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.
What’s an artist’s place in politics? That’s the question many were asking after actress Meryl Streep made a pointed speech criticizing President Trump at the Golden Globes. Trump responded directly to Streep, using his preferred communication medium of Twitter to call Streep “overrated.”
However, after Trump suggested he may defund the National Endowment for the Arts, politics have become deeply personal for artists across the nation and the world. A group of New York-based classical musicians have decided to make their voice heard in an eclectic concert featuring solo voices and instruments, cleverly named “PiaNO” to indicate the lack of piano and also the “no” that resounds so clearly from dissenters of the Trump administration’s values and proposed policies.
“The election left me and many of my loved ones feeling scared and powerless. However, as an artist, I also felt fired up and ready to do something for my community,” says Chelsea Feltman, soprano, of her involvement with PiaNO.
Soprani Elise Brancheau, Chelsea Feltman, and Katya Gruzglina will sing, while Timothy Leonard, David Rocca, Charlotte Nicholas, and Christian Berrigan, will play cello, bassoon, violin, and guitar, respectively. The evening is presented by the Vertical Player Repertory, founded by Judith Barnes, and all proceeds from the concert will go to support the New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
“I have been a longtime supporter of the ACLU for the work they do to protect civil rights throughout the US, and this seemed like a tangible to use my skills to contribute to their cause,” says Feltman.
The program includes a mix of unusually programmed pieces: Bist du bei mir (attributed to J.S. Bach, but actually from an opera by Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel), Philtrum, a contemporary composition by Andrew Hsu and poet Taije Silverman, I Never Saw Another Butterfly by Lori Laitman, which sets poetry written by children killed in the Holocaust, and Suite for Violin and Voice by Heitor Villa-Lobos, a set pairing violin and voice inspired by Portuguese folk melodies.
Feltman says of the programming, “We wanted to feature music from across genres. We also had ideas of the program being easily portable and reprisable, so not bound to a space with grand piano (or any piano!)!”
Soprano Elise Brancheau says, “Not being bound to a traditional format has been incredibly freeing. We were able to choose repertoire based on musicians who wanted to be involved.”
This celebration of songs across culture and time will oscillate between the whimsical and the melancholy, and will represent many voices, including those of the artists who feel now is a time for action.
Feltman underlined the need for artists to take action, saying, “Even if you don’t raise money, art in itself brings healing to communities, promotes sympathy, and is an important tool in affecting societal change. Don’t wait for someone to present you with an opportunity; go out there and make it happen.”
PiaNo will have one performance Saturday, January 28th at 7 PM at Behind the Door, 219 Court Street in Brooklyn, NY. Tickets are $20 ($10 with student ID) and all proceeds will go to benefit the New York Chapter of the ACLU. Tickets can be found at: http://songswithoutpiano.brownpapertickets.com/
Alexis Rodda