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Classical Music Trends to Watch in 2023
The year 2023 brings a Rachmaninoff anniversary, a changing of the string quartet guard, and, for better or worse, a return to more familiar programming.
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Seven Times When The Encore Outshined the Concert
As concert life has gradually returned in this pandemic season, so too, have encores. In the April 2022 issue of BBC Music Magazine I look at the uneven history of this beloved and occasionally contentious practice, from moments when encores were banned to examples of supreme encore creativity. In researching the piece, I encountered a…
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Method Acting, Steve Jobs, and Opera
Can method acting enhance an opera performance? Should an opera singer look like the character they are portraying, down to their body weight and hairstyle? These questions came up recently in a conversation with John Moore, the baritone who is starring as Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in the Seattle Opera production of The Revolution of…
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Formal Attire at the Opera? Here’s What Some Opera Houses Say
In a widely-circulated column in The Guardian, dated Oct. 14, writer Howard Jacobson argues that opera audiences have become too casual, and that men should wear suits and ties to performances in an effort to “commemorate the specialness of an occasion.” He recounts attending a performance of a Mozart opera in London recently and being…
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Santa Fe Opera’s ‘The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs’ on Closing Night
SANTA FE, NM – Driving north from Santa Fe on Highway 285, a stadium-like structure appears perched above the left side of the road. Turn off at one of the two marked exits, pull into one of the tightly-packed parking lots, and soon you’ll encounter small groups of tailgaters beside their crossover SUVs and Subaru wagons. In…
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Met Opera Announces 2017-18, With 3 Notable Omissions
When the Metropolitan Opera announced its current season one year ago, it was notable for the fact that it brought back, in fairly short order, the four most-produced works in the Met’s history: Aida, La Bohème, Carmen and La Traviata.
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If Sea World Draws Criticism, Should the Opera Too?
A provocative article on the website Counterpunch looks at whether there is a double standard when it comes to the use of live animals in works of art. At a time when Sea World and Ringling Bros. have bowed to public pressure and changed their policies on captive orca whales and elephants, respectively, New York artists and their audiences seem particularly enthralled this season…
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When the Metropolitan Opera Presented Sunday Concerts
The Metropolitan Opera’s grim box office numbers have received a good deal of attention from New York’s opera lovers, including the classical music writers of the New York Times, who last week channeled their inner impresarios to offer some suggestions for the company.
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‘The Shining’ Opera Is Based on King Novel – Not Kubrick Film
Any list of “horror operas” would not be a long one. It might include supernatural thrillers like Meyerbeer’s Robert Le Diable, Britten’s The Turn of the Screw and Philip Glass’s Fall of the House of Usher. Some would add Verdi’s Macbeth (plenty of witches) and Strauss’s Elektra (an all-around grim tale).
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Marian Anderson to Appear on the $5 Bill
The United States will soon join Sweden, Norway and Australia in featuring a famed opera singer on its currency. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said on Wednesday that the back of the $5 bill is going to be overhauled to include images of the late contralto Marian Anderson, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights leader Martin Luther King…