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NEW YORK (AP) — Andrea Götsch was surprised when she won her audition in 2019 that led to membership in the Vienna Philharmonic. I thought that was too far away.”A male bastion from its founding in 1842 until 1997, the Vienna Philharmonic now has 24 female players among 145 members with three vacancies as it tours the United States this week. And we want the best members, so it was the right decision.”Based since 1870 at Vienna’s Musikverein, the Vienna Philharmonic elects leadership, engages conductors, chooses programs and schedules tours and recording sessions. It selects members from the Vienna State Opera Orchestra and has had a summer residency at the Salzburg Festival since 1922. A year later, she was confirmed for the Opera Orchestra and in 2022 she became a VPO member.

Persons: — Andrea Götsch, ”, “, It’s, Daniel Froschauer, Vienna’s Musikverein, Anna Lelkes, Albena Danailova, Franz Welser, Madeleine Carruzzo, York Philharmonic’s, Stephanie “ Steffy ” Goldner, Helen Kotas, Froschauer, Anneleen Lenaerts, Xavier de Maistre, Michael Bladerer, Strauss ’, Arabella ”, ” Lenaerts, ” Götsch, Johann Hindler, Verdi’s “, Daniel Harding, Götsch Organizations: Vienna Philharmonic, Associated Press, Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Salzburg Festival, Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, Berlin Philharmonic, York, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, State Opera Orchestra, Mahler, of, State Opera, VPO, Opera Orchestra Locations: Vienna, United States, Vienna’s, Swiss, Brussels, Bolzano, Italy, Mahler’s

☆ Review: A Soprano Cements Her Stardom in the Met’s New ‘Forza’
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-27 | by ( Zachary Woolfe | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

As dramatic music swirled late Monday evening, the woman trudged a few steps pushing a filthy shopping cart — so hunched and bedraggled that she seemed like an extra, sent onstage to set the scene before the star entered. Then she opened her mouth, and a note emerged so pure and clear, widening into a cry before narrowing back into a murmur, that it could only be the soprano Lise Davidsen, cementing her stardom in a new production of Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino” at the Metropolitan Opera. In her still-young Met career, Davidsen has triumphed in works by Tchaikovsky, Wagner and especially Strauss. She has quickly become the rare singer you want to hear in everything. But Verdi and the Italian repertoire traditionally belong to voices more velvety and warm than hers, which has the coolly powerful authority of an ivory sword, particularly in flooding high notes.

Persons: Lise Davidsen, Davidsen, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Strauss, Verdi Organizations: Forza, Metropolitan Opera Locations: Italian

☆ 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, ”

☆ Opera Philadelphia Cuts Its Budget, but Not Its Ambition
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-25 | by ( Joshua Barone | More About Joshua Barone | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

And opera needs works like “10 Days,” which treats the medium with affection and respect while also chafing at its tropes throughout history. For this is an opera that jerks between beauty and terror — seamlessly under the baton of Daniela Candillari, leading an ensemble of about a dozen instrumentalists. The patients (members of Opera Philadelphia Chorus, led by Elizabeth Braden) can sing the same hymn with serenity in one scene and chaotic dissonance in the next, with few indications of which is the truer rendition. The most tragic of the patients is Lizzie (the mezzo-soprano Raehann Bryce-Davis, who sings with a lush and moving elegance that would make her ideal for mid-20th century American opera). Her repetitive ramblings come into logical focus with a long, crushing aria about the death of her daughter.

Persons: Nellie Bly’s, —, Bly, Daniela Candillari, Elizabeth Braden, Josiah Blackwell, Will Liverman, Joanna Settle’s, Andrew Lieberman, Kiera Duffy, Lauren Pearl, Raehann Bryce, Davis, Lizzie doesn’t, She’s Organizations: Opera Philadelphia, Academy of Music Locations: Roosevelt

☆ The Soprano Ailyn Pérez Doesn’t Feel Like a Beginner Anymore
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-03 | by ( Joshua Barone | More About Joshua Barone | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

It helped — a lot — that by then she had met Soloman Howard. In 2016, Pérez starred as Juliette in “Roméo,” and her colleagues included Howard, a bass-baritone, as the duke. At one point, Santa Fe Opera asked Pérez to tape herself singing “Song to the Moon” from “Rusalka,” and Howard said, “‘We are going to make a video,’” she recalled. She doesn’t really remember that night — “I was out of my body” — but others do. Gelb, who said, “You can’t fake Verdi,” remembered her sounding “absolutely magnificent.” Nézet-Séguin, called it “a performance for the ages.”

Persons: Peter Gelb, ”, Pérez, “ Simon Boccanegra ”, Soloman Howard, Juliette, “, Howard, Ball, ’ ”, Gelb, Verdi Organizations: Met, Vienna, Santa Fe Opera, Goods Locations: Santa Fe, Chicago, Santa, “

☆ 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

☆ The Women of ‘Don Carlo’ Portray a Moment in History
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-01 | by ( David Belcher | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Across the monumental, hourslong opera “Don Carlo,” two female characters take a journey unparalleled in Verdi’s canon of 28 operas. Just two real-life characters from history caught in a love triangle that rocked 16th-century Spain. For her and Yulia Matochkina, a Russian mezzo-soprano, it’s a chance to delve into two of Verdi’s most complicated and fully realized female characters. It portrays a real-life Spanish prince, Don Carlo, and Elisabeth of Valois, a French princess, who are secretly in love, although she is betrothed to his father, King Philip II of Spain. But for many, it’s the women who move the story forward and offer perhaps the richest characterizations in Verdi’s repertoire.

Persons: Don Carlo, ”, Nicholas Hytner’s, Lise Davidsen, Elisabeth of Valois, Yulia Matochkina, it’s, “ Don Carlo ”, Friedrich Schiller, King Philip II of Spain, Princess Eboli, Carlo, Rodrigo Organizations: Royal Locations: Spain, Norwegian, Russian

☆ Is It the End of an Era at the Metropolitan Opera?
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-08 | by ( Zachary Woolfe | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Metropolitan Opera’s 2022-23 season may well have been the end of an era. As a repertory house and the country’s largest performing arts organization, it juggles multiple works at a time. The days of being America’s grand repertory company, of 20-plus titles a year, could be slowly entering the rearview mirror. So it was fitting that, last month, the Met said farewell to one of the shows that typified the era that’s ending: its “Aida” from the 1980s. The production was typical Met: hardly cheap but sturdy and flexible, into which you could toss singers with relatively little rehearsal.

Persons: it’s, Don Carlo, ” Organizations: Met

☆ Grace Bumbry, Barrier-Shattering Opera Diva, Is Dead at 86
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-08 | by ( Alex Williams | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Grace Bumbry, a barrier-shattering mezzo-soprano whose vast vocal range and transcendent stage presence made her a towering figure in opera and one of its first, and biggest, Black stars, died on Sunday in Vienna. She was 86. Her death, following a stroke in October, was confirmed in a statement by the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where she was long a mainstay, performing more than 200 times over two decades. Growing up in St. Louis in an era of segregation, Ms. Bumbry came of age at a time when African American singers were a rare sight on the opera stage, despite breakthroughs by luminaries like Leontyne Price and Marian Anderson. But with a fierce drive and an outsize charisma, Ms. Bumbry broke out internationally in 1960, at 23, when she sang Amneris in Verdi’s “Aida” at the Paris Opera.

☆ Spotlighting Lady Macbeth’s Anguish: Can What’s Done Be Undone?
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Oussama Zahr | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Macduff, the chorus, Macbeth’s big Act IV aria — all scrapped. In typical stagings, Lady Macbeth comes across as an unsubtle, unrepentant harridan whose abrupt crisis of conscience in the opera’s final act stretches credulity. Heartbeat starts with Lady Macbeth’s breakdown as the essential truth of her character and then molds the narrative to fit it. The show begins with Lady Macbeth in bed, sobbing uncontrollably, full of remorse for all the blood she has helped to shed. In Heartbeat’s telling, Lady Macbeth, no longer the scapegoat for her husband’s foul behavior, is the one who is led astray by an avaricious spouse.

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