| Soprano leads an outstanding cast as quirky spectacle opens new opera hall. | | Posted Wednesday, November 01, 2006 11:20:09 PM by Blog57 Team | | There were the buff, hard-bodied male and female models in Egyptian garb serving as lobby eye candy and Miami Beach-style décor. There was a clever opening fanfare composed by Stewart Robertson for the occasion, and an assembly of singers and other personnel acknowledged for their contributions to Florida Grand Opera through the decades. There were the three half-hour intermissions that stretched the evening to Wagnerian dimensions. There was the warm water from the drinking fountains and the even hotter $18 glasses of champagne. Most importantly, there was Verdi's Aida. The long-anticipated, much-hyped debut of Florida Grand Opera in its new Carnival Center home finally took place, inaugurating a new era at the Sanford and Dolores Ziff Ballet Opera House Saturday night. With its combustible mix of celebrated arias, compelling drama, stirring choruses and pageantry, Verdi's epic Egyptian love triangle is a favored opera to mark a grand event.... | |
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| | | 'Baby Doe' Returns, Still Girlish at 50 | | Posted Tuesday, October 24, 2006 1:05:25 PM by Blog57 Team | | Washington life has always been filled with the stuff of opera -- ambition, conspiracy, lust and treachery, among less savory elements. Still, it wasn't until the middle of the Eisenhower administration that composer Douglas Moore and librettist John Latouche got around to actually setting an operatic scene in the District of Columbia -- at the Willard Hotel, no less! Strains from "The Ballad of Baby Doe" filled the hotel's luxe Crystal Room yesterday afternoon, when it was presented in a lively truncated rendition by members of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program of Washington National Opera. It was a time for celebration -- of the opera's 50th-anniversary year (it had its premiere in Central City, Colo., in the summer of 1956) and of the 20th anniversary of the reopening .... | |
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| | | Prisoners revel in world of opera | | Posted Thursday, September 21, 2006 3:04:08 PM by Blog57 Team | | Dublin - Prisoners in Ireland and Italy have embraced the world of opera for an innovative project that will see sets and costumes designed and made by them used in a full-scale commercial production of Puccini's La Bohme. The scheme originated in 2004 at the high-security Maiano jail in Perugia and has involved collaboration between Maiano and Dublin's Mountjoy Prison, where inmates have spent six months working from designs drawn up by their Italian counterparts. .... | |
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| | | Dual stories | | Posted Wednesday, August 09, 2006 1:38:04 AM by Blog57 Team | | Territorial disputes between opera and hip hop rarely escalate beyond the occupation of CD racks in a music megastore. But at the Opéra de Lyon, the two almost launched a full-scale turf war. When Serge Dorny took over as general director in 2002, he soon became aware of a problem. The peristyle surrounding the opera house had been invaded by a tribe of disaffected break-dancers. "There was no dialogue between the opera and them and actually there was a lot of delinquency and all kinds of dealings going on," he recalls wryly. .... | |
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| | | Movie Review: The Phantom Of The Opera | | Posted Thursday, August 03, 2006 7:11:55 PM by Blog57 Team | | Nominated for three Academy Awards and three Golden Globes, including Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy, The Phantom Of The Opera is one of the most talked about movies of 2004. Taking the smash commercial success of Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage production to the big screen is no easy task, but long-time Hollywood director Joel Schumacher is more than able to get the job done. He takes an otherwise poorly written screenplay (minus the awe of a live performance, no less) and manages to thrill the audience with the visual aspects of a film chiefly intended to rehash a successful stage musical. The costumes and set are simply magnificent, and Art Director John Fenner (Raiders Of The Lost Ark) helps Schumacher put together a fabulous production that's well worth a movie-goer's time.The Phantom Of The Opera centers around a mysterious character who dwells underneath the Paris Opera House, imbibing the music that emanates from above.... | |
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| | | Shortened Phantom Faces Critics in Las Vegas | | Posted Friday, June 30, 2006 5:07:45 AM by Blog57 Team | | Phantom: The Las Vegas Spectacular, the 90-minute version of the wildly popular musical The Phantom of the Opera, has its own $40 million theater inside The Venetian. It also has alternating Phantoms (Brent Barrett and Anthony Crivello), Christines (Sierra Boggess and Elizabeth Loyacano) and Carlottas (Elena Jeanne Batman and Geena Jeffries) and a host of special effects. The big-budget production officially opened in Sin City on June 24. Did area critics enjoy attending this masquerade? Here is a sampling of what they had to say: Charles McNulty of The Los Angeles Times: "This latest Phantom may not be definitive by any measure, but the production fills the bill well enough… Though there are plenty of special effects on hand, including a mini-fireworks display when the Phantom's evil high jinks reach their crescendo, nothing compares to that initial launching of the crystal colossus… It's at moments like these that a new hybrid of entertainment seems to have been spawned out in the frolicsome desert, a combination that's one part Broadway, one part amusement park, one part circus extravaganza… Condensed to 95 intermission-less minutes, the new production skims through a book that many felt could use a little skimming.... | |
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