| The Billboard illustrated encyclopedia of opera | | Posted Tuesday, February 07, 2006 10:09:41 AM by Rose Martins | Not everyone appreciates opera. Opera music is definitely an acquired taste. It's like champagne or whiskey. Sometimes it takes more than just one sip to learn to appreciate and love the fine art at hand. Opera singers are traditionally overweight and as the famous slogan goes, "The show is not over until the fat lady sings". 
This stems from the overweight opera singer being featured currently at the city's opera house. Nobody would leave until the diva had performed. Some of the most famous opera's are Carmen and Phantom of the Opera, both have been playing for years.
The Metropolitan Opera House is one of the most famous opera houses in the world. It is situated in Lincoln House in New York City. The first opera housed at the Met (as it's fondly known) was 'Antony and Cleopatra' back in 1966.
The famous artist Marc Chagall created the two murals that don the lobby of the Met. The Met can hold an audience of up to 4000 people at any given time, in split levels of the theatre. Amazing that despite the Met's capability to house such a huge number of people, the shows are still sold out on occasion.
The Billboard illustrated encyclopedia of opera serves as a bountiful gallery of photos and color plates of paintings and prints of singers, composers, stage design, and scenes, accompanied by a juicy history.
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| | | Nagano and a new era for Bavarian opera | | Posted Wednesday, November 01, 2006 11:22:39 AM by Blog57 Team | | Yet over the last 13 years Munich's opera house has enjoyed such prestige under Peter Jonas's leadership that his retirement as general manager has inevitably raised questions about the future. Further, coinciding with Jonas's departure this summer, Zubin Mehta wrapped up eight years as general music director and passed the baton to the American conductor Kent Nagano, most recently music director at the Los Angeles Opera. .... | |
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| | | Opera parodies made her famous | | Posted Monday, October 23, 2006 1:05:10 PM by Blog57 Team | | After a dazzling, often zany career spanning six decades, singer and comedian Anna Russell died Wednesday at 94 in the Australian seaside town of Bateman's Bay half a world away from her former home in Unionville, Ont. "She went very peacefully," her adopted daughter, Dierdre Prussak told reporters in Australia, where her mother had joined her for the last months of her life. But peaceful is the last word to describe Canadian-born Russell's lively career, which included sold-out performances in New York's Carnegie Hall, London's Royal Albert Hall, and with the Canadian Opera Company as well as global tours featuring her own saucy satirical songs and poetry. "She was somebody who believed that serious music doesn't have to wear a frown," says Toronto Star critic William Littler.... | |
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| | | Opera to perform anti-tobacco show | | Posted Thursday, September 21, 2006 11:13:18 AM by Blog57 Team | | The Rimrock Opera Company will present an anti-tobacco-use show at the following schools:Sept. 25: Highland Elementary, 9:15 a.m.; Elysian Elementary, 1:15 p.m.Sept. 26: Burlington Elementary, 9:15 a.m.; Miles Avenue Elementary, 1:15 p.m.Sept. 27: Trinity Lutheran, 9:15 a.m.; Elder Grove, 1:15 p.m. .... | |
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| | | Opera back to slow, steady growth | | Posted Tuesday, August 08, 2006 9:11:53 PM by Blog57 Team | | Last year's box office bonanza "Margaret Garner" by Richard Danielpour and Toni Morrison proved a hard act to follow for Cincinnati Opera, but "Tosca," "L'Etoile," "A Masked Ball" and "The Tales of Hoffmann" garnered plenty of enthusiasm this year. The opera's just-released 2006 report on the season concluded at Music Hall in July shows average attendance of 2,654 for the four productions (Music Hall holds 3,516, though 300-400 seats are obstructed views). This compares with 3,039 in 2005, when "Margaret Garner," a Cincinnati Opera co-commission, filled the hall with its riveting, anti-slavery message and local resonances (the events on which "Margaret Garner" is based took place in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky). Average attendance for the 2006 summer festival exceeded the 2,591 posted in 2004, however, and more accurately reflects the opera's drawing power.... | |
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| | | Bringing opera to the suburbs | | Posted Thursday, August 03, 2006 3:43:37 PM by Blog57 Team | | Eve Budnick thought her summer would be filled with relaxing days. Instead, she said, her family has had a great view of her back as she sits for hours at the computer ``organizing things." That's just what happens when you decide to found an opera company. Her change of plans began across state lines. In December, Budnick, an opera coach and accompanist at the University of Connecticut, was chatting with soprano and University of Connecticut opera workshop instructor Rebecca Grimes when the two discovered they were neighbors. Budnick lives in Wayland, Grimes in Northborough. ``We were talking about how there didn't seem to be much opera going on in our area in the western suburbs," said Budnick. ``And then we thought maybe we could provide a service." That ``service" idea morphed into their cofounding the nonprofit opera company Opera del West.... | |
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| | | Childbirth is just the perfect opera topic | | Posted Friday, June 30, 2006 1:29:22 AM by Blog57 Team | | FORGET valkyries and tragic lovers, a new opera coming to Cambridge next week finds all the drama it needs on a maternity ward. Push!is the latest work from the Tête-à-Tête operas company, which is known for its daring and experimental shows which test the boundaries of the genre. Their aim is to bring opera up to date by writing about modern issues and experiences. Push!- which is at the Cambridge Arts Theatre on Wednesday and Thursday next week - is the world's first opera about childbirth and features a series of women's birth experiences. In between the drama a romance blossoms between a caretaker and a cleaner on a labour ward. "I got involved in the writing about half way through and it was only then I really got it," director Bill Bankes-Jones tells scene.... | |
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