04 Jul 2012
Continued Progress at the Vienna State Opera
In his second season, intendant Dominique Meyer has chalked up increases both in tickets sold and earnings at the Vienna State Opera.
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Written on Skin: the Melos Sinfonia take George Benjamin's opera to St Petersburg
As I approach St Cyprian’s Church in Marylebone, musical sounds which are at once strange and sensuous surf the air. Inside I find seventy or so instrumentalists and singers nestled somewhat crowdedly between the pillars of the nave, rehearsing George Benjamin’s much praised 2012 opera, Written on Skin.
Bampton Classical Opera Young Singers’ Competition 2017
Bampton Classical Opera’s third Young Singers’ Competition takes place this autumn, culminating in a public final at Holywell Music Room, Oxford on November 19. This biennial competition was first launched in 2013 to celebrate the company’s 20th birthday, and is aimed at identifying the finest emerging young opera singers currently working in the UK.
Peter Kellner announced as winner of 2018 Wigmore Hall/Independent Opera Voice Fellowship
Independent Opera (IO) was very present at the Wigmore Hall last week. On Thursday 5 October, IO announced 26 year old Slovakian bass Peter Kellner as the winner of the 2018 Wigmore Hall/IO Voice Fellowship, a two-year award of £10,000 plus professional mentoring from IO and the Wigmore Hall. A graduate of the Konzervatórium Košice Timonova and the Mozarteum University Salzburg, Peter is currently a member of Oper Graz in Austria where later this season he will sing the title role of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro and Colline in Puccini’s La bohème.
‘Never was such advertisement for a film!’: Thomas Kemp and the OAE present a film of Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier at the Oxford Lieder Festival
Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier was premiered at the Dresden Semperoper on 26th January 1911. Almost fifteen years to the day, on 10th January 1926, the theatre hosted another Rosenkavalier ‘premiere’, with the screening of a silent film version of the opera, directed by Robert Wiene - best known for his expressionistic masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. The two-act scenario had been devised by Hugo von Hoffmansthal and the screening was accompanied by a symphony orchestra which Strauss himself conducted.
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I have to confess, somewhat sheepishly, at the start of my conversation with Mark Padmore, that I had not previously been aware of the annual music festival held in the small Cotswolds town of Tetbury, which was founded in 2002 and to which Padmore will return later this month to perform a recital of lieder by Schubert and Schumann with pianist Till Fellner.
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It’s six or so years ago since soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn appeared as an exciting and highly acclaimed new voice on the UK operatic stage, with critics praising her ‘ravishing account’ (The Stage) of Mozart’s Countess in Investec Opera Holland Park’s 2011 Le nozze di Figaro in which ‘Porgi, amor’ was a ‘highlight of the evening’.
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Battles administration neglects FLO’s assets by defunding the program
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2017 Summer Festival at Lucerne
Lucerne Festival announces its 2017 Summer Festival.
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A New Opera Company with a True Story of Forbidden Love
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Commentary
There were 588,990 attendees passing through the doors for some 360 performances of opera, ballet and children’s programs. The average capacity was above 98%. There is little evidence of Europe’s economic troubles in this Danube city.
His program of gently expanding the house repertory and his successful renovation of the sleepy resident ballet company has won him many fans. The work of new music director, Franz Welser-Möst, has been praised and his introduction of baroque operas and more contemporary fare were welcomed by the opera-loving Viennese. The increases are remarkable considering that his “competition” the Volksoper and the Theater an der Wien, are also both healthy.
Frank Cadenhead