http://www.operatoday.com/ en-us gary@operatoday.com 2013-05-21T12:39:44-06:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/05/gareth_john_wig.php Baritone Gareth John is rapidly accumulating a war-chest of honours. Winner of the 2013 Kathleen Ferrier Award, he recently won the Royal Academy of Music Patrons’ Award and was presented the Silver Medal by the Worshipful Company of Musicians. 6288@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-05-21T12:39:44-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/05/la_boheme_at_en.php This second revival of Jonathan Miller’s La bohème was the first time I had caught the production. 6278@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-05-21T11:15:00-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/05/rolando_villazo.php It’s Verdi’s bicentenary year and Rolando Villazón has two new CDs to plug — titled somewhat confusingly, ‘Villazón: Verdi’ and ‘Villazón’s Verdi’, the latter a ‘personal selection’ of favourite numbers performed by stars of the past and present. 6287@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-05-21T09:30:23-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/05/brahms_third_in.php Nicola Luisotti and the San Francisco Opera Orchestra climbed out of the War Memorial pit, braved the wind whipped bay and held spellbound an audience at Cal Performances’ Zellerbach Auditorium at UC Berkeley. 6284@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-05-20T20:33:00-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/05/ariane_et_barbe.php Paul Dukas’ Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, first heard in 1907, once seemed important. Arturo Toscanini conducted the Met premiere in 1911 with Farrar and later arranged some of its music for a 1947 recording with his NBC Symphony. 6286@http://www.operatoday.com/ Recordings 2013-05-20T13:48:15-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/05/glyndebourne_ar.php Utterly mad but absolutely right — Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos started the Glyndebourne 2013 season with an explosion. Strauss could hardly have made his intentions more clear. Ariadne auf Naxos is not “about” Greek myth so much as a satire on art and the way art is made. 6285@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-05-19T17:32:16-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/05/paris_opera_awa.php http://www.paris-opera-awards.fr/parisoperraawards-9480.html 6283@http://www.operatoday.com/ News 2013-05-17T11:05:27-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/05/post_1.php Rossini’s La donna del Lago at the Royal Opera House boasts a superstar cast. Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Flórez are perhaps the best in these roles in the business at this time. Yet the conductor Michele Mariotti is also hot news. 6282@http://www.operatoday.com/ Interviews 2013-05-17T06:09:52-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/05/lohengrin_bayre.php Opera in three acts. Words and music by Richard Wagner. 6281@http://www.operatoday.com/ Repertoire 2013-05-16T13:13:03-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/05/wagner_200_year.php The current theme celebrates Richard Wagner's birth 200 years ago. Over the course of the next several weeks, recordings of each of works will be presented, including recordings of live performances when available. Parsifal, Bayreuth 2012 Live Lohengrin, Bayreuth 2011... 6280@http://www.operatoday.com/ Theme 2013-05-16T11:47:01-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/05/parsifal_bayreu.php 6279@http://www.operatoday.com/ Repertoire 2013-05-16T11:01:09-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/05/wozzeck_at_eno.php “Man is an abyss. It makes one dizzy to look into it.” So utters Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, repeating what was also a recurring motif in the playwright’s own letters. 6277@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-05-14T09:03:53-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/05/mulhouse_rare_b.php National Opera Company of the Rhine has marked this year’s Benjamin Britten celebration with a remarkably compelling, often gripping new production of the seldom-seen Owen Wingrave. 6264@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-05-11T22:23:00-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/05/frankfurts_intr.php Once upon a time, Frankfurt Opera had the baddest ass reputation in Germany as “the” cutting edge producer of must-see opera. 6266@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-05-11T22:13:00-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/05/rigoletto_at_ly.php Productions of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto can serve as a vehicle for individual singers to make a strong impression and become afterward associated with specific roles in the opera. 6268@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-05-11T09:41:00-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/05/the_barbican_ha.php Just in case we were not aware that the evening’s programme was ‘themed’, the Britten Sinfonia designed a visual accompaniment to their musical exploration of night, sleep and dreams. 6276@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-05-11T09:07:00-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/05/aida_manitoba_o.php Poor Aida! She never seems to have anything go her way. 6275@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-05-10T10:58:13-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/05/superlative_sin.php Is it possible to upstage Jonas Kaufmann? Kaufmann was brilliant in this Verdi Don Carlo at the Royal Opera House, London, but the rest of the cast was so good that he was but first among equals. Don Carlo is a vehicle for stars, but this time the stars were everyone on stage and in the pit. Even the solo arias, glorious as they are, grow organically out of perfect ensemble. This was a performance that brought out the true beauty of Verdi's music. 6273@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-05-05T20:13:07-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/05/french_song_wig.php The big names were absent: Duparc, D’Indy, Debussy, Ravel … and while Fauré, Chausson, Roussel and several members of Les Six put in an appearance, in less than familiar guises, this survey of French song of the early 20th century and interwar years deliberately took us on a journey through infrequently travelled terrain. 6272@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-05-04T03:46:05-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/05/rare_restoratio.php Composed between 1718 and 1720, Handel’s Esther is sometimes described as the ‘first English Oratorio’, but is in fact a hybrid form, mixing elements of oratorio, masque, pastoral and opera. 6271@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-05-03T03:17:21-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/05/kate_lindsey_at.php It would seem a logical step for the mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey to take on the role of the Composer in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. 6270@http://www.operatoday.com/ Interviews 2013-05-01T14:53:44-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/05/berlioz_the_dam.php Hector Berlioz's légende dramatique, La Damnation de Faust, exists somewhere between cantata and opera. Berlioz's flexible attitude to dramatic form made the piece unworkable on the stages of early 19th century Paris and his music is so vivid that you wonder whether the piece needs staging at all. 6269@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-05-01T09:11:56-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/douglas_boyd_on.php “Aim for excellence”, says Douglas Boyd, new Artistic Director of Garsington Opera at Wormsley, “and the audience will follow you”. 6267@http://www.operatoday.com/ Interviews 2013-04-29T12:47:48-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/elizabeth_conne.php St. John’s Smith Square was the site of Elizabeth Connell’s final London concert, intended as a farewell to London on her moving to Australia. It was rendered ultimately final by her unexpected death. 6265@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-04-28T17:35:25-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/aida_with_all_t.php With the building of the Suez Canal, Egypt became more interesting to Western Europeans. Khedive Ismail Pasha wanted a hymn by Verdi for the opening of a new opera house in Cairo, but the composer said he did not write occasional pieces. 6263@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-04-25T20:37:00-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/operas_awards_l.php A brand new award to promote opera has been unveiled in London. 6262@http://www.operatoday.com/ 2013-04-24T09:03:27-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/die_zauberflote.php 6261@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-04-23T12:30:26-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/a_chat_with_aid.php When I spoke with Zandra Rhodes, she was in her large San Diego workspace, which she described as having walls decorated with her own huge black and white drawings. 6258@http://www.operatoday.com/ Interviews 2013-04-23T11:53:11-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/brindley_sherra.php Brindley Sherratt sings Sarastro in Mozart Die Zauberflöte at the Royal Opera House, London. All performances are sold out, though returns are possible. The entire run (which ends 9th May) is dedicated to the memory of Sir Colin Davis who conducted this production, by David McVicar, most recently in 2011. 6260@http://www.operatoday.com/ 2013-04-19T21:05:13-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/london_music_un.php http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/london-music-under-the-shadow-of-handel 6259@http://www.operatoday.com/ News 2013-04-19T12:28:21-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/superb_bbc_prom.php The 2013 BBC Proms season ahs just been announced. It's spectacular - almost all of Wagner's major operas feature either in full performance or as excerpts. Verdi, Britten, Tippett and Birtwistle also feature. And Joyce DiDonato headlines a glorious Last Night of the Proms. 6257@http://www.operatoday.com/ 2013-04-18T10:59:04-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/placido_domingo.php Plácido Domingo's London debut as Nabucco at the Royal Opera House was received with rapture. Domingo's position in opera is immense. His very presence comes over so well that any performance feels like a historic event. He is a marvel. If Domingo was singing Plácido Domingo rather than Nabucco, it hardly mattered. He delivered the big areas well, and was particularly impressive in the typically Verdian dialogues between father and daughter. Domingo isn't a singer who needs Personenregie. He is simply himself and that's enough. 6256@http://www.operatoday.com/ 2013-04-16T18:29:05-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/kaufmann_wagner.php The economics of the recording companies dictate much that is not ideal. Wagner’s operas were not composed as they were in order to permit the extraction of bleeding chunks, even on those occasions when strophic song forms do occur. 6255@http://www.operatoday.com/ Recordings 2013-04-16T10:02:39-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/sir_colin_davis.php http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9994121/Sir-Colin-Davis.html 6254@http://www.operatoday.com/ News 2013-04-15T13:51:41-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/michael_van_der.php Michel van der Aa's Sunken Garden had its world premiere at the Barbican Theatre, under the auspices of the ENO. Van der Aa is a well respected artist, closely associated with the Nederlandse Opera. His Up Close, presented together with Pierre Audi's Liebestod in 2011, won a Grawemeyer award. Sunken Garden is a huge leap ahead from Up Close, and also from the earlier After Life, also presented at the Barbican and in Amsterdam. Sunken Garden is altogether more ambitious, and successfully achieves van der Aa's dreams of linking different art forms to create a Gesammstkunstwerk for the age of technology. It will divide opinion, however, as anything truly experimental usually does. 6253@http://www.operatoday.com/ 2013-04-14T20:32:24-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/the_marriage_of.php Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro has a libretto by Lorenzo daPonte based on the French play La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro (The Crazy Day or the Marriage of Figaro) by Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799). 6252@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-04-12T09:36:00-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/badens_flute_go.php For its world class Easter Festival, Baden-Baden mounted a Die Zauberflöte that owed more to the grey penitential doldrums of Lent than to the unbridled jubilance of re-birth. 6248@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-04-11T15:59:00-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/bonjour_m_gaugu.php Once Berkeley Opera, renamed West Edge Opera, this enterprising company offers the Bay Area’s only serious alternative to corporate opera, to wit Bonjour M. Gauguin. 6247@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-04-11T10:54:00-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/mahler_composed.php In the first of pianist Julius Drake’s three-part series, ‘Perspectives’, our gaze was directed at Gustav Mahler’s eclectic musical responses to human experiences: from the trauma and distress of anguished love to the sweet contentment of true friendship, from the agonised introspection of the artist to the diverse dramas of human interaction. 6251@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-04-11T09:43:00-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/cinderella_goes.php The Los Angeles opera company marketed its spring production of Rossini's La Cenerentola as Cinderella though there is no opera by that name. The libretto of La Cenerentola is not the Cinderella story we know. 6250@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-04-10T11:50:00-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/operas_based_on.php 4484@http://www.operatoday.com/ Theme 2013-04-10T00:00:03-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/music_from_joha.php 4561@http://www.operatoday.com/ Repertoire 2013-04-09T22:04:50-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/operas_based_on.php This theme relates to operas based on the works of Friedrich von Schiller. 4346@http://www.operatoday.com/ Theme 2013-04-09T13:57:17-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/culture_the_cem.php http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-13-280_en.htm?locale=en 6246@http://www.operatoday.com/ News 2013-04-07T14:48:10-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/die_walkure_par.php The Paris Opéra has not staged a full Ring Cycle since 1957, but its current season will conclude with a correction of this grand operatic gap. 6245@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-04-05T11:47:26-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/manon_lescaut_w.php Washington National’s 2012-2013 season continues this spring with a production of Giacomo Puccini’s first successful opera. 6244@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-04-05T11:18:49-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/murder_in_the_c.php Italian composer Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968) wrote more than fifteen operas, of which almost none are staged today. 6242@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-04-05T10:45:00-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/the_firework_ma.php 6243@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-04-04T10:01:38-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/04/the_gospel_acco.php Composer John Adams’ smashing, crashing and poignant The Gospel According to the Other Mary, created in collaboration with Peter Sellars, made its second appearance at Disney Hall with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. 6241@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-04-03T12:36:18-06:00 http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/03/verdi_nabucco_r.php 6240@http://www.operatoday.com/ Performances 2013-03-31T20:11:52-06:00