AllAboutOpera.com

Full recovery expected for Placido Domingo

2010-03-09T05:06:00.000-05:00

Placido Domingo was discharged Sunday from Mount Sinai Hospital of New York City after successfully undergoing laparoscopic surgery to remove a localized malignant polyp in his colon, his representative Nancy Seltzer announced Monday morning.
The 69-year-old tenor is expected to make a full recovery. He is recuperating in New York.
Per doctor's orders, Domingo will rest for six weeks. His return to performing engagements will depend on how quickly he heals and returns to full strength, Seltzer said.
— Read more at Los Angeles Times

Breath of fresh air

2010-03-09T05:05:00.000-05:00

The Met's new production of "The Nose" should be a hit with everyone except headline writers.
Had the Shostakovich comedy bombed, they'd quip "Met blows nose" or "Don't pick this opera!" But since this sassy, smart show is the highlight of the current opera season, they'll have to settle for something like "Breath of fresh air."
— Read more at James Jorden - NYPOST.com

REVIEW: Tamerlano, Royal Opera House, London

2010-03-09T04:52:00.002-05:00

Whether or not Placido Domingo's presence would have lifted the dynamics of this decidedly flaccid evening one cannot say. It's hard to imagine
him amidst the dispassionate chic of Richard Hudson's whiter than white gallery-like setting with its allusions to suns and moons and the universal orb of power. Indeed it is his character - the Ottoman ruler Sultan Bajazet - that we first see lying prostrate in defeat beneath the said orb. A giant foot bears down on it like a football, symbol of how mere mortals are but playthings of the gods. But Bajazet rises in defiance bearing this entire "universe" on his shoulders. And with four-and-half hours to go, that's just about as dramatic as it gets.
— Read more at The Independent

Jacobs student gets one step closer to Met Opera

2010-03-09T04:52:00.000-05:00

If you asked Laura Wilde in elementary school what she wanted to be when she grew up, she'd probably have told you a lawyer.
Wilde, whose initials spell out `law,' took a different path from courtrooms and case briefs.
— Read more at Indiana Daily Student

REVIEW: 'La boheme,' Met's cash cow, evokes picture-postcard Paris

2010-03-09T04:51:00.000-05:00

For better and for worse, the Metropolitan Opera has been in the headlines a lot since Peter Gelb became general manager four years ago. His initiatives have included live HD transmissions to movie theaters, new repertory and new productions. New directors and designers have been drawn from the worlds of film, architecture and fashion.
(Gelb, by the way, is married to conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson, who was an assistant with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in the mid-1990s.)
— Read more at Scott Cantrell - Dallas Morning News

The singular, vigourless Emilie

2010-03-09T04:50:00.000-05:00

A new work by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, long resident in Paris, is an international event. Her third and latest opera, Emilie, was unveiled last week by the Opera National de Lyon and is soon to be staged at the Netherlands Opera, in Amsterdam, eventually arriving at the Barbican. She has a sort of international style, too.
— Read more at Times Online

Sarasota Opera's 'Hansel and Gretel' isn't just for kids

2010-03-09T04:48:00.001-05:00

Hansel and Gretel is a holiday tradition for families in Europe, not unlike The Nutcracker in the United States. But the Engelbert Humperdinck opera has never really caught on here, so it will be interesting to see how Sarasota Opera fares with its production, which is being billed as family friendly. The company is even offering free babysitting for one performance, making it easier for families and older children to take in the German "fairy tale'' opera.
— Read more at St. Petersburg Times

Picture This: A Nose on the Loose

2010-03-08T05:00:00.001-05:00

It has become commonplace at the Metropolitan Opera for directors and designers of new productions, especially modernist high-concept ones, to be lustily booed by a sizable contingent of the audience during opening-night ovations.
But on Friday night, when the Met introduced its production of Shostakovich's early opera "The Nose" based on the Gogol short story, the South African artist William Kentridge, who directed the production, helped design the sets and created the videos that animate the staging, received the heartiest bravos.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Met premieres Shostakovich's absurdist 'The Nose'

2010-03-08T04:58:00.000-05:00

Dmitri Shostakovich composed his first opera, "The Nose," more than 80 years ago and based it on a short story written nearly a century before that.
Yet few works in the repertory seem more modern or musically challenging than this absurdist masterpiece that came to the Metropolitan Opera for the first time Friday night.
— Read more at Mike Silverman - The Associated Press

Gordon Gietz on His Metropolitan Opera Debut As a Lifesize Nose

2010-03-08T04:55:00.000-05:00

Tonight, young tenor Gordon Gietz makes his Metropolitan Opera debut in William Kentridge's highly anticipated new production of Shostakovich's The Nose, based on the satiric Gogol story about Kovalyov, a civil servant in St. Petersburg who wakes up one day to find that not only is his nose missing, but it has acquired a higher social rank than his own.
— Read more at nymag.com

Renee Fleming stresses hard work and ease of production at Frost master class

2010-03-08T04:54:00.000-05:00

On Friday afternoon four students from the University of Miami Frost School of Music had the dream opportunity to receive coaching from one of the opera world's superstars when Renee Fleming presented a master class at Gusman Concert Hall.
Fleming, who has done similar events at Harvard and Juilliard, was supportive and encouraging toward the young vocalists. "It takes so much courage to get up and do this," she said. "Master classes are hard."
— Read more at South Florida Classical Review

Sarasota Opera's "Cav & Pag" proves a varied bag of verismo

2010-03-08T04:50:00.000-05:00

Even with their enduring popularity, Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci are difficult works to bring off. While complementary in their unbridled vocal demands and tales of violent Sicilian love affairs, the operas are more distinct in their styles and requirements than it seems on the surface, one reason the two works rarely enjoy consistent success together.
— Read more at South Florida Classical Review

Virginia Tech international music festival to feature opera, chamber music

2010-03-08T04:48:00.002-05:00

The mountains of Blacksburg will come alive with music this summer as luminaries from the opera and chamber music worlds gather to coach and mentor a new generation of superstar performers. The two-week festival -- Viva Virginia -- starts June 21 and includes concerts, lectures, and master classes open to the public.
— Read more at Virginia Tech News

First nights at the opera

2010-03-05T04:58:00.000-05:00

It was a good week for new opera -- at least, there was an awful lot of it.
In Munich, Peter Eotvos's "Die Tragodie des Teufels" opened at the Bavarian State Opera, winning praise from Shirley Apthorp in the Financial Times and much fainter praise from George Loomis in the New York Times. The Suddeutsche Zeitung called it "mild, colorful, and above all puzzling and in the spirit of the times."
— Read more at Anne Midgette - washingtonpost.com

Emilie is the work of two strong-willed women

2010-03-05T04:56:00.001-05:00

"Something definitely needs to be done about the end", says soprano Karita Mattila in plain Finnish after the last rehearsals of composer Kaija Saariaho's new opera Emilie at the Opera National de Lyon.
Saariaho agrees, and the famous film and opera director Francois Girard decides to change his direction. His merits as the auteur behind Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993) and Le violon rouge (1998) do not count for much when the two strong-willed Finnish women forcefully present their views.
— Read more at Helsingin Sanomat

China's First Lady of Opera

2010-03-05T04:53:00.000-05:00

Pavarotti started the ball rolling. On the occasion of a concert he gave in 1986 to a packed crowd of 10,000 Chinese at Beijing's Great Hall of the People, the tenor expressed a single regret, that "the capital of the world's most populous nation should be without a suitable opera theater."
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Cleveland Orchestra holds true in fully staged 'Cosi Fan Tutte'

2010-03-05T04:50:00.000-05:00

Faithfulness isn't just a virtue in relationships. It's also a plus in the realm of opera, and the Cleveland Orchestra's got it.
Just as the characters in Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutte" engage in mischief but ultimately remain true, so, too, has the orchestra under music director Franz Welser-Most mounted a luminous production balancing interpretive liberties and fidelity to the score's essential nature.
— Read more at cleveland.com

REVIEW: Touring production of 'Porgy and Bess' solid, if not up to Gershwin's standards

2010-03-05T04:40:00.000-05:00

The touring production of Porgy and Bess that opened Wednesday night at Bass Performance Hall certainly reminds us of the greatness of the work. Between stage director Charles Randolph-Wright and conductor Samuel Bill, the opening-night performance really crackled and sported turbocharged voices.
— Read more at Scott Cantrell - Dallas Morning News

REVIEW: Emilie, Opera de Lyon

2010-03-05T04:36:00.000-05:00

She was learned and sexually liberated, a product of the 18th century but a role model for our time - "a great man whose only fault was being a woman", according to Voltaire, her sometime lover. History has tended to place Emilie du Chatelet (1706-49) in Voltaire's shadow, but she stole the limelight at Monday's premiere of a new opera by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho.
— Read more at FT.com

Better the Devil You Don't Know?

2010-03-04T04:32:00.000-05:00

Operas dealing with the devil found special favor during the Romantic era, with early examples by Weber ("Der Freischutz") and Meyerbeer ("Robert le Diable") that catered to the age's fondness for the supernatural; later the vogue of Goethe's "Faust" spawned other well-known examples. Yet the subject has shown considerable staying power, as more recent operas by Stravinsky and Alfred Schnittke attest. Currently, the Bayerische Staatsoper is offering a devil opera for our time: "Die Tragodie des Teufels" ("The Tragedy of the Devil") by the Hungarian composer Peter Eotvos, which received its world premiere last week.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Soprano Alyson Cambridge calls Washington National Opera's 'Porgy' a 'homecoming'

2010-03-04T04:31:00.001-05:00

For soprano Alyson Cambridge, the Washington National Opera's "Porgy and Bess" beginning March 20, is a "homecoming" in many ways.
Cambridge, who portrays Clara and sings "Summertime", the most famous in the renowned Gershwin opera, has studied and performed music from "Porgy" ever since she was a teenager growing up in the DC area. She studied at DC's Levine School of Music while attending Sidwell Friends School, and had always "dreamed of performing with the Washington National Opera."
— Read more at examiner.com

Finnish Monologue Opera Debuts in France with Superstar Mattila

2010-03-04T04:30:00.000-05:00

Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho made operatic history with her debut of an opera monologue. The demanding opera, whose sole character is Voltaire's enigmatic mistress Emilie, was performed by world-famous Finnish soprano Karita Mattila.
The opera, titled Emilie, opened Monday night at the Opera de Lyon in France.
— Read more at yle.fi

With a mostly terrific cast, Mozart's "Figaro" closes Lyric season in style

2010-03-04T04:26:00.000-05:00

Is there anything more miraculous in all music than Le nozze di Figaro? The wealth of unforgettable melody, the wit and ingenuity of Lorenzo da Ponte's libretto, and, especially, the effervescent spirit and depth of Mozart's music. For all it's surface frivolity, 224 years after its premiere, Mozart's opera still has much to say about love, fidelity, forgiveness, and the eternal folly of the human heart.
— Read more at Chicago Classical Review

Operatic Dilemma: Syracuse Opera should choose great voices over great sets

2010-03-04T04:25:00.000-05:00

Those music lovers who were fortunate enough to hear one of the performances of Wagner's "The Flying Dutchman" offered this past weekend by Syracuse Opera now know the answer to the question "What's all the excitement about?"
For the first time in my 20 years in Syracuse, I experienced a performance in which all four of the leading roles were sung at a level that provided the kind of visceral excitement that well-schooled and powerful opera voices can produce. From the moment he opened his mouth, Greer Grimsley (the Dutchman) pinned the ears back of everyone at the Civic Center, even to the back rows.
— Read more at syracuse.com

Lyric 'Figaro' a chestnut made new through excellence

2010-03-03T03:40:00.003-05:00

It's amazing how an infusion of superior singing can freshen even the most venerable opera production.
Lyric Opera of Chicago is concluding its season with a revival of Peter Hall's celebrated staging of Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro," a production that has served as a kind of talisman for the company since it first graced the Civic Opera House in 1987. The show has been back several times over the years, with various casts, but when it returned to the company for the first time this season Sunday afternoon, there was a sparkle and vitality about it I don't recall having witnessed since this "Nozze di Figaro" was new.
— Read more at John von Rhein - chicagotribune.com