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 »
O18, the second edition of Opera Philadelphia’s annual season-opening festival, launches on September 20 – on the eve of World Alzheimer’s Day – with the world premiere of Sky on Swings. An unflinching yet uplifting exploration of Alzheimer’s disease from the creative team behind O17’s I Have No Stories to Tell You, the new chamber opera finds fleeting beauty in memory loss. Starring mezzo-soprano Marietta Simpson, who imbues her performances with “infinitely touching and vivid expressiveness” (Opera News), and mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, “one of America’s finest artists and singers” (New York Times), Sky on Swings is perhaps the only opera to be headlined by two mature female vocalists. (Photo: Dominic M. Mercier) 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