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☆ Review: The Met Opera’s ‘Turandot’ Returns With a Strong Debut
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-29 | by ( Oussama Zahr | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Puccini’s “Turandot,” a verismo opera set in a fabled version of ancient China, makes for an odd love story. Its unlikable romantic leads go largely unfazed by the death and dismemberment they instigate; when they finally share true love’s kiss, they’re standing atop a figurative pile of corpses. On Wednesday at the Metropolitan Opera, the conductor Oksana Lyniv made a strong debut, emphasizing the murderous, life-or-death stakes instead of the fairy-tale Orientalism that has made it a cultural lightning rod in recent years. The reckoning around “Turandot” creates a problem for the Met, because the company’s long-running production, a lavish spectacle introduced by the director Franco Zeffirelli in 1987, is a hit. The gold-and-ecru throne room of Act II still dazzles, and eye-popping exoticism runs rampant, with acrobats, ribbon dancers, curled-roof pavilions and a dragon puppet.

Persons: Puccini’s, ”, Oksana Lyniv, “, —, Franco Zeffirelli Organizations: Metropolitan Opera Locations: China

☆ The Met Opera’s New Season: What We Want to See
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-21 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Contemporary works will be front and center in the coming season, the Metropolitan Opera announced on Wednesday, with four company premieres among its six new productions. It will be the fifth opera by Adams that the Met has presented, putting him in the same category as Tchaikovsky and Bellini. The lineup is part of the house’s efforts to attract new audiences by embracing contemporary operas, which are outselling many of the classics. The Met is still grappling with headwinds as it works to recover from the pandemic. In January, the company said it had withdrawn nearly $40 million in additional emergency funds from its endowment to help cover operating expenses.

Persons: Jeanine Tesori, George Brant, Moby, Dick, ”, Jake Heggie, Gene Scheer, “, Osvaldo Golijov, David Henry Hwang, “ Antony, Cleopatra, John Adams, Adams, Tchaikovsky, Bellini, Verdi’s, Aida ”, Strauss’s, Salome, Puccini’s, Simon McBurney Organizations: Metropolitan Opera, Met

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles Opera opens its 2024-25 season Sept. 21 with Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” reimagined in a film studio and said Saturday it will present the company premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s “Ainadamar" while reducing its offerings from six main-stage productions to five. Mario Gras's “Butterfly” staging, first seen at Madrid’s Teatro Real in 2017, stars Karah Son as Cio-Cio-San and Jonathan Tetelma as Pinkerton in their company debuts. The six main-stage productions in 2022-23 brought in $9.4 million; the COVID-shortened 2019-20 season resulted in just under $7 million from four stagings. “That’ll be our ninth main-stage opera in Spanish in the company’s 38-year history,” Koelsch said. Tomer Zvulun’s staging of Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” which premiered at the 2019 Houston Grand Opera, opens May 31, 2025, with Quinn Kelsey, Rosa Feola in her company debut and René Barbera.

Persons: Puccini’s, Osvaldo Golijov’s “, Mario Gras's, Karah, Jonathan Tetelma, Pinkerton, James Conlon, Martin, Christopher Koelsch, ” Koelsch, ”, Ana María Martínez, Daniela Mack, Deborah Colker, “, Ian Judge’s, Roméo, Juliette ”, Duke Kim, Amina Edris, Michael Cavanagh’s, Conlon, Erica Petrocelli, Tomer, Verdi’s, Quinn Kelsey, Rosa Feola, René Barbera Organizations: ANGELES, Los Angeles Opera, Teatro Real, Martin Gas, LA, Hollywood, ” Revenue, Scottish Opera, Detroit Opera, Welsh National Opera, Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera Locations: Japan, ”

☆ How Complete Was Stephen Sondheim’s Final Musical?
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-27 | by ( Michael Paulson | More About Michael Paulson | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The book, on the other hand, has been revised since Sondheim’s death by its writer, David Ives, and director, Joe Mantello. Mozart’s Requiem, Puccini’s “Turandot” and Berg’s “Lulu” were all left unfinished when their composers died and are now considered classics. “The work that David and Stephen did should absolutely be seen,” said Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater, which was working with Sondheim to develop the show until a few years ago. “I really trust David and Joe, and don’t think they would be putting up something they didn’t feel was finished — not on this scale,” he said. “They’re smart cookies, and if they wanted to do a workshop because it wasn’t finished, they could.

Persons: David Ives, Joe Mantello, Mozart’s, Puccini’s, ”, Lulu ”, David, Stephen, Oskar Eustis, Sondheim, ” James Lapine, George, “, Joe, wasn’t, Steve Organizations: Public

This is a season of transition for two of New York’s most important arts institutions. And Jaap van Zweden, the New York Philharmonic’s music director since 2018, starts his final year in the position with help from Yo-Yo Ma, Steve Reich and Schubert. Grand orchestras like the Chicago Symphony and Staatskapelle Berlin at Carnegie Hall; the Emerson String Quartet’s farewell; and premieres by Kate Soper and Ted Hearne are among the other highlights coming this fall. And Matthew Ozawa’s staging for Detroit Opera aims to be a corrective to stereotypes about Japanese women and culture (Oct. 7-15). DEATH OF CLASSICAL The impresario Andrew Ousley’s bleakly winking concert series, performed in crypts and catacombs, includes the Calidore Quartet, which will present Beethoven’s Op.

Persons: Jake Heggie’s, Malcolm X ”, Florencia, Jaap van Zweden, Ma, Steve Reich, Schubert, Kate Soper, Ted Hearne, Phil Chan, Matthew Ozawa’s, PERELMAN, ”, Mahani Teave, Andrew Ousley’s bleakly, Lowell Liebermann’s, Maxim Lando, Bach’s “ Goldberg, Hanzhi Wang, David Lang’s Pulitzer, “ Organizations: Metropolitan Opera, York, Chicago Symphony, Berlin, Carnegie Hall, Emerson Colonial Theater, Detroit Opera, Trinity Church Wall, Easter Locations: el Amazonas, Boston, American

☆ Renata Scotto Spun an Actor’s Insight Into Vocal Gold
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-17 | by ( Oussama Zahr | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

Scotto contained multitudes, and that extended to her vocal categorization, too. Some have described her as a lyric by fach and a spinto by temperament, attributing her vocal decline — inevitable for any singer — to the irreconcilability of the two. Her Cio-Cio-San in Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly,” preserved on two studio recordings, exploits the permeable boundary among those voice types. The progress is not linear; her voice responds to hopes and doubts that the heroine continually surfaces and suppresses. Scotto’s morbidezza — her ability to inflect her middle voice with captivating softness — was arguably her most impressive quality.

Persons: Scotto, fach, —, Puccini, ”, “, Lorin Maazel, morbidezza, Verdi’s, ” Scotto, pesky, It’s, Riccardo Muti’s, Violetta, Lucia, Mimì, Desdemona Organizations: Cio Locations: Puccini’s, “ La

☆ Renata Scotto, Opera Diva Who Inhabited Roles, Dies at 89
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-16 | by ( Jonathan Kandell | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Renata Scotto, the firebrand Italian soprano and Metropolitan Opera favorite who was acclaimed for her acting and insights into opera characters as much as for her voice, died on Wednesday in Savona, Italy. At her best, in roles like Puccini’s Cio-Cio San in “Madama Butterfly” and Mimì in “La Bohème,” Verdi’s Violetta in “La Traviata” and Bellini’s “Norma,” Ms. Scotto achieved a dramatic intensity that electrified audiences and elicited the highest praise from her fellow opera stars. “Renata is the closest I have ever worked with a real singing actress,” the tenor Plácido Domingo said in The New York Times Magazine in 1978. “There is an emphasis, a feeling she puts behind every word she interprets.”Vocally, Ms. Scotto could not match the sensuousness of Renata Tebaldi or the astonishing technique and range of Joan Sutherland. But Ms. Scotto’s charisma and stage presence made critics overlook her shortcomings.

Persons: Renata Scotto, Filippo Anselmi, ” Verdi’s Violetta, Bellini’s “ Norma, ” Ms, Scotto, “ Renata, ”, Plácido Domingo, Renata Tebaldi, Joan Sutherland, Harold C, Schonberg Organizations: firebrand, Metropolitan Opera, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, Carnegie Hall Locations: Savona, Italy, “, “ La, The

☆ Reimagining ‘Madame Butterfly,’ With Asian Creators at the Helm
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-24 | by ( Javier C. Hernández | More About Javier C. Hernández | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The auditorium lights dimmed, and the cast and crew of Cincinnati Opera’s new production of Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly” anxiously took their places. For months, the team, made up largely of Asian and Asian American artists, had worked to reimagine the classic opera, upending its stereotypes about women and Japanese culture. They gathered at the Cincinnati Music Hall one evening last week to fine-tune their creation before its opening last Saturday. “It feels a little like a grand experiment,” said the production’s director, Matthew Ozawa, whose father is Japanese and mother is white. The opera has long been criticized for its portrait of Asian women as exotic and submissive, and the use of exaggerated makeup and stereotypical costumes in some productions has drawn fire.

Persons: Butterfly ”, ”, Matthew Ozawa, Madame Organizations: Cincinnati Music, American Navy Locations: Cincinnati, American, Nagasaki

☆ Can ‘Miss Saigon’ Be Saved? Two British Shows Disagree.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-18 | by ( Houman Barekat | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“Miss Saigon” is back and so, inevitably, is the surrounding discourse. Claude-Michel Schönberg’s musical melodrama about an ill-fated romance between a Vietnamese sex worker and an American G.I. So not everyone was pleased when the Crucible Theater in Sheffield, England, announced it would stage a new production of “Miss Saigon” this summer. Chris (a compellingly lugubrious Christian Maynard) meets Kim (Jessica Lee) in a brothel and they fall in love, but their affair ends abruptly when the Americans withdraw from Saigon. Three years later, Chris, now married to an American woman, learns that he has a young son by Kim.

Persons: Saigon ”, Claude, Michel Schönberg’s, Jonathan Pryce, yellowface, Robert Hastie, Anthony Lau, Cameron Mackintosh, Puccini’s, Christian Maynard, Kim, Jessica Lee, Chris, Kim . Kim Locations: Saigon, American, Vietnam, Sheffield, England, British East, Asian, United States

☆ The Art of Being a Flâneur
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-19 | by ( Stephanie Rosenbloom | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +4 min

I followed the river toward the Uffizi Gallery where I stopped, enchanted by the scene below. It’s “a search for the delectable, delicious, almost gustatory delights of the moment,” as they put it. Other times, an object or architectural detail that piques your interest — a gate, a gargoyle — provides a portal to another time. Stories of vanished ages can be triggered by a single stone, then explored back home through books and websites. Being in a big city among so many strangers can be at turns exhilarating and disturbing.

Persons: Arno, Fred B, Bryant, Joseph Veroff, Puccini’s, Robert K, Merton, Elinor Barber, bento, Amer, plumb, Edgar Allan Poe’s “, Marie Roget, ”, Walter Benjamin, “ Charles Baudelaire Organizations: Uffizi, Lincoln Center, Metropolitan Opera House, Columbia University, Science, Metro, Poet Locations: Firenze, Florence, New York, Tokyo, Japan, Istanbul, Paris

☆ Pretty Yende, South African opera star will perform at King Charles' coronation
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Gertrude Kitongo | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

CNN —“Pretty, are you sitting down?” South African soprano Pretty Yende was performing in Vienna last December when she received a call from her manager. She had just been booked for the biggest gig of her life: a performance at the coronation of King Charles III. As one of three soloists at the ceremony, it’s thought that Yende is the first African to be invited to perform solo at a British coronation. The coronation will not be the first time King Charles has watched Yende perform; he saw the soprano sing at the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s 75th anniversary gala, held at Windsor Castle in April 2022. Pretty Yende performs in "Lucia Di Lammermoor" at the Bastille Opera House in Paris in October 2016.

☆ The Maestro Wore Blue: Bringing Pizazz to the Pit at the Met
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Javier C. Hernández | Landon Nordeman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Metropolitan Opera’s music director, dressed in a blazing sapphire jacket and trim black pants, stood before a mirror backstage on a recent afternoon and smiled. “Oh my God, it’s so good,” he said, waving his baton. His outfit was modeled on one worn onstage by a band leader in Franco Zeffirelli’s classic production. Could the golden braid that dangled from his right shoulder be fastened, so it did not create a distraction in the pit? Was the jacket comfortable enough to accommodate the sweeping gestures that the music demanded?

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