opera

 

The Opera Orchestra of New York pulls itself out of a funk with diva-driven B-movie opera 'Adriana Lecouvreur,' starring Angela Gheorghiu

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The Opera Orchestra of New York is returning to its star-driven roots, opening its season last night at Carnegie Hall with superstars Angela Gheorghiu and Jonas Kaufmann in Cilea’s sentimental diva vehicle Adriana Lecouvreur. The you have to be there quotient was boosted to the roof by the fact that this performance would be Gheorghiu’s only New York appearance of the season since she chose not to participate in the Met’s new production of Gounod’s Faust. (It’s in rehearsal now, with Kaufmann in the title role.)

 

Adriana is a sort of B-movie opera, with one of those plots that it’s more fun to retell than to sit through in the first place. More

By James Jorden

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November 9, 2011 4:04 pm

 

This weekend, a freak storm of performances and releases mark the career of avant-garde composer Robert Ashley

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Alex Ross has called him the “musical counterpart of David Lynch.” The critic, composer and scholar Kyle Gann once described him, in The Village Voice, as “the only original opera composer of the late 20th Century, the first since Harry Partch to tell the European tradition to go to hell.”

Why don’t you know more about Robert Ashley, then? More

By Seth Colter Walls

November 4, 2011 3:08 pm

 

Nico Muhly, classical music wunderkind, on early success and ignoring his 'flight map'

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"Back when I used to read a ton of blogs, I was always really flattered when people were like: 'It's the future of classical music!' But that's just as bad as: This faggot is dead in the water already. So stopping reading blogs was a really key thing, not just because of haters, but also because then you start thinking, yeah, I am doing this amazing thing, when you're like no, I have to get from A to this B-flat by way of this E-flat. It really distracts you from the craft of the thing, when you focus on these gigantic brush strokes, to be constantly looking at like the flight map of your career, to be like: Well girl, we're over Greenland now, so I should probably take the Ambien." More

By James Jorden

November 2, 2011 10:02 am

 

Marilyn Horne, who ruled American opera in the 1970s, trains a new generation for a very different art

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She worries about the emphasis on singers’ appearance in the era of HD broadcasts. One summer Horne herself lost 50 pounds—the right way, with good eating and exercise—and she is convinced her middle register promptly went flat and her voice got a size smaller.

 

But she recognizes that singers now have to be thin, or at least thinnish, to be hired; and that not all singers who are overweight can slim down and keep their voices beautiful. She is preparing singers for careers, and she is a realist.

“We do take people who are overweight,” she said of the academy. “But I have to warn them, and ask them, ‘How badly do you really want this?’" More

By Zachary Woolfe

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October 31, 2011 10:34 am

 

A crowded schedule that's worth the effort, from Anthony Braxton to Portishead to Anna Netrebko to Philip Glass

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There’s too much to hear: that’s the first empirical fact to absorb about the coming music season in New York. From a consumer perspective the problem is compounded by the amount of effort it can take to see just the best stuff: tickets purchased online weeks or months in advance, forcing you to tick a date on the calendar when you really have no idea what work will have in store for you that day; or else the intellectual endurance required while trekking to the same venue over the course of multiple nights to see a single cycle of performances. Who has the time to plan for such extravagances, let alone commit them? More

By Seth Colter Walls

September 8, 2011 11:10 am

 

In McNally's 'Master Class,' Tyne Daly gives us the Maria Callas we want, if not the one we had

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McNally’s stroke of genius was to give us Callas not as she was in these sessions—lighthearted and generous, if sometimes stern—but as we wanted to imagine her: A dominating diva whose way with withering criticism was outmatched only by her mastery of the blunt weapon of faint praise. More

By Mark Sullivan

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July 11, 2011 9:37 am

 

How 'Nixon in China' can save opera

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A lack of arts education, expensive tickets, the total domination of film in the mainstream culture, high and low, that Generation X grew up with are all part of the picture. But above all, it's the fact that opera has presented itself to people under 50 as if it were something stuck in amber. It’s a terrific milieu for two amazing Bugs Bunny cartoons but not something that people see—or feel the need to see. If “Angels in America” with its ersatz Roy Cohn can become a major cultural event, there is no reason why opera can’t deliver the goods as well. Making and remaking versions of The Ring Cycle or Tosca is all very well and good, but the dozens of living composers out there who are toiling away in near-anonymity are creating stuff that could be a tonic to this dying art form, if only the institutions that pull the levers would take the risks on them. More

By Robert Hardt Jr.

February 25, 2011 6:55 am

 

Afterlife of a diva: Renata Scotto on aging, talent, tradition and why she quit

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On the walls of her office, there are more photos of the productions she’s directed than of her. There's a Tosca starring Deborah Voigt, a Lucia with a bloody wedding dress; in her memoir, she railed against the tradition of bloodying the dress, saying that the blood was in the music, but, she said with a smile, "I changed my mind." More

By Zachary Woolfe

February 21, 2011 8:34 am

 

The last opera director standing

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Strassberger is a director of opera, and only of opera. That is a rare thing these days—particularly for a young artist and particularly in America—at a time when opera companies are more and more likely to poach directors from theater and film. From Strassberger's perspective, it's a mixed blessing. More

By Zachary Woolfe

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July 27, 2010 8:11 am

 

Kizart's allergy tragedy

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We just spoke on the phone with Kizart, who sounded phlegmy. "My allergies set in," she said, "and if I don't feel I can give my best vocally, there’s no point in singing." More

By Zachary Woolfe

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July 23, 2010 2:41 pm