Opera News articles from August 2004

Opera News archives from August 2004

The Chicago manual of style.(Viewpoint)(opera in Chicago)
August 1, 2004... A 1941 OPERA NEWS article on "The Development of Opera in Chicago" reported on a current exhibition in the lobby of the Chicago Public Library, which had "aroused the wonder, the amusement and the nostalgia of the artistic triumphs in Chicago's...

Susan Graham takes on her first Donna Elvira in Lyric Opera of Chicago's new Don Giovanni, which opens Lyric 50th-anniversary season on September 18.(Opera Watch)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... 1. SUSAN GRAHAM takes on her first Donna Elvira in Lyric Opera of Chicago's new DON GIOVANNI, which opens Lyric 50th-anniversary season on September 18. The mezzo reverts to her familiar trouser roles later in the season, with dates set as...

Stephen Lord makes his New York City Opera debut on September 19, conducting Lotfi Mansouri's production of La Rondine.(Opera Watch)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... 2. STEPHEN LORD makes his New York City Opera debut on September 19, conducting Lotfi Mansouri's production of LA RONDINE. After a November sojourn at Florentine Opera for Il Trovatore, Lord returns to Boston Lyric Opera, one of the two...

Quiz questions for next season's Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcasts are being accepted on-line, at www.operainfo.org, or by mail at Met Opera Quiz, P.O. Box 805, New York, NY, 10150.(Opera Watch)
August 1, 2004... QUIZ QUESTIONS for next season's METROPOLITAN OPERA RADIO BROADCASTS are being accepted on-line, at www.operainfo.org, or by mail at Met Opera Quiz, P.O. Box 805, New York, NY, 10150. Submissions should mention the radio station over which the...

Australian countertenor Tobias Cole, who was the Voice of Apollo in Chicago Opera Theater's recent production of Death in Venice, will take on another Britten role for the company in May 2005, when he wears Oberon's crown in COT's A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Andrei Serban.(Opera Watch)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... 3. Australian countertenor TOBIAS COLE, who was the Voice of Apollo in Chicago Opera Theater's recent production of Death in Venice, will take on another Britten role for the company in May 2005, when he wears Oberon's crown in COT'S A...

Everything you ever wanted to know about the City of Big Shoulders will be in The Encyclopedia Of Chicago, due out in October from University of Chicago Press.(Opera Watch)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 1, 2004... 4. Everything you ever wanted to know about the City of Big Shoulders will be in THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CHICAGO, due out in October from University of Chicago Press. More than ten years in preparation, the encyclopedia has 1,100-plus pages of...

The immortal Florence Foster Jenkins will return to the New York stage in November, when Stephen Temperley's Souvenir, a play with music about the late musically, challenged coloratura and her accompanist, Cosme McMoon, opens at Manhattan's York Theater Company.(Opera Watch)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... 5. The immortal FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS will return to the New York stage in November, when Stephen Temperley's SOUVENIR, a play with music about the late musically, challenged coloratura and her accompanist, COSME MCMOON, opens at Manhattan's...

Designs were unveiled in June for Dallas's Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House, one of the five venues planned for the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, scheduled for completion in 2009.(Opera Watch)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... 6. Designs were unveiled in June for Dallas's MARGOT AND BILL WINSPEAR OPERA HOUSE, one of the five venues planned for the DALLAS CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS, scheduled for completion in 2009. The Center will provide the main stage...

Altman makes Wedding plans in Chicago; Giordani encores Gioconda in London; promising newcomer at caffe taci.(On the Beat)(Robert Altman)(Marcello Giordani)
August 1, 2004... The latest Lyric Opera of Chicago world premiere fakes place in December: A Wedding, with music by WILLIAM BOLCOM and libretto by ARNOLD WEINSTEIN and ROBERT ALTMAN. It's based on the 1978 screen comedy directed by Altman, and when plans were...

Sound bites: David Cangelosi.(Biography)
August 1, 2004... David Cangelosi has become something of a one-man traveling repertory company in recent seasons, creating a vivid gallery of characterizations in Paris, where he has just completed a run as Mozart's Monostatos at the Bastille; at Boston Lyric...

The wedding of the year: William Bolcom and Arnold Weinstein's new opera, A Wedding, based on the 1978 Robert Altman movie, bows at lyric opera of Chicago in december. Megan McKinney talks to some of the opera's stars and finds out how opera and film part company.(Cover Story)
August 1, 2004... In Robert Altman's intricate 1978 comedy A Wedding, a family ceremony is held in a magnificent Episcopal church in suburban Chicago, while nearby an elaborate reception for two hundred guests is being prepared in a stately Lake Forest mansion....

The company that works: Lyric Opera of Chicago is a sturdy Midwestern monument--an American company that has survived and prospered while many others have run aground artistically and financially. On Lyric's fiftieth anniversary, JOHN VON RHEIN looks at the company's distinguished history.
August 1, 2004... In the life of a venerable European theater such as Vienna or Covent Garden, fifty years is a mere sliver of time. But for Chicago, a city where for so many years resident opera was like "the feather in the wind" described by the Duke of Mantua...

Launching pad: when William Murray decided to a write a book about a group of aspiring singers and follow them through a whole season, he chose to spend some time at Lyric Opera Center for American Artists in Chicago--one of the country's top opera boot camps.
August 1, 2004... The studio Gianna Rolandi refers to as "the cell" is a long, rectangular room with a grand piano at one end and a full-length mirror along one wall. In one corner is a large yellow rubber ball on which Rolandi sometimes asks her young artists...

Box social: throughout Lyric Opera of Chicago's history, the musical and social worlds have rubbed off on one another.
August 1, 2004... Unlike "the other city," which is the local code name tot New York, the metropolis of the Midwest has never had enough resident celebrities. Yes, there are some sports stars, plus Oprah. But it was novelist Saul Bellow who put his finger on...

Chicago phoenix: once, Chicago Opera Theater was on life support. Now, under Brian Dickie's guidance, the prognosis is hopeful.(Interview)
August 1, 2004... Chicago Opera Theater celebrated its thirtieth season this year with a move to a new home, the Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance (right). Brian Dickie, since 1999 the company's general director--and, many say, its...

The garden district.(Mary Garden)(Biography)
August 1, 2004... "In a word, a Superwoman." That's what Mary Garden was to music critic James Huneker, and to a generation of Chicago opera-lovers who took the soprano to their hearts as "Our Mary" from the moment of her debut with the newly formed Chicago...

Chicago is our kind of town, chicago is ...: ... the city of great architecture, spirit-lifting public spaces, infinite Culinary possibilities and world-class shopping.(Directory)
August 1, 2004... ... the city of great architerture, spirit-lifting public spaces, infinite culinary possibilities and world-class shopping Clockwise from left: the fifty-foot-high "Chicago Picasso" in Civic Center Plaza was unveiled in 1967; the city's...

Scene from an Italian restaurant.(Italian Village Restaurant)
August 1, 2004... It's a second home to maestro Bruno Bartoletti. Giuseppe Di Stefano was famous for scarfing down its steaks. Bass Ferruccio Mazzoli once snagged a steaming piece of its roast chicken and took it onstage during La Boheme--just to ratchet up the...

Tableau vivant: as the Ravinia Festival to prepares to stage a new production of Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George, William R. Braun reflects on the musical that has meant more to him than any other.
August 1, 2004... All kinds of music and theater have been a vital part of my life for nearly forty years, but there have been only two times I sat in my seat and cried like a kitty. The first was Sunday in the Park with George. (The second was Wagner's Die...

Sunday in Ravinia.(Welz Kauffman)(Interview)
August 1, 2004... A new production of the woefully underproduced Sunday in the Park with George promises to be one of the highlights of this summer's Ravinia Festival. Ravinia, the off-season home of the Chicago Symphony, celebrates its centennial this year,...

All the city's a stage: Richard Christiansen looks at Chicago's happening theater scene.
August 1, 2004... Take a walk through downtown Chicago this coming season, and you may believe that you are indeed in the midst of what Mayor Richard M. Daley has called "the new theater capital of the United States." Well, the Mayor exaggerates--but not by...

Chicago: Chicago Opera Theater gave Britten's Death in Venice an imaginative, marvelously evocative new production by Ken Cazan.(North America)(Benjamin Britten)(Il Viaggio a Reims)(Opera Review)
August 1, 2004... Benjamin Britten's disturbing, controversial Death in Venice is notoriously difficult to stage, given its extended passages of monologue and a libretto that is a bit overburdened with symbolic introspection--as is the original Thomas Mann...

Seattle.(North America)(La Fanciulla del West)(Opera Review)
August 1, 2004... Seattle Opera's La Fanciulla del West (seen May 22) was served, like the Polka Saloon's whisky, straight up. This was a no-nonsense production: a love story played out against what Girl of the Golden West playwright David Belasco called "a dark...

Bordeaux.(International)(Les Rois)(Opera Review)
August 1, 2004... Opera National de Bordeaux's decision to commission Philippe Fenelon's second opera, Les Rois, is to be applauded. The composer's first opera, Salammbo was one of the great successes at the Opera de Paris in 1998 and was successfully revived in...

Glyndebourne.(International)(Die Zauberflote)(Opera Review)
August 1, 2004... Last year, the U.K.'s chief summer opera festival began with a first excursion into Wagner via a successful Tristan und Isolde. This year, for its seventieth anniversary, Glyndebourne returned to its presiding deity, Mozart, and Die...

London.(International)(Die Walkure)(Arabella)(Opera Review)
August 1, 2004... Phyllida Lloyd's staging of The Ring for English National Opera is turning out to be about the abuse and exploitation of women. In The Rhinegold, the Rhine-daughters (as they are called in Jeremy Sams's translation) were employed in a...

Stuttgart.(Simplicius Simplicissimus)(Opera Review)
August 1, 2004... Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1905-63) saw it all. As a Bavarian boy, he witnessed limbless German soldiers returning from the Great War trenches, then Hitler's rise and Germany's inexorable march to war. By his forties, Communist dictatorship ruled...

Freiburg.(Cosi Fan Tutte)(Opera Review)
August 1, 2004... An opera for all seasons, Cosi Fan Tutte can be interpreted as fun or profound. In his stage debut at Theater Freiburg (seen May 15), TV and film director Max Farberbock started out at one extreme (say, Sex and the City) and ended up attempting...

Vienna.(Berenice)(Madama Butterfly)(Opera Review)
August 1, 2004... Berenice, Johannes Maria Staud's first opera, is based on an Edgar Allen Poe story that can be downloaded from the internet and printed in legible type on four pages. The libretto, by Durs Grunbein (also a debut effort), takes up some...

Moscow.(The Fiery Angel)(Opera Review)
August 1, 2004... "Of orgies there's no end," said Prokofiev about Valery Bryusov's symbolist novel The Fiery Angel, apparently attracted more by its sexuality than by its religiosity. Yet the opera he composed on Bryusov's tale of the occult arguably doesn't...

August online edition of Opera News.
August 1, 2004... NORTH AMERICA: Streetcar pulls into D.C.; Carmen in Baltimore; Kentucky Opera's Cosi; mixed-media Zauberflote in Syracuse; Barbiere in Trenton; Tampa's Turandot; Berkeley Handelians. INTERNATIONAL: Alcina and Lea Paladins in Paris; Haydn...

Handel: La Maga Abbandonata.(Sound Recording Review)
August 1, 2004... HANDEL: La Maga Abbandonata [] Kermes, Beaumont, Leon; Il Complesso Barocco, Curtis. Texts and translations. BMG Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 74321 95644 2 Because he lives in Italy and has centered his career in Europe, it might be easy to...

Gluck: Orphee et Eurydice.(Sound Recording Review)
August 1, 2004... [] Delunsch, Harousseau; R. Croft; Choeur des Musiciens du Louvre, Les Musiciens du Louvre, Minkowski. Text and translations. Archiv 471 582-2 Although it is one of the most important operas in history, Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice has always...

Monteverdi: L'Orfeo.(Sound Recording Review)
August 1, 2004... MONTEVERDI: L'Orfeo [] Dessay, Coote, Gens, Prina, Ciofi, Sampson; Bostridge, Luperi, Regazzo, Maltman, Agnew; Le Concert d'Atree, Harm. Virgin Veritas 7243 5 45642 2 Ever since the revival of Baroque opera took off in the 1970s, no...

Strauss: Die Liebe der Danae.(Sound Recording Review)
August 1, 2004... STRAUSS: Die Liebe der Danae [] Uhl, Zach, Bernhard, Peetz, Kjellevold; Grundheber, Chafin, McNamara, Schopflin; Kiel Philharmonic Orchestra, Kid Opera Chorus, Windfuhr. Text and translation. CPO 999 967-2 (Naxos, dist.) "All that...

Vivaldi: Rosmira Fedele.(Sound Recording Review)
August 1, 2004... VIVALDI: Rosmira Fedele [] Pizzolato, Haller, Brua, Bertini; Laszczkowski, Cantor, Elwes; Ensemble Baroque de Nice, Bezzina. Text and translations. Dynamic CDS 437/1-3 Assisted by scholarship, Baroque opera performances are becoming...

Ives: Songs: Concord Sonata.(Sound Recording Review)
August 1, 2004... IVES: Songs: Concord Sonata [] Graham: Aimard, piano. English texts and translations. Warner Classics 2564 60297-2 It should come as no surprise that Susan Graham proves herself to be just as comfortable with the often forbidding songs...

Gerard Souzay.(Sound Recording Review)
August 1, 2004... [] "FALLA: SIETE CANCIONES POPULARES ESPANOLAS; RAVEL: HISTOIRES NATURELLES; FAURE: MELODIES" With Baldwin, Bonneau, piano. "Testament SBT 1311 [] "RAVEL, DEBUSSY, CHAUSSON, DUPARC: MELODIES" With Bonneau, piano; Orchestre de la Societe du...

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde.(Video Recording Review)
August 1, 2004... [] Knie, Forrester; Wickers, Braun, Wilderman; Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal and Chorus of Opera de Quebec, Decker. VAI DVD 4259, subtitled, 87 mins. [] Eaglen, Dalayman; Heppner, Pape, Ketelsen; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and...

Vera Galupe-Borszkh: The Annual Farewell Recital.(P.D.Q. Bach: The Abduction of Figaro)(Video Recording Review)
August 1, 2004... [] Arias from La Grande-Duchesse de Getolstein, Dido and Aeneas, La Gioconda, Mefistofele, Il Trovatore; songs by Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Poulene. La Gran Scena Opera Company, recorded April 2003, live at La Belle Epoque, New York. VAI DVD 4250,...

Menotti: The Consul.(Video Recording Review)
August 1, 2004... [] Neway, Sachs, Salary; Kelley Ludgin, Lishner; Torkanowsky VAI DVD 4266, black and white, 120 mins. The worldwide popularity of Amahl and the Night Visitors notwithstanding, it is The Consul that stands tallest in Gian Carlo Menotti's...

Obituaries.(Nicolai Ghiaurov)(Obituary)
August 1, 2004... NICOLAI GHIAUROV. Lydjene, near Velingrad, Bulgaria, September 13, 1929--Modena, Italy, June 2, 2004 Basses don't tend to be stellar attractions in this age of the tenor, but Nicolai Ghiaurov came close. He commanded a remarkable vocal...

Dateline.(Calendar)
August 1, 2004... ASPEN MUSIC FESTIVAL (Wheeler Opera House, 970-925-9042; www.aspenmusicfestival.com) Aug. 2 The Turn of the Screw (Britten) Aug. 16 Rigoletto (Verdi). Also 17, 19, 21 CENTRAL CITY OPERA (Central City Opera House, CO, 303-292-6700;...

The reel Chicago.(Coda)(movie locations)
August 1, 2004... Long before Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones shimmied their way through Chicago, the Second City provided the setting for scores of American movies. We've chosen ten of our favorites. How many can you identify? (Hint: It may not...