The Metropolitan Opera announced that Diane Zola has been appointed the company’s new Assistant General Manager, Artistic, replacing the late Robert Rattray. So says the Met’s press office.
The Richard Tucker Music Foundation announced today that Christian Van Horn has been named as the winner of the 2018 Richard Tucker Award. Read more »
Celebrated conductor William Christie, widely considered among the foremost interpreters of early-music for modern audiences, and his acclaimed ensemble Les Arts Florissants have delighted audiences at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) for 30 years. On March 1st, they return with Rameau, maître à danser, featuring two rarely seen operas originally penned by 18th-century French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau for the court of Louis XV.
A pastoral atmosphere prevails throughout La naissance d’Osiris, a one-act ballet set to a libretto by Louis de Cahusac commissioned to celebrate the birth of the Duke of Berry, future Louis XVI; Daphnis et Églé tells the story of two lovers ignorant of their own love for each other, charming audiences with its use of classic European dance styles like sarabande, gavotte, gigue, minuet, tambourin, and contredanse.
Both operatic miniatures served as a symbol of the court’s opulence as well as a source of evening entertainment; together, as Rameau, maître à danser, they serve as a sublime showcase for Christie’s singular brilliance and the ravishing power of baroque music. At the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House Mar 1—3. Read more »
Well, you can knock La Cieca over with an oversized feather fan, because it turns out that 1940s German musical movie star Marika Rökk, “who was banned from acting for two years for her apparent closeness to the Nazi regime, had in fact been working from the 1940s onwards for a reconnaissance network passing Third Reich secrets to Moscow.” Read more »
Intrepid cub reporter Terry Teachout has scored the scoop of the century!
“Maestro James Levine, the Met’s Music Director since 1976, announced that after 40 years in the position, he will retire at the end of the current season, for health reasons,” says the Met press office.
From the Met: “Jonas Kaufmann has canceled his performances in this season’s new production of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut due to illness.”
Kasper Holten, Director of Opera at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, has announced he will quit this post in March 2017.
“Our patrons are also our investors, and because many of our core subscribers are also our most generous philanthropists, we need to make sure that our programming jives with their expectations, what they’d like to see onstage.”
Cher Public