By Rosemary Sorensen [The Australian, 2 September 2010]
PUCCINI'S La Boheme is about Mimi, that pathetic creature who loves oh so briefly, then is snuffed out, coughing up her guts with a bad case of consumption. Never mind that she is able - poor and ill though she may be - to warble at the top of her spotty lungs and drive her lover to distraction. Mimi is a tragic maid.
[SFGate.com, 2 September 2010]
Dear Mr. Kosman: How come we don't have any modern opera composers that approach those of the past? When you hear "Carmen" or "Tosca," you can hum the melodies of those compositions, but I dare anyone to hum the melodies of anything composed after 1930. It would be so nice to hear a new "warhorse" opera. Where is the modern-day version of Verdi, Wagner, Puccini or Bizet?
By Dylan Loeb McClain [NY Times, 2 September 2010]
Sunday’s chess column was about Noam Elkies, a Harvard mathematics professor who is also a music composer and chess player. Though Elkies is unusual at being talented in all three areas, he is not entirely unique. Through the years, there have been a number of strong chess players who were excellent mathematicians or musicians.
By BWW News Desk [Broadway World, 1 September 2010]
Washington National Opera (WNO) and The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts have announced the retirement of Music Director Heinz Fricke. The announcement marks the conclusion of the German maestro's remarkable 18-year tenure leading the Washington National Opera Orchestra and the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, which cooperatively share a corps of 61 professional musicians.
By Alan Rodger [Herald Scotland, 31 August 2010]
Michael Tumelty’s trenchant criticism of the decision to reduce the orchestra of Scottish Opera to half-time working is high on anger and suggestions of mischief (“Hang your head in shame, Scottish Opera, you are a disgrace to the nation”, Herald Arts, August 28).
Walter Weidringer [Die Presse, 30 August 2010]
Die Berliner Philharmoniker unter Simon Rattle triumphierten mit Schönberg, Webern und Berg. Mit solch beredtem Ausdruck erfüllten die Berliner auch die bewegenden Totenklagen von Weberns.
[Focus, 30 August 2010]
Dies war der Fall nach seinem Debüt an der legendären New Yorker Metropolitan Opera in La Traviata im Februar 2006. Die Erinnerungen daran (Meinen die wirklich mich?) lässt ihn an die Anfänge seiner Karriere in Deutschland in der Provinz, aber auch an persönliche Krisen zurückdenken. Aber wenn eine große alte Dame der Opernkunst wie Christa Ludwig meint, nachdem sie Kaufmann zum ersten Mal gehört hat, das ist ganz große Kunst, dann lässt das aufhorchen.
By Anna Picard [The Independent, 29 August 2010]
Gothic sensibility permeated the Royal Albert Hall on Monday evening: euphoric, melancholic, sun-dazzled and moon-drunk.
By Fiona Maddocks [The Guardian, 29 August 2010]
Driven and obsessive, drawing on 1970s jazz funk, soul and gospel, Mark-Anthony Turnage's new BBC Proms commission Hammered Out burst noisily upon the world at Thursday's world premiere conducted by David Robertson. A scrunchy havoc of whip, sleigh bells, saxophones, bass guitar, as well as the full forces of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Nibelung note of a household hammer for good measure, bashed, danced and whirled through this 15-minute non-stop toccata.
By Jeremy Eichler [Boston Globe, 29 August 2010]
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. — The year in the photo is 1920. The great Viennese composer Alban Berg, 35 years old, stands at an open window of his Vienna home, gazing directly out at the camera yet also somehow beyond it. His face conceals like a mask. The breakthrough triumph of his first opera, “Wozzeck,’’ is five years in the unknowable future. We sense perhaps an air of reserved confidence, perhaps a tint of melancholy. But there is more to this picture.
Chicago, IL, August 28, 2010 --(PR.com)-- On October 22, Roosevelt University will host a multimedia opera production composed and produced by Kyong Mee Choi, assistant professor of music composition in the university’s music conservatory and recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. The opera will be held at Ganz Hall, Roosevelt University, 430 S. Michigan Ave., at 7:30 p.m.
By Richard Scheinin [San Jose Mercury News, 28 August 2010]
Future operatic soprano Jasmina Halimic discovered Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" as a schoolgirl in Bosnia. But it wasn't until years later -- after moving to the United States in 1994 -- that she really got it: Tolstoy's masterpiece became an Oprah's Book Club selection in 2004, and Halimic reread it while studying music in Indiana.
By Andrew Clark [Financial Times, 27 August 2010]
By choosing Oceans Apart for his 2010 theme, Edinburgh International Festival director Jonathan Mills opened up fertile avenues for exploration in spoken theatre and classical music, while leaving little room for manoeuvre in opera. The obvious choice was Puccini’s wild west thriller La fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West). Premiered in New York 100 years ago and never previously heard in Scotland, it conjures a picture of the New World that, though seen through the eyes of a composer who had never experienced it, effectively captures the values of a frontier community.
By Lynsey Hanley [The Guardian, 27 August 2010]
There are more ways of divvying people up than according to how much money they've got. A survey this week by Reader's Digest concluded that a large proportion of Britain is culturally impoverished, with one-third of those surveyed never having listened to classical music and three-quarters unable to identify Edward Elgar as the composer of Pomp and Circumstance.
By Jessica Duchen [The Independent, 27 August 2010]
On Gustav Mahler's 11th birthday, the story goes, a family friend asked what he wanted to be when he grew up. "Jesus Christ," said the lad. To the astonished "Why?" he replied: "Because I want to suffer for other people."
Opera Today, Inc. cares about your privacy. This privacy policy tells you what information we collect at our web site www.operatoday.com (the "Site") and how we use it.
There are many places on our Site where you can share your personal information with us, and where you can communicate with others.
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The Site has features that automatically collect information from users to assist us in creating sites that honor our users' preferences and serve their needs.
The Site uses cookies, which are small data files containing information about the user that are stored on the user's hard drive. Some cookies are used to make login to our sites easier (such as by remembering usernames, passwords and preferences). If users reject cookies, they may be limited in using some areas of the Site. Cookies can also enable us to track users' movements and target their interests to enhance their experience at the Site. We may also collect clickstream data and assign unique identifiers to our users for the same purpose. Information obtained with these technologies may be associated with personal information for registered users.
The Site may also feature editorial and/or promotional content of third parties. These third parties may also use cookies or other technology, and we advise you to check their privacy policies for information about their cookies and other privacy practices. For our internal purposes, we may gather information such as the date, time, browser type, navigation history, and IP address of all visitors to the Site. We use this information for our internal security audit log, trend analysis, and system administration, and to gather broad demographic information about our user base for aggregate use.
We may share your information with others if you choose to let us do so, such as where we offer opt-out or opt-in choices. Other than as set forth in this policy, we do not share your personally identifiable information with other companies, apart from those acting as our agents in providing our service to you, and which agree to use it only for that purpose and to keep the information secure and confidential. We will also disclose information we maintain when required to do so by law, for example, in response to a court order or a subpoena or other legal obligation, in response to a law enforcement agency's request, or in special cases when we have reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be causing injury to or interference with (either intentionally or unintentionally) our rights or property. You should also be aware that courts of equity, such as U.S. Bankruptcy Courts, may have the authority under certain circumstances to permit your information to be shared or transferred to third parties without your permission.
We may share (provide and receive) aggregate information, which is not personally identifiable, with others. This information may include demographic data such as the gender and/or geographic location of groups of users, but it will not include personal information (such as your name or email address). We use aggregate demographic information about our audience in order to improve our service, for marketing purposes and/or industry reporting purposes.
Our sites may provide you the opportunity to choose to receive communications from us or from third parties at the point where we request information about you. You may also have the option of removing your name from any email list. In order to ensure the quickest removal from any list, it is best to follow the specific instructions outlined within the communications you receive from us.
If a user's personally identifiable information changes (such as zip code), we endeavor to provide a way to correct or update that user's personal data. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions regarding making changes to your data.
We strive to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). We do not knowingly collect personal information from U.S. children under 13 without appropriate parental notice and consent. We are committed to protecting children’s privacy.
Security for all personally identifiable information is extremely important to us. We store your personal information securely, and use special procedures designed to protect the information we collect from loss, misuse, unauthorized access or disclosure, alteration or destruction.
We may provide links to third-party sites or content. We are not responsible for those other sites, their privacy policies or how they treat information about their users, and we advise you to check their privacy policies.
We reserve the right to modify, alter or otherwise update this Privacy Policy at any time, so we encourage you to review this policy from time to time.
If you have any questions about our privacy practices, please feel free to contact us by e-mail or by regular mail at Opera Today, Inc., PO Box 541245, Omaha, NE 68154, Attn: Privacy Questions
Last updated 15 December 2005.