All links are live!
12:00 PM
THIS SATURDAY!
October 31, 2015
LIVE IN HD
at a theater near you!
TANNHAUSER
James Levine conducts Wagner’s early masterpiece in
its first return to the Met stage in more than a decade. Starring Johan Botha
in the daunting title role of the young knight caught between true love and
passion. Eva-Maria Westbroek is Elisabeth, adding another Wagner heroine to her
Met repertoire after her acclaimed Sieglinde in the Ring a few seasons ago. On
the heels of his recent triumph in Parsifal, Peter Mattei sings Wolfram, and
Michelle DeYoung is the love goddess, Venus.
Synopsis: http://www.metopera.org/Discover/Synopses/Tannhauser/Encore: Wednesday, November 4 at 6:30 PM
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Great Performances at the Met
This week on Rhode Island Public television,
WSBE: (Comcast 294, Cox 808, Full Channel 109, and Verizon 478)
Saturday, October 31, 2015 @ 8:00pm
Sunday, November 1, 2015 @ 3:00am
Monday, November 2, 2015 @ 12:00am
MARCELO ALVAREZ
in
Cavalleria Rusticana-Pagliacci
Tenor Marcelo Álvarez stars in Mascagni's
"Cavalleria Rusticana" and Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci." In
"Cavalleria," he's a former soldier who used another woman to make
his ex-fiancée, now married to another man, jealous; and in
"Pagliacci," he's a clown whose wife is in love with another man.
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NEWS
A six year-old boy reviews the Met’s
Turandot
Don’t ask a young opera singer these three
questions
Can Festivals Help Opera Companies Stay
Fresh?
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
By Fred Plotkin
Opera Philadelphia on Tuesday announced what
it calls a 12-day urban opera festival. But it's not the first company to shake
up its season routine, as Fred Plotkin writes.
Giotto as an Operatic Inspiration
Friday, October 16, 2015
By Fred Plotkin
"What Bach is to music, Giotto is to
Renaissance art and all that followed," writes Fred Plotkin in this
appreciation of his dramatic paintings.
Must Opera Be 'Relevant'?
Friday, September 18, 2015
By Fred Plotkin
"I am asked, even more than usual, the
exhaustingly trite question of whether opera is still 'relevant,'" writes
Fred Plotkin. You might be surprised at his response.
When Opera Singers Work the Worship Circuit
Monday, September 14, 2015
By Fred Plotkin
For even established opera singers, church and
synagogue gigs are a necessary means of paying the rent, writes Fred Plotkin.
But does it help to subscribe to a given faith?
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OPERA ON THE INTERNET
WITH
DAVE D' AGUANNO
This coming
Saturday (October 31), the Met will be showing a LIVE performance of
Wagner's "Tannhauser" in selected movie theatres as part of their
line-up of HD-transmissions, with tenor Johan Botha singing the title role and
soprano Eva-Marie Westbroek as Elisabeth.
There are, however, a
couple of other LIVE performances that interested opera-lovers can listen to on
internet radio. One of these is a performance from Paris of Arnold Schoenberg's
opera "Moses & Aron" which can be heard on French Radio.
If you happen to be
interested in listening to an opera by Pietro Mascagni which is NOT
"Cavalleria Rusticana," then BBC Radio 3 will oblige with a LIVE
performance from this year's Wexford Festival of the Italian composer's opera
"Guglielmo Ratcliff." Whereas his far more famous opera features a
cast of hot-blooded characters from Sicily, this one instead gives us
a cast of hot-blooded folks from Scotland! (Why not?)
Performances of
possibly Gasparo Spontini's most celebrated opera from 1807 -- "La
Vestale" -- took place earlier this month in Brussels, and the Belgian
station Klara will be broadcasting one of these performances on Saturday.
As with other operas performed in Brussels, this one is apt to be offered as a
FREE video-stream on the opera company's website in the near future.
From June 2015, Hector
Berlioz's blockbuster "Les Troyens" can be heard on NPR as part of
its continuing series of opera broadcasts from the San Francisco Opera's
2014/2015 season. Opera-lovers who may have seen the Met's HD-transmission of
this opera a few seasons back will be pleased to learn that the roles of Enee
and Didon will once again be sung by tenor Bryan Hymel and mezzo-soprano Susan
Graham.
Also from last June,
Gounod's "Faust" can be heard on ORF, as performed in Turin, and
featuring bass Ildar Abdrazakov as Mephistopheles.
Enjoy!
DAVE
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STAR WARS IS BACH!
The Met Saturday afternoon
radio broadcast season starts again
radio broadcast season starts again
December 5.
(Oh, how will I wait until December??)
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No opera on
WGBH this week!
