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Opernhaus Zürich announces its 2012-13 season in a slick, new packaging under Intendant Andreas Homoki and Music Director Maestro Luisi, a mix of eclectic and standard works.
OC's standouts include Robin Ticciati's Don Giovanni (May 2013 with Peter Mattei in the title role) and Nello Santi's Ballo (November 2012) and Falstaff (April 2013).
Browse the super-slick season catalog here for the entire 2012-13 setlist.
The Lyric Opera of Chicago announced for its 2015-16 season that Ann Patchett's Bel Canto will be made into an opera.
Milanese Maestro Daniele Rustioni counts Teatro alla Scala and Royal Opera House among his list of premieres from the Under-30 club. Bringing his lessons from mentors such as Pappano and Noseda, Rustioni's in Torino where he just opened Madama Butterfly for Teatro Regio (it closes on February 28) followed by Rigoletto from 14-20 March.
The conducting superstar spoke about it in OC's latest piece for her Stasera Esco column on Grazia.it Read it here!
Italy's fiercely-feared opera critic, Paolo Isotta of Corriere della Sera, trashed the Barenboim-anointed young conductor, Omer Wellber, and most of the singers of La Scala's "new" Aida in the culture pages today.
He waxed poetic about the sets/costumes of the late Lila De Nobili, whose last work he saw in 1973 in Visconti's direction for Manon Lescaut at the Spoleto Festival, and then about Zeffirelli's 1963 production that La Scala rolled-out of its archives for last week's premiere.
In the review, he spells Omer Wellber's last name as "Wellberg" (Isotta literally gives no f**k!) and says that if he was a musician in the orchestra, he'd refuse to play for "Wellberg", too (opening night brought an orchestra member into the lobby during the second intermission on defense). Isotta found Wellberg's Verdi "confused" and said that the singers, aside from Marianne Cornetti as Amernis, were tragic.
OC checked out the latest series of la Verdi shows this weekend, slated as inaugural concerts to ink Maestro John Axelrod's newest collaboration as Principal Director with the Milan orchestra, duties split with Music Director Xian Zhang.
On Friday night, after a teaser of Mozart's delightful horn concerto 3 (with a strong performance from Croatian horn blower Radovan Vlatković) and a stunning Afterthought by Giorgio Battistelli, Mozart's Requiem Mass-terpiece took center stage with fab-four soloists. Axelrod's Requiem was a pious, compassionate departure from rapture and ph34r. More like a meditation, it was paced into introspective arcs with curious ideas that mostly worked despite its complete narrative. One of the bigger ideas was a dignified whisper to extinguish Lux aeterna instead of the usual slam. International soloists were anchored by Kiwi Martin Snell's booming bass. Mexican tenor Jesus Leon's lyric and charismatic voice worked well with Romanian soprano Theodora Gheorghiu (no relation!) Despite having the briefest role, Israeli mezzo Rinat Shaham's colorful, expressive voice brought an authoritative weight to the ensemble.
(Dan Steinberg/Los Angeles Opera)
Everyone hibernates in the winter, including a bearded Christoph Waltz, who looks fittingly like a young Giuseppe Verdi. The Austrian actor had a beard-off with Placidone after last Saturday night's opening of Simon Boccanegra at the Los Angeles Opera. It opened to James Conlon on the podium, Placido Domingo in the title role, and Ana Maria Martinez as Amelia.
Fiordiligi and Dorabella enter the lobby of a design hotel after a day of high-end shopping. Guglielmo and Ferrando are in jeans and leather jackets. So begins young Italian opera director Damiano Michieletto's vision for Mozart's Così fan tutte at Venice's Teatro la Fenice, which opened on February 16.
Set in a luxury design hotel modeled from the 70s, Corriere della Sera affectionaltly called it kitschy. We guess that Michieletto's noticed in the past couple years, Milan's elegant old guard -- like the Principe di Savoia and the Grand Hotel et de Milan -- has been crowded by the expanding empires of Italian designers who've opened design hotels: Armani, Bulgari & Moschino.
Corriere praised an "impeccable cast" for opening night: Antonello Manacorda on the podium, Maria Bengtsson as Fiordiligi, Josè Maria Lo Monaco as Dorabella, Markus Werba as Guglielmo, Marlin Miller as Ferrando, Caterina Di Tonno as Despina and Andrea Concetti as Don Alfonso.
UPDATE
Apparently this happens during the opera. Yes, that's what you think it is.
Bob Dylan gets mashed up with Beethoven in t-shirt form.
Tonight kicked-off the inaugural performance of La Verdi's latest concert series where Mozart's Requiem headlines the playlist under the baton of John Axelrod and four fab soloists. OC got the perspective on Mozart's mass-terpiece from one of the soloists, Rinat Shaham, against the backdrop of the maestro's perspective.
La Scala Aida always brings the dramz! Alagnagate '06!
Last night's Aida premiere at La Scala cut divisions among the theater's loggione and orchestra. Franco Zeffirelli's 49-year-old Aida was put back into rotation in a nod to the Italian director's long La Scala legacy -- it had originally premiered in 1963.
After the the second act intermission, conductor Omer Meir Wellber was greeted with boos from the loggione as he took the podium, although an intrepid voice rang out in his defence: "It's not the conductor's fault, but the fault of an unprofessional orchestra."
During the second intermission, one of the orchestra members came into the lobby to defend the orchestra's work. He argued in front of journalists that, to the contrary, the orchestra helped out the conductor a lot and even tried to cover some of the vocal problems of the singers -- Oksana Dyka sang Aida, Marianne Cornet was Amneris and Jorge De Leon was Radames.
Four hours later, three curtain calls of "light, lukewarm applause" set the backdrop for a shout from the loggione that said, "Shame on you guys!"
La Scala 69'd Zeffirelli's 2006 disco fever, Bolle-thonged Aida production that was made famous for Alagna's Radames mid-aria walk-off after a boo was fired from the loggione. Good times.
Semyon Bychkov is out of the upcoming Strauss Die Frau ohne Schatten that opens on March 11 at Teatro alla Scala. The theater announces that the cancellation is due to a spontaneous surgical procedure. German conductor Marc Albrecht, son of George Alexander Albrecht, has been brought in. Bychkov is still on the schedule for a 3-night series of Schoenberg/Brahms concerts with Filarmonica that fall on March 19, 21 and 22.
The Lunch with the FT recently lunched with Dustin Hoffman at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons over raw plates, where the American actor outed his directorial debut in a film called Quartet:
[...] starring Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly and Pauline Collins as a group of retired opera singers [...]
IMDb breaks it down here:
Cecily, Reggie and Wilfred are in a home for retired opera singers. Every year, on October 10, there is a concert to celebrate Verdi's birthday and they take part. Jean, who used to be married to Reggie, arrives at the home and disrupts their equilibrium. She still acts like a diva, but she refuses to sing. Still, the show must go on... and it does.
The photoshop above is from Eater, where we've just read that Mario Batali will make his opera debut in NYCO's La Traviata tomorrow night, appearing in cameo during one of the party scenes. Let's hope that the dressers can get him out of his crocs.
It's a Verdi blockbuster for 2013 that will unveil new productions of Traviata, Falstaff, Nabucco, Oberto, Macbeth, and Un ballo in maschera at Teatro alla Scala.
The sexxxtet of new Verdi productions will usher-in the Italian composer's 200th birth year anniversary, chased by two reprisals -- Don Carlos and Aida -- which was announced today by Scala GM Lissner.
Traviata will open the season on December 7, 2013 and will be conducted by Daniele Gatti (directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov). For the record, this year we have Wagner's Lohengrin conducted by Barenboim, directed by Claus Guth with Kaufmann and Pape. December 7, 2014 will open with Beethoven's Fidelio, conducted by Barenboim.
Falstaff is Carsen's production wtih Covent Garden to be conducted by Harding.
Nabucco will be conducted by Luisotti in Daniele Abbado's production.
Oberto is from the direction of Mario Martone (who did our Cav/Pag). Martone will also do a production of Trovatore in 2014 and a Traviata in 2015.
Macbeth is under the direction of Giorgio Barberio Corsetti and will be conducted by Gergiev.
Ballo will be directed by Damiano Michieletto (who we just interviewed for Stasera Esco) and conducted by Daniele Rustioni.
Every time we go to a concert at La Verdi, we're blown away by the wicked skills of first violinist, Luca Santaniello, who carries the orchestra with elegance and personality. He also knows his classic rock heroes as well as his classical music idols, the classical musician with the classic rock soul.
As the Los Angeles Philharmonic's The Mahler Project rounds third base, Los Angeles Magazine reports on Dudamel's five-week long initiative (scan above) that started on January 13.
The Mahler Project brings together two of Dudamel's pet orchestras -- the L.A. Phil and the Simón Bolívar -- for an all-Mahler program to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Austrian composer's death.
This past weekend's highlight was a monstrous performance of Mahler's Eight, the Symphony of a Thousand, with sixteen choirs (800 singers) and two orchestras (200 instrumentalists) that filled the Shrine Auditorium.
The project officially wraps on February 18.
Madrid's Teatro Real, under the cheese fist of Artistic Director Gerard Mortier, just announced its 2012-13 season and among the gems is a new production of Mozart's Così fan tutte directed by Michael Haneke. The only bad news that Cambreling is conducting seven of the ten replications. Can't have it all, OC, can't have it all.
Other standouts for OC include Saverio Mercadante's La rappresaglia conducted by Muti and his Cherubini kids; Wozzeck starring Simon Keenlyside in the title role; Daniel Catán's Il Postino with the Domingo/Gallardo-Domas duo; and Juan Diego Flórez gets Bizet in Les pêcheurs de perles.
Other operas include: Boris Godunov, Il prigioniero/Suor Angelica, Macbeth, The Perfect American, Don Giovanni, Die Zauberflöte, Moses und Aron, Roberto Devereux and Parsifal.
(Photograph: Marco Brescia/La Scala)
She shared her story with The Observer in December 2011 and stated that anorexia and bulima runs rampant among the ballerinas at Teatro alla Scala's ballet corps.
Now she's been axed from the company who states that she damages their image.
Thirty-three year old Italian ballerina, Mariafrancesca Garritano, told the Observer that one in five ballerinas was anorexic and unable to conceive. She also said:
"The chance of getting fired has crossed my mind, but I love La Scala, I care about it, and that's why I really hope things can change."
New York Magazine interviews Italian ballerina turned model, Anna Zanovello, who walks the runway for the Milan fashion shows and trains as a ballerina.
Renata Tebaldi, who would have been 90 years old on February 1, left behind a rich legacy that continues with an international singing competition, now in its fourth year. The 2011 edition concluded on September 24, 2011 with a winners' concert that honored first price winner, Canadian Soprano Teresa Sedlmair, second place winner, Italian tenor Davide Giusti and third place winner, Korean soprano Jaeeun Lee.
Tomorrow morning (at 9:44am, Milan time) RAI5 will broadcast the winners' concert, organized by the Renata Tebaldi Foundation. You can watch the live stream if you press the blue and grey button on the right side that says "guarda e commenta la diretta di rai 5".
Above: Niksa Simetovic, President of the Renata Tebaldi Foundation, winner Teresa Sedlmair and Bruno Cagli, President of the Internatinal Jury.