| 'La Bohme' returns to Kentucky Opera | | Posted Thursday, October 12, 2006 3:08:38 AM by Blog57 Team | | Kentucky Opera has presented "La Bohme" seven times in its history, first during the 1959-60 season and most recently during the 2000-01 schedule. This week's production, with scenery that originated with Toronto's Canadian Opera Company, is being conducted by John Keenan and stage directed by Michael Cavanaugh. Keenan conducted a 2005 production of Bizet's "Carmen" at Minnesota Opera, a production stage-directed by David Roth, who's now Kentucky Opera's general director. The cast for this week's "La Bohme" is headed by soprano Lauren Skuce as Mimi and tenor Dorji Ciren as Rodolfo. (It's fair to say that Ciren is among the very few tenors -- probably the only one -- who can claim Tibet as his home country.) Other principals include Christopher Feigum as Marcello, Evelyn Pollock as Musetta, Andrew Gangestad as Colline, Jeremy Kelly as Schaunard, Philip Cokorinos as Benoit and Alcindoro, and Nathan Wilson as a Customs Official.... | |
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| | | Houston Ebony Opera Guild production of Carmen offers charms for ... | | Posted Monday, August 28, 2006 1:27:43 PM by Blog57 Team | | The Houston Ebony Opera Guild production of Carmen offered charms for both the neophyte opera-goer and the veteran. Plenty of fresh ears seemed present at Friday's first performance at Miller Outdoor Theater (the second is tonight). Laughs of surprise and pleasure greeted several turns of plot in the story about a cigarette girl who seduces a soldier but then dumps him for a bullfighter. .... | |
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| | | Letters | | Posted Thursday, August 24, 2006 3:02:08 AM by Blog57 Team | | Opera house plan (1) - Silvan Spagnol, Zabbar. At last, a reasonable solution has been proposed for the Royal Opera House site. I think the Summer Arts Festival was proof that this site can be a hive of cultural... Opera house plan (2) - Catherine C. Muscat, Iklin. I welcome the proposal to the Prime Minister submitted by the Culture and Tourism Minister, Francis Zammit Dimech, so that the ruins of the Opera House in Valletta may be turned... Opera house plan (3) - John Schembri, St Julians. There will always be nimbies so the idea of utilising the old opera house will surely meet some resistance. Hopefully there are plans to "beautify" the parts that are still standing... Paedophile employees - Herbert Messina Ferrante, Attard.... | |
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| | | Festival del Sole opener features electrifying turns by Bell, von ... | | Posted Wednesday, July 19, 2006 9:02:57 PM by Blog57 Team | | One of the more significant cultural events in the history of the Napa Valley debuted Sunday evening to a standing ovation at the Lincoln Theatre in Yountville.The Festival del Sole lineup of talent dazzled the opening night audience -- the marvelous Russian National Orchestra, celebrated conductor Alan Gilbert (of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony fame), the distinguished mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter and Grammy Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell.It was Bell who brought the program to a halt 40 minutes into the concert.He was playing the first movement of Tchaikovsky's difficult violin concerto, when he spun out a cadenza (the unaccompanied section) of such mesmerizing tenderness, and such emotional intensity, the audience could hardly contain itself, and broke into an immediate standing ovation.... | |
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| | | Remembering a mezzo-soprano known for talent and hard work | | Posted Saturday, July 15, 2006 11:02:34 AM by Blog57 Team | | New England music lovers were lucky because Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's career was based in Boston for nearly 20 years. The art and personality of the late mezzo-soprano moved her colleagues and the public in a very personal way. And since her death on July 3, several people have written in to share their memories. Pianist Benjamin Pasternack recalled the circumstance of her Boston Symphony Orchestra debut in 1985. She stepped in late to sing the Jungfrau in Schumann's oratorio ``Das Paradies und die Peri." ``I was engaged to accompany the vocal solo rehearsals," Pasternack writes. ``The conductor was the late Giuseppe Sinopli, a nice man. At a certain point in our first run-through, no one sang, and we all looked around. It turned out there was one aria for a different soprano which hadn't been cast -- this just a few days before the first performance.... | |
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