The Met’s new production of Richard Wagner’s LOHENGRIN showcases startlingly good singing from tenor Piotr Beczala in the title role, supported ably and nobly by soprano Tamara Wilson’s Elsa, bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin’s Telramund and bass Gunther Groissbock’s King Heinrich. And soprano Christine Goerke’s evil Ortrud nearly steals the show. With the Met’s orchestra and chorus in glorious form, led by music director Yannick Nezet-Seguin in the pit, the performance made you want to scream and yell for more.
Friday night, the Metropolitan Opera gave its second concert honoring “Ukraine and its brave citizens as they fight to defend their country and cultural heritage.” The country’s colors flew above the performance, which opened with a pretaped video message from First Lady, Olena Zelenska, along with the Ukraine national anthem. She remarked that the concert wasn’t really marking the one-year anniversary of the horrendous, illegal conflict (although, indeed, it did), but a time closer to peace for its citizenry.
The Met gave birth to a fascinating new opera on Tuesday and it wasn’t a moment too soon to unleash composer Kevin Puts’s THE HOURS on an audience that sometimes seems doomed to die inundated by too many AIDAs, BOHEMEs and CARMENs. The world premiere production of THE HOURS by Puts and Greg Pierce was directed by Phelim McDermott. The cast was a starry one, led by soprano Renee Fleming, soprano Kelli O’Hara and mezzo Joyce DiDonato.
On Thursday, November 10, 2022 at 7pm, composer and instrumentalist Ben Neill will present his immersive electronic opera Fantini Futuro at Basilica of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral, located at 261 Mott Street in New York. This one night only performance also acts as the premiere of the opera's full presentation, as well as a benefit for restoring the church's historic organs.
On Thursday, November 10, 2022 at 7pm, composer and instrumentalist Ben Neill presents his immersive electronic opera Fantini Futuro at Basilica of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral, located at 261 Mott Street in New York.
George Benson, Billy Eckstine and Phyllis Hyman, are but a few of the extraordinary singers that had roots in Pittsburgh and enriched the vocal jazz tradition. The vocalists who will sing at the Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival (PIJF), which runs from September 16-18, will expand and extend on the legacy of their Steel City forebears.
Can you imagine the Met--or any other major opera house--cutting the length of a new opera so commuters could make the last train? That’s what baritone Etienne Dupuis told me about the world premiere in Paris of Verdi’s DON CARLOS (1867). Dupuis is starring as Don Rodrigue, Marquis de Posa, at the Met these days, in the new David McVicar production of the Verdi opera.
One of Broadway’s favorite leading ladies Kelli O’Hara will be appearing with SiriusXM Radio staple Seth Rudetsky for a one-night concert at The Wallis April 2, 2022 as part of The Wallis Broadway @ concert series. Kelli was gracious enough to carve out a little time to answer a few of my theatrical queries.
DON CARLOS--Verdi’s original French language version, for the first time at the Met, of the opera better known in these parts as the Italian DON CARLO--was as grim as its setting in the Spanish inquisition in the new David McVicar production introduced last night. And about as long (though for once it ended earlier than expected)--Verdi's longest opera.
What is there to say about Puccini’s TOSCA that hasn’t been said in the last hundred-plus years since its premiere in Rome (to echo the locations in the opera)? It is a marvel of brevity, with librettists Illica and Giacosa shaving locations, characters and action from the original play, written by the French dramatist Victorien Sardou for the legendary actress Sarah Bernhardt, without sacrificing its impact. It has a gorgeous score, but for a grand opera, it is also quite intimate, with the action mainly revolving around three characters who carry their emotions on their sleeves and interact like their lives depend on it.
Talk about ‘spoiler alerts,’ there was a big one for me early in the opera, EURYDICE, by Matthew Aucoin to a libretto that he and Sarah Ruhl fashioned from her play of the same name, which had its Met premiere last night. Eurydice tells Orpheus “Don’t look at me,” which to me mirrored the scene at the end of the piece in the Underworld when Hades tells him that he can take her back to the land of the living if he doesn’t look back at her…which, of course, he does.
The Kimmel Cultural Campus presents the return of its beloved annual holiday celebration, A Soulful Christmas, the joyful evening of gospel music and beloved holiday songs. To ensure the health and safety of participating artists, the event will be more intimate- with a smaller number of singers participating socially distanced on an extended stage inside its Verizon Hall on Tuesday, December 14, 2021, at 7:30 p.m.
Artist Series Concerts of Sarasota opens its 2021-22 Luncheon Series with a return performance by Cheryl Losey Feder, the popular former principal harpist of the Sarasota Orchestra, November 11, at the Bird Key Yacht Club, 301 Bird Key Drive, Sarasota.
It’s been a long 18 months since the last opera on the Met’s stage. The Terence Blanchard-Kasi Lemmons FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES roared into Lincoln Center to let the audience know what it has been missing.
Though the Met’s season doesn’t technically start till the end of the month, the company started off with a pair of what French chefs might call “amuses bouches”—sort of tastebud teasers. The first was Mahler’s Second, which was done in the open air; the second was its first inside the hall:The Verdi Requiem, which was broadcast (and which I saw) live last Saturday on PBS.
Des Moines Metro Opera (DMMO) today announced a $1 million leadership gift commitment from long-time patron, opera lover, and friend Frank R. Brownell III to secure the future of one of the Company’s flagship programs – the Apprentice Artist Program for young singers.
