English Touring Opera are delighted to announce a season of lyric monodramas to tour nationally from October to December. The season features music for solo singer and piano by Argento, Britten, Tippett and Shostakovich with a bold and inventive approach to making opera during social distancing.
Conductor Oliver Zeffman has commissioned the very first opera for a socially distanced world, which is now available to watch exclusively on Apple Music. Eight Songs From Isolation has been written by eight leading composers, specifically for streaming - rather than live performance - and is the first opera written for a time when the performers were unable to meet in person.
Leading freelance musicians unite in Parliament Square to call for targeted support for colleagues in the arts and entertainment sector.
Duo Lewis Murphy (composer) and Laura Attridge (writer) have launched a charitable song project entitled Notes From Isolation. The resulting songs, featuring some of the UK's top singing talent, are being released online between August and October 2020 and can be enjoyed free of charge.
The Royal Opera House is thrilled to announce an exciting, wide-ranging new line-up for its autumn programme. For the first time, extraordinary performances will be accessible online for a global audience through livestreams and for socially distanced live audiences at our home in Covent Garden. In a global first, we present a new opera in hyper-reality, alongside repertory favourites from both artistic companies.
Some of the most famous and outstanding stars from the opera world are to take part in a very special evening from Wexford Festival Opera, including Aigul Akhmetshina, Joseph Calleja, Daniela Barcellona, Juan Diego Flórez, Igor Golovatenko, Ermonela Jaho, Sergey Romanovsky, and many more.
Following its successful launch in 2019, OperaStreaming streams nine operas on YouTube from the historic opera houses of Emilia-Romagna during the 2020-21 season, with fully-staged productions of Verdi's La traviata in October from Modena and Verdi'sOtello from Bologna in...
‘A brief history of song’ is the subtitle of the 2020 Oxford Lieder Festival (10th-17th October), which will present an ambitious, diverse and imaginative programme of 40 performances and events.
Bampton Classical Opera returns to the Baroque splendour of London’s St John’s Smith Square on November 6 with a concert performance of Gluck’s one-act opera The Crown, the first in the UK since 1987. The performance will also be filmed and available to watch on demand on the Bampton website from 9 November.
While many of us spent lockdown at home taking it a little easier, composer Andrew Synnott wrote an opera.
Owen Wingrave is part of the new Interim Season of 19 brand new events, all free to view online between September and December 2020.
The Arts Council has awarded innovative UK charity Music and Theatre For All (MTFA) a major new grant to develop three ambitious new projects in the wake of Covid 19.
English National Opera (ENO) will reopen the London Coliseum to socially distanced audiences on 6 and 7 November for special performances of Mozart’s Requiem. These will provide audiences with an opportunity to reflect upon and to commemorate the difficulties the nation has faced during the pandemic.
The Royal Opera House is proud to continue its curated #OurHouseToYourHouse programme into the autumn, bringing audiences the best of the ROH through a new series of Friday Premieres and cultural highlights.
After six months of closure, the Royal Opera House is thrilled to be opening its doors to the public as part of Open House London weekend, giving visitors a taste of one of the world’s most famous theatres for free.
The Academy of St Martin in the Fields is thrilled to announce re:connect - an eight concert series with live socially distanced audiences at its namesake church, St. Martin-in-the-Fields. The autumn concerts will take place at 5pm & 7:30pm on two Saturdays per month with guest artists including baritone Roderick Williams, soprano Carolyn Sampson and composer-conductor-pianist Ryan Wigglesworth performing a wide range of repertoire.
Music and poetry unite and collide across centuries, from the Medieval to the Enlightenment to the present day. This year, the Oxford Lieder Festival will present a thrilling and innovative programme comprising more than forty events streamed over eight days.
The English Concert with artistic director Harry Bicket is delighted to announce a series of concerts from 1-15 October 2020. The concerts take place in historic London venues with star soloists and will be performed and streamed live to a paying audience at 7pm GMT on each performance date. The programmes include first-class vocal and instrumental works from the two pillars of the English Baroque, covering different aspects of the repertoire.
Glyndebourne has announced plans for a ‘staycation’ series of socially-distanced indoor performances, starting on 10 October 2020.
The Royal Opera House is delighted to announce two packed evenings of opera and ballet, live from our stage in Covent Garden and available to view wherever you are in the world online.
MEMORIES OF ROBERT MERRILL: AMERICAN OPERATIC ICON by James Engdahl, Engdahl Artists International Robert Merrill, born Moishe Miller in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, passed away last Saturday, October 22, 2004, as he watched the first game of the World...
MEMORIES OF ROBERT MERRILL: AMERICAN OPERATIC ICON
by James Engdahl, Engdahl Artists International
Robert Merrill, born Moishe Miller in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, passed away last Saturday, October 22, 2004, as he watched the first game of the World Series on television. If there was anything that would have given him as much pleasure as his singing career did, it would have been playing baseball!
I have been asked to share my memories of Mr. Merrill. They were few but were each great lessons to me as a young singer as to what to expect from an artist's life.
The first time I saw Robert Merrill was after a Met performance of Un ballo in Maschera with Nicolei Gedda and Roberta Peters during my first year in New York. I had never seen either these artists before and I was very excited as I had tickets to three shows including the broadcast! Ms. Peters made the first appearance and sang well that day. Mr. Gedda entered and sang with his exemplary style but in the balcony, I found him hard to hear with the exception of his wonderful top voice. Then Robert Merrill entered to sporadic applause, something that truly surprised me, as here was one of America's greatest singers. His voice sounded a bit thin but with that wonderful color I had grown up admiring. He sang the rest of the opera well but I was a bit disappointed.
Next came the broadcast and Mr. Merrill made his entrance to huge applause and I joined in and smiled. Then he sang his first phrase and the size of the voice not only had doubled but that velvet gleamed for the rest of the afternoon. I mentioned this to a long time member of the Met family and he said, "Oh, that's because it was a broadcast and he wanted America to know he was still there!"
The next time I saw him was in concert where he sang arias like "Non piu andrai" from Nozze di Figaro and of all things, "O du mein holder" from Wagner's Tannhauser, both roles he had never sung on stage to my knowledge. The Mozart went well but I had a glimpse of the Catskills side of him I had heard of often but never seen. Then came the Wagner! Mr. Merrill stood silently of the stage and poured out his voice with an artistry I had never heard from him before. As I listened, all I could think about was what we missed in not hearing his Wolfram!
The third time I saw him was at a Richard Tucker Foundation Gala and I was wondering what he would sing. The Master of Ceremonies announced his name, the audience cheered and as the orchestra began the Toreador Song from Carmen, he burst onto the stage with an energy and virility that belied his age (around 70) and he sang superbly throughout the aria, although I noticed he has lowered it a step or so. He finished to a standing ovation and he was an icon across America again.
The last time I saw him was at a premiere at the Jewish Museum of a film highlighting Jan Peerce, Richard Tucker and Mr. Merrill's early appearances on television. As I saw him leave his limo, he had become fairly heavy and moved very slowly. He seemed disoriented as to where he was and where to go. His loving wife Marion guided him into the theater and we watched the film, an excellent documentary. The discussion panel announced his being in the theater and as I watched him rise from his chair, the performer's gleam and smile appeared and he knew just how to address the moment.
A singer, no matter how artistic, is like an athlete and remembered mainly by his last out appearance, I was glad I was there to see Robert Merrill, American operatic icon, hit one last ball out of the park!
[To hear Robert Merrill sing the Toreador Song, click here.]
Click here to join a discussion on the passing of Robert Merrill.