(Photo © Marc Larcher) To learn from Maestro Paolo Arrivabeni about his journey before he steps on the podium to conduct an opera or a symphony is more than a treat. It is a brief excursion into some of the layers he explores before he picks up his baton. More than rehearsals with singers and orchestra, more than simply studying {…}
Published in 1931, “The Waves” is recognized as Virginia Woolf’s most experimental work, featuring soliloquies from six different characters in a unique stream-of-consciousness. And now it will get an opera. The team behind the work is composer Blake Allen and director / writer Will Nunziata. Allen, an award-winning composer, violist, and producer, enjoys “merging merging the worlds of opera and {…}
Content Warning: There is some explicit language in the content of this article. On August 6, the head of the Slovak National Theatre, Matej Drlička, was informed of his dismissal by an officer from the Ministry of Culture. He was one of the many directors who were dismissed by the new Minister alleging Drlička had criticized her ministry and had {…}
(Photo credit: Louis Chan / David Allen) What does the future look like for female directors in opera? Opera San José, the opera company in the heart of Silicon Valley, California, now entering its 41st season, gives OperaWire a look at two young trailblazers: the current CEO and General Director, Shawna Lucey, and Michelle Ainna Cuizon, presently in residence and {…}
(Photo Credit: Frances Marshall, Marshall Light studios / Sara Porter) The Ring Cycle is a massive undertaking, one that requires an opera company with a built-in infrastructure to do it. But it is also the peak of opera production and one that every director / manager dreams of doing. So despite, the massive challenge it entailed, Regents Opera’s artistic director {…}
This week the LA Opera is set to revive a production of “Roméo et Juliette.” The production was first created in 2005 and has not been performed since 2011. Now as the company prepares for the revival, famed choreographer Kitty McNamee will be making her directorial debut reviving the production. McNamee choreographed the production when it was first premiered and {…}
This November the Dutch National Opera will premiere “Le Lacrime di Eros,” an experimental work that brings together music from the Renaissance with contemporary electronic music composed by the American composer Scott Gibbons, under the baton of the French conductor Raphaël Pichon, who is responsible for creating and developing the concept. The work is built around rarely heard pieces from {…}
When he was but nine-years-old, Juan Trigos woke up one day and ran to his mother to tell her what he was going to do with his life. “She of course laughed and so did I, but I had already decided,” he told OperaWire in a recent interview on the occasion of being the winner of the 2024 Azrieli Commission {…}
(Photo by Anne-Laure Lechat) “I was lucky to have a great music teacher in my teens, who gave us very inspiring compositional assignments. I remember the experience of going to school as a teenager and thinking about my compositions I was writing for the class, and fell in love with the experience of spending my thinking time on abstract sounds. {…}
“I was drawn to composing because of an intrinsic fascination with sound and a strong curiosity in figuring out how music that moves me was created,” Composer John Nobles told OperaWire in a recent interview. Nobles is the recipient of the Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music for his piece “Kanata” for Large Choir. A JUNO Award-winner for “Classical Composition of {…}
At an early point in his life, Georgian and Israeli composer Josef Bardanashvili was set to become a painter like his father and older brothers. But it all changed at age 13 when he started to learn how to play the trumpet. From there, his love for music was irresistible and he would eventually make his way to the Tbilisi {…}