This summer marks the 20th season for Colorado's eclectic Crested Butte Musical Festival, a genre-spanning contemporary arts celebration featuring a diverse crop of talented performers in the creative fields of classical music, opera and modern dance.
Such is the case with his forthcoming homage to the ever-famous Giacomo Puccini. The world's greatest living tenor, he sings "Nessun Dorma," the highlight of Puccini's Turandot, among other selections from Manon Lescaut, Tosca, La Bohème, Madama Butterfly and more.
Recently, the Metropolitan Opera has made headlines for all the wrong reasons. Be it pre-season labor disputes with the man Peter Gelb, opening night unrest care of Leon Klinghoffer and Rudy Guiliani or just a simple technical glitch during the broadcast at your local cinema, what's been lost as of late is a lot. Such controversies, however inflated, do obscure the institution's real mission statement. First and perhaps foremost, is the fact that the Met remains this country's most enduring repertory company. For every Klinghoffer or Iolanta premiere in 2014-15, there are as many, if not more, reheated Aidas and prefab Meistersingers. Come the holidays, highly touted new productions of Le Nozze di Figaro and The Merry Widow will run alongside evergreen faire like Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Hansel and Gretel. And, let's be honest, it is the latter, lighter of these programming options that the casual opera-goer is wont to experience there at Lincoln Center. In fact, Mr. Gelb is banking on it.
The Metropolitan Opera has come back from a lot this year: a financial meltdown and a controversial staging of John Adams masterpiece The Death of Klinghoffer. Now, the latest program is a brilliant rendition of Puccini's classic La Bohème, which begins Friday, November 14.
Kristine Opolais won't need to clean the dust under her eyelids this week. With her first Madama Butterfly in the pocket, the Latvian soprano considered her day had been completed with grace. Or so she thought.
In a tragedy worthy of opera itself, the New York City Opera has breathed its last.
Many think online crowd-sourced funding the answer to our prayers. Or it could be a nail in the coffin.
Essential recordings from the much-missed great Italian tenor, as Decca marks 50 years of his international career.