The Metropolitan Opera House announces that Puccini’s Madama Butterfly will return to the Met stage for 16 performances, starting January 11. Grammy Award–winning conductor and music director of the New Jersey Symphony Xian Zhang makes her Met debut, leading a cast starring soprano Aleksandra Kurzak as Cio-Cio-San and tenor Matthew Polenzani as Pin...
READ MOREHave you been to Marengo, Iowa lately? A town of 2,500 situated just north of Highway 80, featuring a National Register of Historic Places listed courthouse, a Carnegie library, and a venerable cemetery with a Civil War memorial, it is intricately connected to French history, just like Iowa City, which developed out of a settlement named Napoleon....
READ MORESunday, January 14, 2024 , 1:00pm-4:00pm. Edgartown Library 26 Edgartown - West Tisbury Rd. - Edgartown, MA. Based on the tragic life of Anne Boleyn, second wife to Henry VIII, Donizetti's Anna Bolena is the first of his "Three Queens" operas. This 2011 production from the Vienna State Opera stars soprano Anna Netrebko as the doomed queen, mezzo El...
READ MOREChef Massimo Bottura will be the protagonist of two episodes - those of January 5 and 12 - of the American television series Dream of Italy. The program-which boasts more than sixty million viewers-is to dedicate the two episodes in question to the city of Modena and more generally to the Food Valley of Emilia Romagna: Massimo Bottura, in this cont...
READ MOREThe first event in Washington Concert Opera’s 37th season, on Dec. 2, was the D.C. premiere of Gioachino Rossini’s “Ermione,” an opera that “immediately sank into oblivion” in 1819, according to WCO co-founder Peter Russell. Why did it fail? Musically, Rossini “might have just pushed the envelope a little too far” for the Naples audience, suggested...
READ MOREItalian opera singing has been added to the United Nations' cultural heritage list, a prestigious accolade for the four-centuries-old art mixing costume drama and music. U.N. culture agency UNESCO said on Wednesday it had included opera under its category of Intangible Cultural Heritage, which already features other famed Italian practices such as...
READ MOREThere are conductors who compose and composers who conduct. Music professor Paul Salerni claims to be the latter. But with his 45 years at Lehigh coming to a close, he looks back having done much more than just compose or conduct music. Though he will be retiring at the end of this year, Salerni, who has composed and conducted music and been a prom...
READ MOREThe Opera in Verona is not just an event, it’s a phenomenon. Held in the ancient Roman amphitheatre, the Arena di Verona, this opera festival transforms the historic site into one of the most awe-inspiring open-air opera venues in the world. Here, the blend of stellar performances, the grandeur of the Roman architecture, and the magical ambience un...
READ MOREItalian-American conductor Nicola Rescigno played a significant role in developing both the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Dallas Opera, which he co-founded with Carol Fox and Lawrence V. Kelly, in 1952 and 1957 respectively. It was Rescigno who brought Callas to America for her 1954 debut, and became one of Maria Callas’s favourite conductors, alo...
READ MOREThe Heritage Concert Series in partnership with Terpsikord proudly announces Puccini99: A Celebration of Italian Heritage in America a night of Italian opera. This exquisite concert, which falls on the 99th anniversary of Giacomo Puccini’s death, will take place on November 29th, 2023, at 8 pm at the prestigious Merkin Concert Hall at The Kaufman C...
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