Verdi’s “Nabucco” will get a new production. Stefano Poda will direct the new production. Amartuvshin Enkhbat, Youngjun Park, Luca Salsi, and Igor Golovatenko lead the cast that includes Anna Pirozzi, Maria José Siri, Anna Netrebko, and Olga Maslova as Abigaille, Francesco Meli and Galeano Salas as Ismaele. The cast is rounded out by Roberto Tagliavini, Alexander Vinogradov, Christian Van Horn, Simon Lim, Vasilisa Berzhanskaya, Francesca Di Sauro, and Aigul Akhmetshina. Pinchas Steinberg conducts. 

Performance Dates: June 13-Sept. 6, 2025

Verdi’s “Aida” will be revived in Stefano Poda’s production. Daniel Oren and Francesco Ommassini conduct with Maria José Siri, Olga Maslova, Aleksandra Kurzak, Anna Netrebko, and Marina Rebeka in the title role. Clémentine Margaine, Agnieszka Rehlis, Ekaterina Semenchuk, Luciano Ganci, Gregory Kunde, Brian Jagde, Roberto Alagna, Yusif Eyvazov, Simon Lim, Ramaz Chikviladze, Giorgi Manoshvili, Alexander Vinogradov, Simon Lim, Christian Van Horn, Abramo Rosalen, Igor Golovatenko, Amartuvshin Enkhbat, Ludovic Tézier, and Youngjun Park round out the cast.

Performance Dates: June 20-Sept. 4, 2025

Verdi’s “La Traviata” will be performed in Hugo De Ana’s production. Speranza Scappucci and Francesco Ommassini conduct a cast that includes Angel Blue, Rosa Feola, Nadine Sierra, Galeano Salas, Enea Scala, Dmitry Korchak, Amartuvshin Enkhbat, Luca Salsi, and Ludovic Tézier.

Performance Dates: June 27-August 2, 2025

Bizet’s “Carmen” will be performed in a production by Franco Zeffirelli. Aigul Akhmetshina, Alisa Kolosova, and Anita Rachvelishvili take on the title role with Aleksandra Kurzak, Mariangela Sicilia, Daniela Schillaci, Roberto Alagna, Francesco Meli, Yusif Eyvazov, Piotr Beczała, Freddie De Tommaso, Paolo Lardizzone, Erwin Schrott, Luca Micheletti, and Giorgi Manoshvili. Francesco Ivan Ciampa conducts.

Performance Dates: July 4-Sept. 3, 2025

“Roberto Bolle and Friends” will be presented in coproduction with ARTEDANZAsrl.

Performance Dates: July 22 & 23, 2025

Verdi’s “Rigoletto” returns to the stage with Pene Pati, Galeano Salas, Amartuvshin Enkhbat, Luca Salsi, Youngjun Park, Nadine Sierra, Rosa Feola, Erin Morley, and Gianluca Buratto.

Performance Dates: August 8-Sept. 5, 2025

Jonas Kaufmann leads the Opera Gala.

Performance Date: August 3, 2025

Orff’s “Carmina Burana” returns to the festival with Erin Morley and Raffaele Pe. Andrea Battistoni conducts. 

Performance Date: August 15, 2025

The post Anna Netrebko, Aigul Akhmetshina, Angel Blue, Jonas Kaufmann, Amartuvshin Enkhbat, Piotr Beczała, Luca Salsi, & Aleksandra Kurzak Lead Arena di Verona’s 2025 Season appeared first on OperaWire.

With the year coming to an end, four major Italian opera houses are set to open their 2024-25 seasons. As customary the Italian opera calendar opens in late November or early December. So here is a look at what to expect from these four famed theaters.

Teatro La Fenice 

The Venice Theater opens with a new production of Verdi’s late masterpiece “Otello.” Fabio Ceresa
directs while Myung-Whun Chung conducts. The cast is led by Francesco Meli, who is known for his Verdi interpretations and makes his role debut in one of the most challenging roles in the repertoire. Luca Micheletti, Karah Son, and Francesco Marsiglia round out the lead cast.

Dates: Nov. 20-Dec. 1, 2024

Teatro San Carlo 

The Napoli Theater will open with a new production of Dvořák’s “Rusalka.” Asmik Grigorian, who has performed the role to great acclaim at the Royal Opera House and Teatro Real, will sing the title role in her house debut. She will be joined by Adam Smith, also in his house debut, Ekaterina Gubanova, and Gabor Bretz in his house debut. Anita Rachvelishvili will round out the cast in her great return to the stage. Dan Ettinger conducts the new production Dmitri Tcherniakov.

Dates: Nov. 20-Dec. 7, 2024

Teatro dell’Opera di Roma

The Rome theater will open with Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra” with Luca Salsi, one of the great Verdi baritones of our time, in the title role. He will be joined by Eleonora Buratto, Michele Pertusi, and Stefan Pop. A second cast will include Claudio Sgura, Maria Motolygina, Dmitri Ulyanov, and Anthony Ciaramitaro.  Michele Mariotti conducts the new production by Richard Jones. 

Dates: Nov. 27-Dec 5, 2024

Teatro alla Scala

It all comes to a close with the Milanese theater’s famed opening night on the Feast of St Ambrose. This season the company will open with Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino” in a new production by Leo Muscato. Riccardo Chailly conducts a star-studded cast led by Anna Netrebko, Jonas Kaufmann, and Ludovic Tézier, all of whom performed the work together at the Royal Opera House. They will be joined by Vasilisa Berzhanskaya, Alexander Vinogradov, and Marco Filippo Romano. A second cast will perform the work led by Elena Stikhina, Amartuvshin Enkhbat, Luciano Ganci, and Simon Lim.

Dates: Dec. 7, 2024-Jan. 2, 2025

The post Star-Studded Casts Open Four Italian Theater’s 2024-25 Seasons appeared first on OperaWire.

The concert will be filmed by Rai Cultura cameras and will also be broadcast on Rai Radio 3.

Riccardo Chailly will conduct the evening which will feature soloists Mariangela Sicilia, Jonas Kaufmann, and Anna Netrebko.

The first part of the concert will feature Puccini’s “Preludio Sinfonico, Requiem” for three-part mixed chorus, viola and organ featuring violist Simonide Braconi, and organist Lorenzo Bonoldi, and the Act three Intermezzo and male choir from “Madama Butterfly.”

It will also feature the Act three “Prelude” and “Requiem aeternam” from “Edgar” featuring Sicilia. The second part will feature “La tregenda” Intermezzo from “Le Villi” and the “Crisantemi” for string orchestra.

The concert will end with Act four of “Manon” featuring Netrebko and Kaufmann.

The concert will be on the centenary of Giacomo Puccini’s death and will mark the close of the 2023-24 season.

The Teatro alla Scala opens its 2024-25 season on Dec. 7 and will feature a new production of “La Forza del Destino” starring Brian Jagde and Netrebko.

The post Arte to Present Teatro Alla Scala’s Homage to Puccini with Jonas Kaufmann, Mariangela Sicilia & Anna Netrebko appeared first on OperaWire.

September 20 marked a special day for tenor Juan Diego Flórez.

For decades, the famed bel canto specialist has been almost exclusively releasing albums on Decca Classics, becoming one of the major operatic faces for the label throughout his career. He also worked with Sony Classical for a short period. But the tenor, who in recent years has opened up his repertory in new directions, released a solo album on his very own label, Flórez Records.

The album in question, “Zarzuela,” harkens back to the genre that Flórez championed early on in his career and has turned to intermittently throughout his career.

“I wanted to take my recording legacy into my own hands,” Flórez told OperaWire in a recent phone interview regarding his decision to open his own label, a move that numerous other opera artists have engaged with. Among the prominent artists to start their own labels are Marina Rebeka with her Prima Classic and Sonya Yoncheva with SY11 Productions.

“Nowadays many artists are doing this and I thought it was a good idea and a way to explore the different projects in my artistic life,” Flórez elaborated before noting the complexities of the process. “To succeed at this, I think you have to surround yourself with the right people first. Because, of course, you don’t really know even if you’ve recorded many albums, how it fully works. So you let yourself be helped. And the rest is to find to create projects and find the right repertory. Fortunately, my team is used to it. There are many fantastic professionals, sound engineers, people who take care of distribution. In the end, it’s a team effort. It’s a challenge, but we’re already quite well on our way and I’m happy.”

Sinfonia por el Perú

With “Zaruzela” being the first album, not only did Flórez want to make a mark with the repertory, but also with the ensemble that he worked with – Sinfonía por el Perú, which the tenor founded in 2011.

When he founded the ensemble, Flórez wanted to give opportunities for future generations of musicians to get major performance opportunities and grow. To this day, per the official website, over 30,000 students have benefitted from the project across 10 regions in Peru.

“I have been inspired by the Venezuelan model of orchestras and choirs, ‘El Sistema,’” the tenor explained. “I was able to do a concert with Gustavo Dudamel and I was so impressed that I wanted to do something similar for Peru. We have currently more than 6.000 beneficiaries. We have numerous centers with different programs: orchestras, choirs, bands, luthier workshops, among others.”

“Our students come from challenging backgrounds, so they don’t have the same opportunities that other children get. But music helps them grow and overcome all these challenges in their lives,” Flórez added.

At the core of the program is the Youth Orchestra where students that show an interest in musical careers, get a chance to delve deeper into the repertoire and go on tour. The organization already brought 30 students to Madrid to perform with the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofia, and in recent weeks Flórez took them on tour as an ensemble for the very first time, performing extensively in Madrid, Barcelona, Vienna, Geneva, and Paris.

“I remember during the last tour in Salzburg, they would walk the streets. They couldn’t believe where they were. It was an amazing experience for them, especially because they are very aware of how fortunate they are to have the opportunity to play in wonderful venues where the greatest orchestras in the world also play,” Flórez added.

Regarding the collaboration on “Zarzuela,” Flórez noted that he felt the ensemble was at the right level to tackle the repertory.

“I love performing with them. We’ve done many concerts and being able to do a recording together is a wonderful opportunity,” he continued. “We had a great time during the recording sessions.”

Another major factor in the success of the recording sessions for the album was the collaboration of conductor Guillermo García Calvo, who Flórez pronounced “a great specialist of Zarzuela.” García Calvo has been artistic director of the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid.

“He had a lot of input and gave a lot of inspiration to the students,” Flórez added. “He was very focused and enthusiastic to work with them.”

The album even features a piece, the intermezzo from “La Boda de Luis Alonso,” that features the orchestra.

“They get a chance to shine without me,” Flórez remarked.

In addition to this album, the tenor mentioned that he had interest in doing audiovisual releases of opera productions through his label as well as an album with pianist and longtime collaborator Vincenzo Scalera.

“We have performed hundred of concerts together, but have yet to record those programs,” Flórez revealed. “So that is definitely something I would love to do in a future release.”

First Time

Among another of the tenor’s major upcoming projects is his role debut as Pollione in “Norma” at the Vienna State Opera in February 2025. He’s a champion of Elvino in “La Sonnambula” and Arturo in “I Puritani,” and also recorded other Bellini arias in some of his albums, but this is his first attempt at the hero of perhaps Bellini’s most celebrated work.

“He’s a bel canto tenor, but its challenges depend on how you approach it. There’s a verismo tradition, but you can also approach it from a more bel canto angle without cuts and doing ornaments. At his time, the dramatic tenor as we know it now didn’t really exist,” Flórez said about the challenges Pollione offers up before elaborating on the character. “It’s a role about a lover. A man in love. He might come off a bit weak in his character next to the two women, but it’s another exciting role to take on in a beautiful opera.”

The tenor also noted that as far as his future projects, he does hope to take on the title role of “Roberto Devereux,” but also hopes to get more opportunities to perform roles he has only interpreted once, including “Les Contes d’Hoffmann,” which he will be performing in November at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden.

“I’ve debuted so many roles lately,” he noted. “Some I’ve only gotten to do once. Like ‘Hoffman,’ I only did it once and I will be doing it again. And I would love to do it another time, instead of just adding more operas. I want to consolidate the roles I already have. To do something like ‘Hoffman’ again, is to rediscover it. A role only belongs to you when you’ve sung it multiple times and have had the time to discover all the colors and shades it has.”

The post A New Direction – Tenor Juan Diego Flórez on His New Record Label & Working With Sinfonía por el Perú appeared first on OperaWire.

The recording company posted a picture of the Teatro San Carlo’s poster of the current cast of the Verdi opera and said, “‘Simon Boccanegra!’ Something is going on…”

The cast for the upcoming concert performances includes Ludovic Tézier in the title role, Michele Pertusi as Jacopo Fiesco, Mattia Olivieri as Paolo Albiani, Marina Rebeka as Amelia, and Francesco Meli as Gabriele Adorno. The opera will be performed two times on Oct. 11 and 13, 2024.

Prima Classic which is owned by Rebeka has already released complete recordings of “La Traviata,” “Il Pirata,” and “Norma.” Additionally, Rebeka has released six solo albums including “Spirito,” “Elle,” “Voyage,” “Credo,” and “Essence.”

 

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The post Prima Classic Hints at ‘Simon Boccanegra’ Recording appeared first on OperaWire.

The company said that due to the sudden Covid-illness of Jonas Kaufmann, the concert Jonas Kaufmann/Ludovic Tézier has been postponed to a new date to be announced shortly.

Ticket owners will be able to save the tickets they have bought to attend the concert for the new date or they can change tickets for the postponed event with another performance.

Kaufmann next performs at the Théâtre du Châtelet and Konzerthaus in his Viva Puccini tour while Tézier will sing the title role of “Simon Boccanegra” at the Teatro San Carlo. The two reunite for performances of “La Forza del Destino” at the Teatro alla Scala with Anna Netrebko.

The post Teatro San Carlo Postpones Jonas Kaufmann/Ludovic Tézier Concert appeared first on OperaWire.

So without further ado here are OperaWire’s most anticipated productions of the 2024-25 season.

Ainadamar 

As listed in the 10 operas to see this fall, the Osvaldo Golijov is one of those rare experiences you cannot miss.

For the second year in a row (and the first time in history that this has happened), the Metropolitan Opera will present an opera in Spanish. Following last year’s “Florencia en el Amazonas,” Osvaldo Golijov’s tango opera will make its Met premiere. Miguel Harth-Bedoya makes his Met debut conducting a new production by Deborah Colker.  OperaWire raved about the production noting it was “effective.”

The all-star cast will include Angel Blue, Gabriella Reyes, Elena Villalón, Daniela Mack, and Alfredo Tejada.

Antony and Cleopatra

John Adams is back at the Met after the composer’s “El Niño” premiered in the 2023-24 season.

The new work which is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s drama will have its Met premiere starring Julia Bullock as Cleopatra and Gerald Finley as Antony. When the opera first premiered at the San Francisco Opera, OperaWire raved about Finley’s work stating, “Gerald Finley Shine in John Adams’ Wonderful Work”

The production, which first premiered at the San Francisco Opera, and Liceu Opera Barcelona, will be directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer. Tenor Paul Appleby and mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong round out the cast.

Les Contes d’Hoffmann

Offenbach’s work is one of the most important works in the operatic canon and is often performed by the world’s greatest artists. This year the Met is getting Benjamin Bernheim, who closed the Olympic games in Paris and has become the world’s most prominent Hoffmann interpreter having performed the role in Paris, Salzburg, and Hamburg, among many others.

Alongside the tenor, the Met has assembled an extraordinary cast including Christian Van Horn, Pretty Yende, Erin Morley, Clémentine Margaine, Aaron Blake, and Vasilisa Berzhanskaya. Marco Armiliato conducts the production by Bartlett Sher.

Regarding Bernheim and Van Horn’s interpretations of the work OperaWire has said, “Benjamin Bernheim & Christian Van Horn Reign Supreme in Hoffmann.”

Die Frau ohne Schatten

The Met is bringing back perhaps one of the company’s greatest productions by Herbert Wernicke. Last seen in 2013, the production has been hailed for its “balance between delicacy of detail and grandeur of breadth.”

The Strauss opera, which is rarely heard at the Met, will star Elza van den Heever as the Empress, Lise Lindstrom as the Dyer’s Wife, Nina Stemme as the Nurse, Michael Volle as Barak, Russell Thomas as the Emperor, and bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green as the Spirit Messenger.

Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium in an unmissable Strauss work.

The Queen of Spades

One of the world’s greatest sopranos, Sonya Yoncheva, returns to the Met. After having performed Tatiana and Iolanta to great acclaim, the Bulgarian soprano makes her role debut as Lisa, one of the great dramatic roles in the Russian repertoire.

The soprano will be joined by a cast sung by tenor Brian Jagde, baritone Igor Golovatenko, mezzo-soprano Violeta Urmana, and baritone Alexey Markov.

The post Top 5 Operas to See This Season at the Metropolitan Opera appeared first on OperaWire.

Out of over 1,000 applicants, 21 women and 18 men have made it to the final round of the International Singing Competition. From Oct. 5 to 11, they will meet with opera and festival directors, agents, and talent scouts in the music industry. At the final round of the competition, singers will perform alongside the Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Jonathan Darlington.

This year’s jury consists of Dominique Meyer, Brian Dickie, Samuel Gelber, Sophie de Lint, Sophie Joyce, Bernd Loebe, Ricarda Merbeth, Christoph Seuferle, Elisabeth Sobotka, and Evamaria Wieser.

Prizes totaling in 66,000 euros are awarded for first to third place in both the women’s and the men’s category. Audience prizes and sponsorship prizes will also be awarded.

The public will have access to a livestream, as well as the Deutschlandradio broadcast airing on Oct. 20.

The grand finale will take place in Gütersloh in front of a live audience in the Stadthalle Gütersloh on Oct. 11.

Past winners of the competition include Francesca Pia Vitale, Emily D’Angelo, Nicole Car, Jongmin Park, Marina Rebeka, Franco Fagioli, and and Vesselina Kasarova, among others.

The post Neue Stimmen International Singing Competition Announces Details of the 20th Anniversary Finale appeared first on OperaWire.

Asmik Grigorian has been named the 2024 Austrian Music Theater Prize winner.

The soprano will receive the “Grand Jury Prize” on Sept. 1, 2024 for “emotional depth, technical brilliance and fascinating stage presence.”

In a statement, Karl-Michael Ebner, initiator and president of the Austrian Music Theater Prize said, “Asmik Grigorian’s unparalleled career and her enormous contribution to the opera world have had a lasting impact on musical theater. It is therefore only fitting that she should be awarded the ‘Grand Jury Prize’ – an award that does justice to her impressive career.”

Over the past year, Grigroian has performed in many major theaters including the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Wiener Staatsoper, Royal Opera House, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Salzburg Festival, where she has become the festival’s primadonna.

Recent prize winners include Piotr Beczala, Jonas Kaufmann, Elina Garanca, and Camilla Nylund.

The Austrian Music Theater Prize has been awarded since 2013 for outstanding achievements in opera, operetta, musicals and ballet.

The post Asmik Girgorian to Receive Austrian Music Theater Prize appeared first on OperaWire.

Few operas have so inextricably been linked with the name of Maria Callas as “Norma.” The first perhaps in a line of 20th century Neoclassicists, she dusted off every inch of (pseudo-)Romantic mannerism and histrionics, restituting to the playbills an uncompromisingly sympathetic interpretation of tragic grandeur, as if sprung from the pen of Jean Racine himself.

Callas’s following has been eclectic, for the most part, though Bel canto specialists like Joan Sutherland have memorably impersonated the Druid priestess. Most recently, the Latvian Marina Rebeka has laid claim to the role, incl. at the Met’s 2017 run of the Bellinian favorite. For Prima Classic, she turns the notoriously formidable score into a triumphant vision of forward thrust and vocal incandescence.

Supremely Norma

Let us be clear: Rebeka’s Norma is quite simply glorious. In exceptional voice, she sails through the part’s innumerable pitfalls with near unmatched intensity, making her character less of an introspective heroine than the dramatic precursor to Verdian protagonists the likes of Odabella, and possibly even Abigaille.

Editorial changes, though minor, reinforce the impression of Rebeka’s forward impetus. For instance, “Casta Diva” is sung in G major instead of the customary F major (as Roger Parker, in the booklet, ever so eloquently explains). This adaptation is a concession of sorts, as Rebeka’s vocal phenotype thrives on the part’s many jumps into the sonic stratosphere; but it does not naturally lend itself to the trenchant coloraturas of virtuoso performers.

The shading, consequently, is not nearly as sophisticated as Callas’s, and her preghiera’s appeal mainly derives from the sculptural elegance of her line rather than the prismatic colors of the syllables taken individually. Still, dynamic variations are subtly transitioned, and the caressingly sustained diminuendo in the cadenza’s repetition is nothing short of a godsent!

The timbre is flamboyantly lavish, and much more idiosyncratic than just a few years ago when, in Prima Classic’s recording of “La Traviata,” her positively unbridled temper would routinely manifest through a somewhat wobbly pitch. In “Norma,” by comparison, everything falls into place quite naturally. The vertiginous high notes are floated when needed (“Casta diva”), or abruptly attacked in the tercet of “Vanne, si, mi lascia, indegno.”

Dramatic Momentum

Rebeka is equally imposing in the duets. In tenor Luciano Ganci she finds a stentorian Pollione, brimmed with the excitement of a larger-than-life persona. He is indebted to a slightly epigonal fascination with del Monaco whose clarion sound puts at risk the elaboration of interpretive nuance.

More sophisticated perhaps, and akin to the example of Christa Ludwig (who never sang the part of Adalgisa!) Karine Deshayes provides a delightful counterpart to Rebeka’s enthralling priestess. She keeps a dramatic edge even at her most vulnerable (“Mira, o Norma”), while her magnetic timbre never fails to blend with the steely clarity of the remaining cast.

It falls in line with conductor John Fiore’s decidedly ingenuous verve. Fiore builds narrative momentum without having to compromise on either melody or chromatic lyricism. At worst, it feels like a slightly anticipated excursion into Verdian soundscapes (especially of the middle period); otherwise, it serves as the congenial baseline to Rebeka’s exceptionally voiced Norma, domineering, and transcending every component part of Prima Classic’s new release.

The post CD Review: Prima Classic’s ‘Norma’ appeared first on OperaWire.