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The Italian ballerina suns herself in Ibizia with an Opéra national de Paris colleague, Hervé Moreau, who models Abbagnato's purple bikini top for a photo. After spending the same hours-a-day training as she does sleeping, Ele's physique is no joke. Below the jump, discover what the devoted ballerina's training has done to her a$$. (via Chi magazine).
The Spanish tenor, Sanctus Domingus, was in Durango, Mexico last week for a gala solo performance.
(photos ANSA)
AFP/Getty Images
The (unrequited) love story that continues to break your heart no matter how many times you've heard it. David Patrick Columbia's ode to Maria Callas, Careless Love, on NYSD.
*Yeah, it's Bon Jovi's Wanted Dead or Alive. Suck it, Jersey haters!
Continue reading "Renée & Josh in Tuscany (Oh Yeah and Sting was There Too, Whatevs)" »
For 100+ years, Chicago's summer festival offers music for the masses (from June until September) in unfussy settings, giving some of opera's coolest talent a place to hang out, sing, and get paid. Last week's Ravinia gave concert versions of Mozart's Le Nozze and Così fan tutte with Maestro James Conlon and the CSO in celebration of Conlon's 60th birthday (he's also Ravinia Festival's Music Director).
Le Nozze was with Nathan Gunn as the Count, Ailyn Perez as the Countess, Lisette Oropesa as Susanna, and John Relyea as Figaro.
The night prior was Così fan tutte with Frederica von Stade's Despina (photo above with Maestro Conlon), Ana Maria Martinez's Fiordiligi, Ruxandra Donose's Dorabella, Rodion Pogossov's Guglielmo, and Saimir Pirgu's Ferrando.
Photos AP
Rolando Villazón's Danish fans dropped Kroners & love last night at Copenhagen's Tivoli Koncertsalen, where the Mexican tenor (sort of) sang a sold-out concert with French soprano Stéphanie Degout-Loris and mezzo Audrey Kessedjian.
Things were off to a bad start when Tivoli's new Music Director, Henrik Engelbrecht, came out on stage at the beginning of the evening to announce that the tenor was suffering from a cold.
Rolando then hacked his cold-inflamed throat through three numbers and left the stage. While his fans waited patiently through the songs of his two female companions for his return, the singer reportedly went back to his hotel. ~Something is rotten in the state of Denmark~ With tickets starting at 500 DKK ($90 USD) and running up to 1250 DKK ($222 USD), the tenor reportedly sang a total of seven minutes.
Anna Netrebko visits her beloved Austria this week to sing Juliette (shared with Nino Machaidze) and Piotr Beczala sings Roméo (shared with Stephen Costello) in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, opening on August 10. Yannick Nézet-Séguin will lead the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra in Bartlett Sher's staging of Gounod's opera for the Salzburger Festspiele. (photo Reuters). All that bedazzled pink silk & tulle, big curly hair, and low cut necklines make us feel like we're back in middle school. o teh horror!
Click for half-a-dozen more photos under the cut
Continue reading "Pretty in Pink: Netrebko Back in Salzburg" »
(via the always astonishing Tom Sutpen)
Daniele Gatti's busy summer (in Bayreuth with Parsifal and in Salzburg with Elektra) included an interview in today's Corriere della Sera (not online until tomorrow): the Milanese conductor explained to the august Milanese newspaper why Italian conductors thrive abroad but have problems in their own country, and says that he has cancelled his next two commitments at la Scala because he found Luc Bondy's staging for Tosca "unconvincing" and because "I asked for a new production of Bohème, not, with all due respect, for Zeffirelli's. I'll be back to Milan in 2013, for the anno verdiano: with Messa da Requiem and Falstaff".
Rene Pape (Orest) during a dress rehearsal of "Elektra" in Salzburg, opening on August 12, to be conducted by Daniele Gatti, directed by Nikolaus Lehnhoff. Stage design by Raimund Bauer.
(Reuters/Ebenbichler)Jonny Greenwood has written the score for the film adaptation of Haruki Murakami's novel "Norwegian Wood".
Tran Anh Hung -- the man behind the amazing "Vertical Ray of the Sun" -- is the director. The movie debuts at the Venice Film Festival next month, opens worldwide in Japan in December.
David Hockney is still the man, 35 years after the fact:
Hockney was already an opera fan and "knew if you wanted to do something spectacular in the theatre, then you went to opera. I'd never understood people who said they were bored by it. They must have no ears and no eyes, and I really pity them. But of course I was also a little cautious, as I didn't know this opera. My number one rule became 'Don't f*ck up the music.' It's not the job of a set designer to make an opera come alive. That's the job of the composer, conductor, orchestra and singers.
"But opera is meant to have spectacle, and so I did listen very carefully to the music without knowing too much about it in a technical sense. And it became obvious that when a composer puts in a musical transformation, there is meant to be a corresponding spectacle on stage. The music tells you exactly where to locate it, if you listen hard enough. And if it's done well you get a sense of harmony to which the audience instinctively reacts."
Good to have you back, sir.
(in the image above, a detail from the original 1975 poster, from the Guardian's print edition)
You have tickets to the August 10th premiere of the Salzburger Festspiele Gounod's Roméo et Juliette with Anna Netrebko? Who cares! Instead, August 5th will be THE EPIC event of 2010's festival. Salzburg's Schloss Leopoldskron is the place where opera fans will be clambering for a taste of Anna Netrebko -- but not for the Russian soprano's ever-changing voice. Rather, her borscht.
Anna (among other collaborators and recipe contributors) will be dishing-up boiled beets at the book launch/fundraiser of Evelyn Rillé & Johannes Ifkovits' Die Oper Kocht cookbook. She was joined by colleagues (and the odd conductor), showing-off their kitchen talents by participating in a new cookbook: José Carreras, Elīna Garanča, Thomas Hampson, Angelika Kirchschlager, Luca Pisaroni (and dog Lenny), Neil Shicoff, etc...
Opera + cooking? oh, ok. If Anna's borscht doesn't satisfy, there'll be Ferruccio Furlanetto's "Wasabi-Risotto mit Rotbarben"; Rene Pape's "Sächsischer Sauerbraten mit Klöße und Rotkraut"; Nino Machaidze's "Lobiani"; Babara Bonney's "Steaks mit Kartoffelgratin" and many more (see full menu/invite here). BYOA: antacid is not complimentary with admission!
(A huge thanks to yappy!)
Follow a beet-fondling Anna Netrebko, a knife-weilding Elīna Garanča, and a leek-smoking Thomas Hampson inside for so many more promo portraits!
Continue reading "Opera Singers With Knives: Die Oper Kocht" »
Salzburger Festspiele opened last week and was anointed by the stars in a mix of fancy dress and off-the-rack that makes the little Alpine city so endearing.
Herbie von Karajan's widow, Eliette von Karajan, was in the Haus (für Mozart) to take-in the premiere of the play Jedermann, greeted by chalkstriped Festival head, Peter Alward.
Dionysos composer Wolfgang Rihm was in black (in July) HE IS AN ARTIST
Helga Rabl-Stadler and Daniel Barenboim
Anja Kruse
And now make way for the HBIC of the evening, Siegfried (without his other half, Roy).
More photos here.
The Greek god of wine has been resurrected in German composer Wolfgang Rihm's opera, Dionysos, currently in rotation at this summer's Salzburger Festspiele. It's the story of man's journey towards the Dionysian ideal of hedonism and sensuality, told in Pierre Audi's production -- not necessarily sensual but rather bizarre in stage designer Jonathan Meese's vision full of exaggerated lady parts. light bondage, and bewb groping.
German baritone Johannes Martin Kränzle sang the lead of "N" (for Nietzsche), Hamburg-born soprano Mojca Erdmann was Ariadne (photo above, all AP).
Click the link below to find a cartoonishly NSFW production still from the production +1.
Continue reading "Dial N for Nietzsche: Wolfgang Rihm's Dionysos at Salzburger Festspiele" »
Remember last week when Bayreuther Festspiele opened with Hans Neuenfels' Lohengrin and everyone was appalled over a few guys in rat costumes? Bayreuther Festspiele's Götterdämmerung opens today, led by Christian Thielemann in Tankred Dorst's production (photos above and below). Tomorrow it's Katharina Wagner's turn for her own production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg with Sebastian Weigle conducting. But you'll have to click the link below to see the photos.
Continue reading "Bayreuther Festspiele's Götterdämmerung & Die Meistersinger" »