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Boston Lyric Opera has committed itself these days to mounting more of its own productions. But when it chooses to import a staging, Esther Nelson, the company's general and artistic director, has said she will be looking not only to American houses but also their European counterparts. BLO is currently making good on her promise with a delightful new production of Strauss's "Ariadne auf Naxos,'' shipped over from Welsh National Opera. Conceived by the Australian director Neil Armfield, it's been revived here by Denni Sayers, and opened Friday night at the Shubert Theatre, conducted by Erik Nielsen.
— Read more at Jeremy Eichler - The Boston Globe

San Diego Opera's splendid production of Charles Gounod's ravishing "Romeo and Juliet" makes one wonder why this opera is not performed more often.
Based on Shakespeare's play, and sometimes even quoting his text, it was Gounod's major success after "Faust," which had been so universally acclaimed that his next four operas languished in its shadow. Not so "Romeo and Juliet."
— Read more at sdnn.com

Annapolis Opera's 37th season featured a production of Puccini's "Tosca" over the weekend that reconfirmed several things:
There will always be a valuable place for regional opera companies and the live-performance experiences they offer their communities; there are young singers around today capable of giving credible portrayals of challenging roles; economical sets that could be blown over by a good breeze can do the atmospheric job well enough (Arne Lindquist was the designer here); and in an age of stage director supremacy and theatrical concept-run-amok-ness, there's still something to be said for thoroughly traditional approaches (Braxton Peters directed).
— Read more at Tim Smith - The Baltimore Sun

According to the BBC, the Royal Opera House in London plans to stage the world premiere of "Anna Nicole," based on the life of the former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith, right, who went from impoverished Texas waitress to oil tycoon's widow to reality television celebrity. The new work is from the composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and the writer Richard Thomas, a creator of "Jerry Springer: The Opera."
— Read more at NYTimes.com

At the end of the last act of John Adams's opera Nixon in China, the character Chou En-lai asks: "How much of what we did was good?" We may not be able to answer that question as it refers to the political events in the opera. But ask it of this particular production of Nixon in China, by Vancouver Opera, and it's easily answered. What you did was good, very good indeed.
— Read more at The Globe and Mail

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I made pretty clear in my glut of Mariinsky reviews that the troupe's Kennedy Center residency left me disappointed. One felt it could have been so much better.
People I talked to and heard from about the Mariinsky in the past couple of weeks, both in the music business and outside it, both in Washington and New York (where Gergiev led a slightly flabby "The Nose" at the Met and then brought the Mariinsky to Carnegie Hall for a two-night concert performance of "Les Troyens") were sharply divided.
— Read more at Anne Midgette - washingtonpost.com

The Grand Finals Concert of the Metropolitan Opera's National Council Auditions, the most prestigious voice competition in North America, has drawn the attention of company managers, artist representatives and opera insiders for more than 50 years. For the voice buffs in the audience, it is always fascinating to hear the young finalists and try to sort out, along with the panel of judges, who among them will be the stars of tomorrow.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

If there's one reason why Samuel Barber should have lived to be 100, it's the upside-down irony that his monumental New York flop is Philadelphia's hottest opera ticket.
Born a century ago in West Chester, Barber is being performed far and wide, though the most closely watched event is Curtis Opera Theatre's production of his Antony and Cleopatra - the composer's most ambitious score but a devastating failure at its 1966 Metropolitan Opera premiere. Nonetheless, Curtis' run of three performances, starting Wednesday at the Kimmel Center's Perelman Theater, has been sold out since July.
— Read more at David Patrick Stearns - Philadelphia Inquirer

With a bit of help from the Cultural Olympiad, Vancouver Opera offered the first of four performances of John Adams's 1987 opera Nixon in China at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre Saturday. The demanding work's very first Canadian production is a brilliantly effective one.
— Read more at vancouversun.com

Quality isn't always recognized immediately. But few works of art have had so rapid a change in esteem as "Carmen" by Georges Bizet.
"Carmen" was a flop at its premiere in Paris in March 1875. Seven months later, it was a hit in Vienna and has remained one of the most popular operas ever since.
Pittsburgh Opera will present four performances of "Carmen" starting Saturday night at the Benedum Center, Downtown. The production will present "Carmen" in its original form as an opera comique, a work with spoken dialogue between musical numbers.
— Read more at Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

[The sensational life of the curvaceous Texan waitress, oil heiress and Playboy model may well be tailor-made for the operatic stage, says William Langley.]
When Anna Nicole Smith died three years ago, Entertainment Tonight, the wildly popular American television programme that had bought the broadcast rights to her funeral, boasted that the occasion would "make the Oscars look like a barn dance". Ms Smith's two most recent boyfriends, lawyer Howard Stern and celebrity journalist Larry Birkhead, eyeballed each other menacingly across the nave, while Anna's mother, Virgie, arrived to raucous boos from the crowd.
— Read more at telegraph.co.uk

AMBROISE THOMAS'S "Hamlet" returns to the Metropolitan Opera on Tuesday night, no doubt to be furiously denounced once again as a travesty of Shakespeare's tragedy. Composed in 1868 as a five-act French grand opera with all the trimmings and not seen at the Met since 1897, "Hamlet" invariably seems to get bad press, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries. "Pretentious and wearisome," summed up a critic for The New York Times after the Met premiere in 1884.
— Read more at NYTimes.com

Antonio Pappano doesn't have the airs of most international maestros. Ten days ago, I flew with him and the Royal Opera House's orchestra on an early-morning charter flight from Gatwick to Vienna, where they were making their debut at the Konzert-haus in a programme of Wagner, Liszt and Bartok. Pappano had left his home in north London at 5am for the 7.30am check-in, and, though looking as bleary-eyed as the rest of us, he chatted cheerily with the players before taking his place in the front row of the all "roach class" plane.
— Read more at Times Online

From his aisle seat in the Kennedy Center, dressed in a comfy sweater and corduroy slacks, Terrence McNally is gazing serenely at the Opera House stage.
The production he's immersed in is a Russian company's concert version of the Tchaikovsky opera "Eugene Onegin," and though he seems thoroughly engrossed, the serious fan in him can't resist breaking the spell with some running color commentary.
— Read more at washingtonpost.com

Sometimes there's nothing new in modern music.
When Andreas Mitisek, the general and artistic director of Long Beach Opera, was talking about his upcoming performances of "Nixon in China" (Saturday and March 28 at the Terrace Theater) he was asked about its minimalist music by composer John Adams.
"People always think of minimalism as a new thing," he said. "Well, if you listen to the concertos of Antonio Vivaldi (who composed in the 18th century), there's a lot of repetition, and the constant movement of the same kind of musical figures as accompaniment."
— Read more at The Daily Breeze

[from press release] World-renowned British Tenor Ian Bostridge makes his first appearance at UCLA Live Wednesday March 24 at 8 p.m. performing Schubert's Winterreise in its entirety.
Composed in 1827 and based on the poems of Wilhelm Muller, Winterreise was influential in the new-romantic aesthetic of German lied. The cycle of 24 songs tells a dramatic narrative of lost love.
— Learn more at uclalive.org

The Metropolitan Opera today announced the winners of the 2010 National Council Auditions. They are: Leah Crocetto of Oxford, Connecticut; Lori Guilbeau of Golden Meadow, Lousiana; Elliot Madore of Toronto, Canada; Nathaniel Peake of Humble, Texas; and Rachel Willis- Sorensen of Tri-Cities, Washington. The winners were selected from nine finalists who performed arias with the Met Orchestra, conducted by Marco Armiliato. Each winner receives a cash prize of $15,000 and even more importantly, the opportunity to launch a major operatic career.
— Read more at broadwayworld.com

A shoutout to the communications office of the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center for one of the most imaginative press packets I've seen yet, this one drawing attention to next month's Maryland Opera Studio premiere of "Shadowboxer," a work about the legendary Joe Louis by composer Frank Proto and librettist John Chenault.
— Read more at Tim Smith - baltimoresun.com

The struggling New York City Opera, operating with a slender financial cushion, announced plans on Tuesday for another stripped down, five-production season but said it would add a series of concert performances.
— Read more at Daniel J. Wakin - NYTimes.com

Having carved out a hugely successful career with her home company, Opera Australia, soprano Emma Matthews is about to embark on a long-held ambition, namely her debut with the Royal Opera as Vixen Sharp-Ears in The Cunning Little Vixen.
Advance press had told me that she was 'lovely' and 'adorable' and so she proved to be, and in a profession that is often blighted with egos and Divas, Matthews' down-to-earth demeanour and infectious humour came as a welcome relief.
— Read more at musicOMH.com

Britain's Royal Opera will stage the world premiere next year of "Anna Nicole," a work about the life of former Playboy model, actress and tabloid favorite Anna Nicole Smith who died in 2007.
The new opera, by British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and writer Richard Thomas, will be staged by renowned opera director Richard Jones, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.
— Read more at Reuters.com

Opera singer soprano sensation Kiri Te Kanawa will thrill opera lovers in her only Bay Area appearance on March 20 at the Marin Veterans' Memorial Auditorium.
— Read more at sfgate.com

[from press release] The world premiere of the one-act opera Margot Alone in the Light, an adaptation of Ray Bradbury's short story `All Summer in a Day' by composer Clint Borzoni and librettist Emily Conbere will take place at 8:00 PM on Friday and Saturday, April 2 and 3, 2010, at the Gershwin Hotel in New York.
— Read more at operamission.org/

The New York premieres of Bernstein's "A Quiet Place" and Stephen Schwartz's "Seance on a Wet Afternoon," the world stage premiere of John Zorn's "La Machine de l'etre" and the U.S. stage premiere of Morton Feldman's "Neither" highlight New York City Opera's 2010-11 season.
In its second season since returning to Lincoln Center, City Opera will focus on 20th century American composers as it presents another abbreviated schedule of just five productions.
— Read more at Deseret News

When I was in college, I hated Richard Nixon. Everyone I knew (except perhaps my father) hated Richard Nixon. My perspective was as a politically engaged undergraduate at the University of California Berkeley during the war in Vietnam - holding a low draft number.
I gradually stopped hating Nixon. But it wasn't until Oct. 22, 1987, in the company of bejeweled and Stetson-topped Texans, that I began to understand why. Houston Grand Opera had commissioned John Adams' "Nixon in China" to celebrate the opening of a new opera house.
— Read more at Mark Swed - PopMatters

Peter Gelb has had mixed results with risk-taking at the Met, but his latest gamble has paid off: The new production of Shostakovich's "The Nose" (1930) is a brilliantly conceived work of art that succeeds on every level. For this company premiere, the South African artist William Kentridge and the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev exploited the Met's formidable resources to create a huge, complex and highly original show that stunningly captured and communicated the opera's anarchic spirit.
— Read more at Heidi Waleson - WSJ.com

The Metropolitan Opera today announced the names of nine finalists who will sing in the 2010 National Council Auditions Grand Finals Concert on March 14 at 3:00 p.m., with the Met Orchestra conducted by Marco Armiliato. The finalists are: Leah Crocetto, soprano from Adrian, Michigan and Oxford, Connecticut; Lori Guilbeau, soprano from Golden Meadow, Louisiana; Rena Harms soprano from Santa Fe, New Mexico; Haeran Hong, soprano from Kang Won, South Korea; Hyo Na Kim, mezzo-soprano from Seoul, South Korea; Maya Lahyani, mezzo-soprano from Hod-HaSharon, Israel; Elliot Madore, Baritone from Toronto, Canada; Nathaniel Peake, tenor from Humble, Texas, and Rachel Willis-Sorensen, soprano from Tri-Cities, Washington.
— Read more at broadwayworld.com

The Royal Opera House has announced details of the resident companies' 2010-11 season at Covent Garden. In total, there are eight world premieres, two UK premieres, five new productions and fourteen revivals, as well as a major tour to Japan involving Anna Netrebko in Manon and Angela Gheorghiu in La traviata.
New productions of Wagner's Tannhauser, Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride, Massenet's Cendrillon and Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur provide several of the highlights of the new season, along with the world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage's Anna Nicole.
— Read more at MusicalCriticism.com

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The timing couldn't have been worse. Vancouver Opera made a bold decision to launch a new, lavish production of John Adams's opera Nixon in China. The Canadian premiere would coincide with the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, playing off those global events and taking advantage of an international audience. Such an exciting venture would no doubt attract another opera company to partner in the production, which would provide much-needed help with resources.
— Read more at The Globe and Mail

As perhaps the best-known star in opera today, Renee Fleming could probably coast on her looks, voice and rapport with audiences.
And if ever there was an occasion to just mail in a crowd-pleasing series of arias by Puccini, Bellini and the rest, it was the concert Saturday at Festival of the Arts BOCA, an informal - if expensive - outdoor event at which her voice has to be carried over an amplification system.
— Read more at South Florida Classical Review

"War and Peace," the opera, arrived at the Kennedy Center freighted with expectations. Terms like "sprawling" and "masterpiece" are often applied to Prokofiev's score, in keeping with its literary model, Tolstoy's novel. Add in the curiosity value of the opera, seldom done in the West until the Mariinsky Opera and Orchestra began taking it on the road. Then there's the buzz surrounding the massive production, weighing in at 30 tons and costing $2 million to import. Saturday night's performance, conducted by Valery Gergiev, had an awful lot to live up to.
— Read more at Anne Midgette - washingtonpost.com

Before Stalin tightened his grip, the Russian avant-garde flourished in the 1920s. In a country that saw itself as the vanguard of a new world order, writers, painters, musicians and filmmakers felt free, indeed challenged, to find new expressive voices.
Toward the end of the decade, the 22-year-old Dmitri Shostakovich sounded his barbaric yawp in an absurdist opera called The Nose. Rarely seen since then, The Nose had its Metropolitan Opera premiere Friday night.
— Read more at Scott Cantrell - Dallas Morning News

Sarasota Opera's production of Engelbert Humperdinck's gorgeous 1893 fairy tale opera, "Hansel and Gretel," enjoyed a superb revival on Saturday night, bringing new wit and color to this classic fable of good versus evil. If, in this version, the evil part is not quite as scary as one might like, the good is so good that it matters little.
— Read more at HeraldTribune.com

Written for Karita Mattila and premiered in Lyon, the solo-voice opera Emilie opens with the fevered scratch of a pen.
Here is the Marquise du Chatelet, writing late into the night, her swollen belly hidden from society in the Queen of Poland's apartment at Luneville. Physicist, philosopher, linguist and astronomer, author of a dissertation on light, a discourse on happiness and the first translation of Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, she has ordered her papers, fearing imminent death. At the age of 43, after 17 summers of accident-free amorous adventure, "la divine, la sublime Emilie" is about to give birth.
— Read more at The Independent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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