By Seth Colter Walls [Newsweek, 15 March 2010]
The story of Franz Schreker flips classical music’s greatest cliché on its head. Instead of toiling in obscurity during his life and gaining fame only after death, the Austrian was a star as a young composer—before he was all but erased from history. In 1919, the influential critic Paul Bekker wrote that Schreker was the only operatic author with a claim to Wagner’s exalted legacy.
By Francis Carlin [Financial Times, 9 March 2010]
Das Rheingold has been a long wait. The Paris Opera has not seen a full Ring cycle since 1957. Now, Nicolas Joel has embarked on a new cycle over two seasons with a first, very mixed, result.
NY Times ArtsBeat [9 March 2010]
Today on ArtsBeat three New York Times critics — Anthony Tommasini, chief classical music critic; Roberta Smith, art critic; and Dwight Garner, book critic — are discussing the music, the art and the literary threads of “The Nose.” Daniel J. Wakin, classical music reporter for The Times, is moderating.You can read the previous posts here.
By Becca Mitchell [TC Daily Planet, 8 March 2010]
There’s no denying La Bohème is one of the world’s most famous operas. Giacomo Puccini’s 1896 opera is staged frequently across the globe and was the inspiration for the Tony-winning musical Rent, which ran for more than 12 years on Broadway and was just staged in an acclaimed Minneapolis production. One could argue it’s the love story at the center of the piece that’s contributed the most to the opera’s lasting resonance. And on that level, if not on all levels, the current Minnesota Opera production delivers.
By Allan Kozinn [NY Times, 8 March 2010]
Philip Langridge, an English tenor who was renowned for roles by Benjamin Britten and was an eloquent interpreter of Handel, Mozart, Schubert, Janacek and Stravinsky, died in England on Friday. He was 70 and lived near Guildford, southwest of London.
By Andrew Clark [Financial Times,7 March 2010]
The good news first: having lost the indisposed Plácido Domingo for the entire run, the Royal Opera found a passable replacement for the role of Bajazet, the imprisoned king in Handel’s most serious opera.
By Andrew Clark [Financial Times, 2 March 2010]
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 Châtelet (1706-49) in Voltaire’s shadow, but she stole the limelight at Monday’s premiere of a new opera by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho.
By Catherine Hickley [Bloomberg, 10 February 2010]
Peter Alward, the former head of EMI Group Ltd.’s classical music division, will take over the scandal-ridden Salzburg Easter Festival as soon as next week, the Austrian weekly magazine News reported.
By Mort Levine [San Jose Mercury, 10 February 2010]
If you sit back and simply take in the “heavenly frivolities” of Mozart’s masterpiece, “The Marriage of Figaro,” with its rapid fire array of eminently memorable melodies, you might well miss the undercurrent of sexual tension and class resentment between nobles and those who serve them.
By Francis Carlin [Financial Times, 9 February 2010]
Come in all dirty men in macs from Geneva and neighbouring cantons. Olivier Py’s new Lulu comes with a health warning that the film used in the staging might shock sensitive souls; children under 16 are advised to stay away.
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.
Registration: You will have the opportunity to register with us, and sometimes registration is required before certain Site features can be used. Our registration forms may request your contact information (such as your name, email address, mailing address, etc.), demographic information (such as your country, gender, etc.), and profile data (such as your music preferences, entertainment practices, etc). You may be assigned a site username and/or password. For our internal purposes, we use this information to communicate with you and provide the services you have requested, and to provide a more personalized experience on our sites. For example, your registration may allow you to use and post to
Site message boards, create site profiles, etc. We use aggregate demographic and profile information about our audience in order to improve our service, for marketing purposes and/or for industry reporting purposes.
Newsletters and Other Communications from Us: You may elect to receive newsletters or other email communications from us, and we may also offer other users the opportunity to sign up to receive such information. When there is a separate sign-up for newsletters, we ask for contact information such as name and email address, and, occasionally, demographic and profile information. We use this information in the same manner as we use the contact information in the Registration process described above. Recipients of our mailings can unsubscribe by following instructions that may appear at the end of the email newsletter.
Note that in order to keep our registered users informed about the operation of our services, we may send emails and announcements that are needed for the proper functioning and administration of the Site.
Communications with Us: We have features where you can submit information to us (such as when contacting us with a question or feedback). We will may retain your emails and other information you submit to us for our internal purposes, and to help us to serve you better. Communications with Friends: We may offer features where you can send information to others, such as e-cards or "Tell A Friend" features. We will use the contact information you enter for your friends to send the email or e-card.
Interactive and Community Features: The Site may offer interactive and community features, such as message boards, chat, email accounts, instant messaging, profiles, personal homepages, etc. All information posted or sent through these features may be publicly available, and you should be aware that when you voluntarily disclose personal information (e.g., user name, email address, phone number) through these features, that information can be collected and used by others and may result in unsolicited communications from other people. Users' posts may be publicly and/or internally associated with their profiles/screen-names. Users are solely responsible for the content of messages they post or send on public forums.
Contests, Sweepstakes and Surveys: We may also have contests, sweepstakes and surveys at our sites. When you enter or participate in them, we request contact information from you (such as your full name, email address, mailing address, and telephone number) and may also request demographic or profile information. We will use the information you provide for the purpose of conducting the promotion (for example, to contact you if you have won). We may also use the information to send you newsletters and other information we think may be of interest. Recipients of our mailings can unsubscribe by following instructions that may appear at the end of the email newsletter. Any personal information collected will be used by us and may be associated with registration information. We may share aggregate information with others. We may sometimes partner with sponsors in offering contests, sweepstakes or surveys, and may share (provide and receive) information with them.
E-Commerce: The Site makes available certain items for purchase. In order to complete purchases made on the Site, we collect billing address and credit card information (such as account name, number and expiration date). This information is used for billing purposes only and is not otherwise shared. In the future, the Site may also feature special purchases or product offerings which link to a number of other third-party store sites and those stores may collect and use your personal information and credit information to process your order subject to their own privacy policies. We are not responsible for those other sites and advise you to check their policies and terms and conditions as they may vary.
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.