150 Years of Opera in Chicago

This is a very attractive book, which, in addition to the expected text, has many striking photos, a list of the operas performed in Chicago, indicating all the seasons in which each work was given, and a season by season chronology, limited to professional companies.

A ‘King,’ a ‘Messiah’ and a conductor

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/09/17/PKGI4KVHTU1.DTL&type=performance

He had his dark, anguished side – but he loved women and vodka too

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1874136,00.html

Runnicles won’t renew contract with S.F. Opera

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/09/16/DDGJOL63271.DTL

Argento at Santa Fe

http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/49262.html

Semele, New York City Opera

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c06d3c0c-440e-11db-8965-0000779e2340.html

ASHLEY: Perfect Lives; Celestial Excursions; Foreign Experiences

Robert Ashley has the uncanny ability to sprinkle diamonds amidst great swaths of apparently trivial and quotidian detritus–diamonds that trigger the nervous system in an intensely stimulating fashion.

A Relative Newcomer Makes Her Mark

http://www.nysun.com/article/39518

Paris’s Art-Deco Salle Pleyel Opens After Four-Year Restoration

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aL1Yp5cJKYBI&refer=muse

Un ballo in maschera, San Francisco

(Photo by Terrence McCarthy) By Allan Ulrich [Financial Times, 11 September 2006] Regime change in operatic duchies is never smooth, but need it always look and sound so wrenching? The…