RICHARD TUCKER AWARD

After their first, full, in-person season in over a year, AVA has announced their 2022/23 opera season! With last season's productions being called a 'complete triumph from its start to its finish' (Chestnut Hill Local), AVA's 88th season is sure to delight opera audiences....

It's been a big year for soprano Lisette Oropesa, with starring roles at major European houses. But in this country, it's something else entirely: She won the Richard Tucker Award and the Met's Beverly Sills Award. That was followed by a pair of name-above-the-title roles, her first at the Met: her role debut in Massenet's MANON and, this week, her house role debut as Verdi's Violetta in LA TRAVIATA....

Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, an operatic fable about the power of music, returns to the Metropolitan Opera for the first time since 2011 for seven performances beginning October 20, 2019....

The Metropolitan Opera has named soprano Lisette Oropesa as the winner of the 14th annual Beverly Sills Artist Award. The $50,000 award is given to extraordinarily gifted singers with rising Met careers. Given in honor of the legendary American soprano Beverly Sills, the award was established in 2006 by an endowment gift from the late Agnes Varis, a managing director on the Met's Board of Directors....

Judging by the number of small opera companies in New York alone--see the 2019 New York Opera Fest that starts performances next month--there's no shortage of up and coming opera singers trying to make their way on the scene. But there's no showcase like the Finals Concert of the Metropolitan Opera's National Council Auditions to give a singer a leg up--and this year's group of talented performers seemed to give us more hope than usual that all's right with the world…at least when it comes to op...

Michael Mayer's 2013 production of Verdi's Rigoletto, set in a 1960s Las Vegas casino, returns to the Met on February 12, with conductor Nicola Luisotti leading an all-star cast. Initial performances star Nadine Sierra as Gilda, Vittorio Grigolo as the Duke, Roberto Frontali as Rigoletto, Štefan Kocán as Sparafucile, and Ramona Zaharia in her Met debut as Maddalena. In later performances, Rosa Feola makes her Met debut as Gilda, Bryan Hymel sings the Duke for the first time at the Met, George Ga...

I caught up with rising star bass-baritone Christian Van Horn the other day, to find out what the devil was going on with his starring role in the Met's first performance of Arrigo Boito's MEFISTOFELE in almost 20 years. Were you nervous as hell (pun intended) on the first night, I asked Van Horn, winner of this year's prestigious Richard Tucker Award, in your role as the Devil?...

The Met is offering Robert Carsen's 1999 production of Arrigo Boito's MEFISTOFELE to show us what bass-baritone Christian Van Horn--winner of this year's Richard Tucker Award--could do in his first starring role at the house and the answer was: plenty....

Whether from disease, 19th century #MeToo-style abuse, or unrequited love, Opera Philadelphia's (OP) Festival O18 opening weekend showed us three ways that central female characters lost their grip on reality. While I considered only one of them a total success, audience openness to sometimes-demanding material made it clear that the company has found a formula that strikes at the hearts of opera-goers, new and old....