Patrick Mack
Patrick Mack starting listening to opera as a teenager to the total bewilderment of his rock and roll mother. He sang leading roles in the opera departments of Santa Monica College and UCLA and for two years in the Baltimore Symphony Chorus. In 2003 he joined the tenor section of The Verdi Chorus which has been giving young singers paid performance opportunities for over 30 years. He has served on their Board of
Directors since 2012 and handles their publicity, marketing, and Facebook page. Patrick is a luxury cruise consultant with All-Travel in
Los Angeles and was honored as one of the Top 25 Travel Agents in the country in 2015 by Travel Agent Magazine. Having weaned himself from an
early age on the musical opinions of Andrew Porter in the New Yorker, he has been wielding the critics pen on Parterre.com since 2011.
His singing of the national anthem has never failed to impress those standing closest to him at any public event he attends.
Jacques Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann has had a bumpy ride to its pride of position in the current French repertoire.
I entered the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Saturday night for LA Opera’s 30 year old revival of their production of Salome with a combination of enthusiasm and apprehension.
Let’s call this meeting to order. My name is Patrick and I’m a boxset-aholic.
Friday night Music Director James Conlon sold Die Entfürhung aus dem Serial to a tony crowd of Angelenos.
Now we find Mariella Devia, a diva held in near mythic regard due to her vocal longevity, with competing videos of two of her performances that were released, literally, on the same day.
How many books have been published about Anna Maria Sofia Cecilia Kalogeropoulou Meneghini Callas, great operatic goddess of the dark arts?
L.A. Opera offered an inspired concert staging of Leonard Bernstein’s musical-comedy bouquet to New York, Wonderful Town.
Sony Classical has now released “Leontyne Price Prima Donna Assoluta” containing nearly her entire operatic oeuvre in a box set.
The characters get right down to work immediately with their foul deeds.
The Teatro di San Carlo in Naples is a pearl itself and this presentation proffers some of the best that company has to offer.
The Hollywood Bowl is truly the preeminent musical venue in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles saw the first U.S. performance of Giacomo Puccini’s snow-dusted weeper in 1897 just a year after the young Toscanini led the prima in Turin.
Giuseppe Verdi was so unhappy with the first production of his Giovanna d’Arco at La Scala in 1845 that he swore an oath to himself that he would never entrust that theatre with a prima again.
Los Angeles first saw Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly presented at the Mason Opera House downtown in 1908 by the English Grand Opera Company. Rumors that LA Opera Artistic Director Placido Domingo portrayed Cio-Cio San’s little boy in that production remain unsubstantiated.
There was a general feeling of homecoming in the hall on Friday evening in anticipation of what promised to be a special return visit on many levels.
Ms. Guy goes into detail about what made Sills a “magic” performer, recounting reactions of people across an extraordinarily broad socio-economic spectrum who discovered their love of opera and singing through her.
Gather around while I play Ghost of New Year’s Eve past!
The most recent Egyptian voluptuary of 2006 by our friend Franco has now been replaced by the most singularly spartan production of Verdi’s masterpiece I think I’ve ever seen.
Giacomo Puccini’s final opus interruptus is and shall always remain my favorite opera. The reasons for this preference are so varied and numerous that if they were printed and bound the volume would most assuredly require its own stand.
Hopefully the assignment of Herman Melville’s endless whaling opus Moby-Dick as compulsory reading for High School students is a thing of the past.
If you had told me 20 years ago that at some point in the future I would have over 550 of the Metropolitan Opera’s performances, audio and video, at my command with the touch of a button I would say my eulogy had just been read and I’d been taken to my reward.
LA Opera opened their 30th season with a pairing of two of their most popular productions, both of which were initially staged by filmmakers not unfamiliar with the vagaries of our industry outpost here in Hollywoodland.