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News

Glyndebourne: lust, greed -and some great tunes

Ivan Hewett [Daily Telegraph, 8 May 2008]

This year Glyndebourne Festival Opera opens with a work in which the virtuous are punished, the wise are mocked, and the lustful and treacherous lavishly rewarded with riches and power - not to mention the best tunes.

A knight at the opera

By TIM CORNWELL [The Scotsman, 8 May 2008]

A BAWDY bedroom scene is playing on Scottish Opera’s rehearsal stage. Baritone Peter Sidhom, playing Sir John Falstaff – in a padded fat suit that bulges bizarrely from both his front and rear – is comically attempting to pin soprano Amanda Roocroft on the bed.

Latest mash-up: COC and hip hop

(Photo: Kevin Clark)
JOSHUA OSTROFF [Globe and Mail, 7 May 2008]

If you had to pick a pair of musical genres furthest apart from each other, opera and hip hop would be a fairly safe bet. One thing they do share is sizable purist fan bases, which, whether they use the phrase or not, prefer practitioners to keep it real. Nonetheless, these star-crossed genres are coming together in a performance called The Hip Hopera, a new collaboration by the Canadian Opera Company and the Royal Conservatory of Music.

Muti to CSO

By Sarah Bryan Miller [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 7 May 2008]

It’s potentially great news for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra: they’ve got a new music director, and he’s one of the best.

Carolyn Abbate Joins University of Pennsylvania Faculty as Professor of Music

[7 May 2008]

(Media-Newswire.com) - PHILADELPHIA –- Carolyn Abbate, who ranks among the world’s foremost musicologists, has been appointed the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania, effective July 1. Abbate comes to Penn from Harvard University where she is the Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Fanny Peabody Professor of Music.

Conductor to skip vampire-themed opera

By Bradley S. Klapper [AP, 7 May 2008]

Acclaimed conductor Franz Welser-Moest will not take the rostrum for two scheduled billings of a vampire-inspired staging of "Die Fledermaus" at the Zurich Opera, the Swiss opera house said Wednesday.

Atalanta at the Royal College of Music

Richard Morrison [Times Online, 23 April 2008]

By all accounts Handel had a sense of humour. So I'm sure he would have been tickled by this delightful Royal College of Music production (ending the London Handel Festival) that transfers the story of the butch, boar-hunting Princess Atalanta and her clandestine quest for a worthy suitor to a 21st-century seaside resort populated by stroppy adolescents texting each other while hanging morosely round a litter bin. This is possibly the first Handel production in which a football scarf plays a central role.

Florez wows crowd at Met with 18 high Cs

By MIKE SILVERMAN [AP, 22 April 2008]

NEW YORK -- Rewarding a rare encore with an even rarer standing ovation in midperformance, a rapturous Metropolitan Opera audience hailed the company's beguiling new production of Donizetti's comic gem, "La Fille du Regiment" ("The Daughter of the Regiment").

No Breaks in Life, Not Even in a Fast-Food World

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI [NY Times, 21 April 2008]

PARIS — Gerard Mortier, the brilliant Belgian-born director of major European music festivals and opera houses, is poised to shake up the cultural scene in New York when he takes charge of the New York City Opera in 2009. A tireless champion of contemporary works and a provocative impresario with a penchant for radical productions that have alternately thrilled and scandalized audiences, Mr. Mortier has said that he is eager to take the helm of the “people’s opera,” as the City Opera has long been called.

A mountain of music

[The Guardian, 21 April 2008]

The sloping marble roof of the Oslo opera house may be perfect for snowboarding. But, for Jonathan Glancey, the warm heart of this stunning building is just as thrilling

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