ROSSINI

An opera doesn’t have to be totally obscure to catch Will Crutchfield’s bel canto eye—but it couldn’t hurt. ANNA DI RESBURGO (ANNE OF ROXBURGH), the first of the two works on this summer’s schedule of the maestro’s company, Teatro Nuovo, certainly falls into that category....

As I sat down to write about the delightful recent performance I heard of Rossini’s IL TURCO IN ITALIA at Madrid’s Teatro Real, with soprano Lisette Ororpesa in a charming new production by Laurence Pelly, I went to Spotify to see what kind of recordings were around. I was surprised to find more than a dozen of them--headlining everyone from Callas (in several of them) to Bartoli, with Sills, Jo, Caballe, Sciuti and some less familiar singers....

Canadian bass-baritone John Relyea, who just ended a highly acclaimed run as Boris Ismailov in the Met's production of Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, will also be singing the role of the Grand Inquisitor in all of the Met's upcoming performances of Verdi's Don Carlo, which opens on November 3....

Oh, sure, give us Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, Laura Kaminsky, Kevin Puts, Terence Blanchard, Paul Moravec, Huang Ruo and all the other fabulous composers at work today. But let’s talk about Rossini--and it’s hard for anyone who attended the concert the other night at New York’s 92nd Street Y not to. With tenor Lawrence Brownlee, (bari)tenor Michael Spyres and pianist Myra Huang presenting us with a dizzying array of what Brownlee called “barnburner pieces, back to back,” there was not much more t...

This year's 2021 edition will feature 'Moïse et Pharaon,' 'Il signor Bruschino,' and 'Elisabetta regina d’Inghilterra.' The festival, running through August 22, will also include various concerts and galas. ...

The Rossini Opera Festival will now be available for streaming in North America exclusively on Stage Access....

Park Avenue Armory will embark on the eighth year of its Recital Series, a series of intimate chamber music performances in the austerely elegant Board of Officers, intended to continue the salon tradition of chamber music performances. The 2020 Recital Series will open with two performances by young Italian soprano Rosa Feola, Monday evening, January 13, 2020 and Wednesday evening, January 15, 2020, both at 7:30pm....

According to Opera Wire, opera singer Richard Conrad has died at age 84 at his home in Elio, Maine following his battle with an illness....

Beginning Wednesday, June 19, the Met will present Summer Encores, featuring select performances from the celebrated Live in HD series, in more than 400 movie theaters across the United States and Canada. The 2019 Summer Encores opens with Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, seen in Tony Award-winning director Bartlett Sher's acclaimed production, with tenor Vittorio Grigolo and soprano Diana Damrau as the star-crossed lovers. The series continues with the Met's classic production of Puccini's La Bohème...

Jean-François Lapointe will sing the Marquis de la Force in all upcoming performances of Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites, replacing Dwayne Croft....

I've already cheered tenor Javier Camarena's Herculean take on “Ah, mes amis!” in the Met's current FILLE DU REGIMENT--with 1 ½ dozen high Cs, including an encore--but there's more than the tenor in Met's current revival of the Donizetti gem to make the season suddenly seem grand. He and soprano Pretty Yende have made a potent comic once before--in Rossini's BARBIERE--but FILLE is something altogether different....

The Board of Wexford Festival Opera has announced Rosetta Cucchi as the new Artistic Director of the Festival.  She will take up the six-year position when the current Artistic Director David Agler finishes his tenure after the 2019 Festival....

The Metropolitan Opera presents Donizetti's comedy La Fille du Régiment, with performances February 7 to March 2, 2019. Pretty Yende stars as Marie, the young canteen girl of the local regiment. Javier Camarena is the boy with whom she falls in love, Tonio, whose show-stopping aria “Ah! mes amis” is famous for its remarkable nine high Cs. Stephanie Blythe is the outlandish Marquise of Berkenfield, and Alessandro Corbelli and Maurizio Muraro share the role of the comical sergeant Sulpice....

Les Pêcheurs de Perles (The Pearl Fishers) returns to the Metropolitan Opera for seven performances November 14–December 8, 2018. Bizet's opera tells the story of a beautiful Hindu temple priestess pursued by rival pearl divers competing for her love. The cast is led by soprano Pretty Yende as Leïla, tenor Javier Camarena as Nadir, and baritone Mariusz Kwiecien as Zurga, led by conductor Emmanuel Villaume....

On the heels of the release of his first solo album, Contrabandista, on Decca Classics, Mexican tenor Javier Camarena's “infectious” voice (New Yorker) and “brightly eloquent” performances (LA Times) take him to New York and across Europe this season. Already considered the pre-eminent Mozart and bel canto specialist of his generation, Camarena has just completed a run as Arturo in Bellini's I Puritani in Barcelona, followed yesterday by the Tucker Gala at Carnegie Hall, and is currently startin...

Emily D'Angelo will sing Annio in all performances of Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito, replacing Paula Murrihy, who has withdrawn for personal reasons....

Opera Philadelphia is set to take the opera world by storm once again, as it looks forward to O18, the second installment of its pioneering Festival O....

It was 'out with the old (i.e., Caramoor) and in with the new (i.e., Purchase College)' for Will Crutchfield's love affair with all things bel canto this weekend, and what better way to get things rolling at his new company, Teatro Nuovo, than Rossini's TANCREDI. After all, it was the master's first big hit, written in just a month when Rossini was not yet 21....

The Metropolitan Opera's annual Summer HD Festival, which presents free outdoor screenings of operas on Lincoln Center Plaza, will return for the tenth time this summer, with one screening each night from Saturday, August 25, to Monday September 3, 2018 (Labor Day). The series will present ten recent performances from the company's acclaimed Live in HD series of movie theater transmissions. As a prelude to the festival, the Marx Brothers' classic film, A Night at the Opera, will be presented on ...