Vocal - my/maSCENA

Santa Fe Opera Sets the Stage for Summer 2021

By Newswire on 21 October 2020 Opera

Santa Fe, NM — The Santa Fe Opera’s General Director Robert K. Meya announced today the company’s exciting return to the stage in 2021 with the repertory, principal singers, conductors, directors and designers scheduled for its 64th Season. The announcement was streamed from The Crosby Theatre’s open-air stage. Joining Meya was Production Director Chelsea Antrim Dennis. Dennis detailed how this year, instead of building sets, costumes and props for opera, she and the opera’s production crew joined the Costume Shop staff in sewing face masks and 1,000 re-usable medical gowns for the healthcare workers at CHRISTUS St. Vincent and the Navajo…

Opera Canada’s Rubies goes digital: 2020 honourees revealed

By Newswire on 15 October 2020 Classical Music, Opera

Opera Canada is proud to announce the four distinguished honourees who will receive Opera Canada Awards–The Rubies 2020 for their exemplary contributions to the industry: Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor; Music Director, Metropolitan Opera Barbara Hannigan, soprano & conductor Michael Schade, tenor Edward Johnson, tenor; former General Manager, Metropolitan Opera Selected by a committee comprising of leading opera professionals from across the country, our three honourees will be celebrated at a FREE digital gala award event premiering on November 23rd, 2020 on Youtube Premiere @ 8PM EST. Opera Canada magazine first introduced the Opera Canada Awards in 2000, which were nicknamed ‘The Rubies,’…

Tenor Frédéric Antoun takes issue with La Presse article

By La Scena Musicale Team on 11 October 2020 Art Song, Arts Industry, Classical Music, Opera

Montreal tenor Frédéric Antoun, reacting to an op-ed article in La Presse in a video on Facebook, uses a tissue to demonstrate how, contrary to popular belief, professional opera singers release very little air during singing. “Enough with the fake news, OK?” finishes Antoun on a comical note with a Donald Trump imitation.

Erin Wall, 1975-2020

By La Scena Musicale Team on 9 October 2020 Art Song, Classical Music, Opera

Erin Wall, a Calgary native (who also grew up in Vancouver) whose sumptuous voice and dignified stage presence kept her busy as both a concert and opera singer, has died at age 44. It was known as early as January 2018 that the soprano was suffering from breast cancer. In one of her own tweets she made a reference to having contracted COVID-19. “Once I was an opera singer,” reads what appears to be her last message. “Then COVID-19 and stage IV cancer changed everything.” A regular on major stages around the world, Wall in 2017 performed both as Strauss’s…

La Scena Tête-à-tête with Rihab Chaieb & Don Adriano

By La Scena Musicale Team on 7 October 2020 Arts Industry, Education, Opera

On Facebook: On YouTube: Join us on Wednesday October. 7 at 7 PM EST on Facebook Live for an interview with the rising opera star Canadian Mezzo-Soprano Rihab Chaieb with host Don Adriano. Performances by the Montreal native mezzo-soprano are characterized by their dramatic and visceral intensity. She is a graduate of McGill University, the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio and the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. She is also winner of the 2016 Gerda Lissner Foundation vocal competition and winner of the third prize at the 2018 Operalia Competition. This is an opportunity to get to know…

Opera and voice

By Justin Bernard on 21 September 2020 Vocal

Topsy-Turvy Season for the Opéra de Montréal Big changes have been announced for the 2020-21 OdM season. Abiding by the new health standards issued by the CNESST, the company has seen itself forced to postpone its two major productions, La Traviata by Verdi and Jenůfa by Janáček, because these require too many performers on stage, making it impossible to ensure the health and safety of the artists involved. Replacing these works in the fall program, Patrick Corrigan and his team have decided to present two works that had initially been planned for spring 2020. The first is La voix humaine…

ReWatch: La Scena Tête-à-tête with Jack LiVigni & Don Adriano

By La Scena Musicale Team on 19 September 2020 Arts Industry, Education, Opera

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/151471873187/videos/653123248664534 On YouTube: ReWatch the interview from Saturday Sept. 19th at 19:30 EST on Facebook Live with tenor Gioacchino “Jack” LiVigni, host Don Adriano. The native from Brooklyn, is a graduate of the Academy of Vocal Arts, honed many of his stage and repertoire skills at AVA and began bringing them to the international stage while still a student at AVA. Mr. Li Vigni made his Metropolitan Opera of New York debut in 2004 in Boris Godunov, and was seen again at the Met in Lohengrin and Parsifal, and covered roles in Nabucco, Ariadne auf Naxos, Rosenkavalier, and…

Opera and Jewish Cantorial Music: a 21st-Century Update from Montreal

By Philip Ehrensaft on 16 September 2020 Baroque and Early, Vocal

Montreal’s Shaar Hashomayim synagogue is well known as a centre of Jewish music. The title track of Leonard Cohen’s penultimate album, You Want It Darker, brought the Shaar’s cantor, the lyric tenor Gideon Zelermyer, and its choir, directed by Roï Azoulay, to the attention of a wider public. Cohen, the grandson and great-grandson of past presidents of the Shaar, was a lifetime member of the synagogue, and is buried in the Shaar’s cemetery on Mount Royal. When Cohen inserted repetitions of the Hebrew word hineni (“here I am”) into the title song he was acknowledging that his end was near,…

Opera in Europe Makes a Comeback

By Olivier Bergeron on 16 September 2020 Opera

Back in March, when most of the world went into lockdown, music organizations around the globe made the difficult decision of cancelling the remainder of their 2019/2020 seasons. Some cancelled or postponed all live performances until January 2021 for safety and budgetary reasons, leaving thousands of musicians, stagehands, set builders, technicians and others unemployed until further notice. While North America is still relatively silent, operatically speaking, European companies have found creative ways to bring live opera back to their audiences. In Germany, the Deutsche Oper Berlin came up with what was probably the most creative and bizarre way to bring…

For the MSO opener, a masked ball

By Arthur Kaptainis on 12 September 2020 Concert Reviews, Opera, Orchestral

Not your usual opening night. Small crowd. No mingling. No buzz. Except insofar as the Montreal Symphony Orchestra under Bernard Labadie proved itself equal on Sept. 11 to the repertoire at hand. This band has met only sporadically since March, mostly in popup chamber concerts that remained stubbornly under the radar. Apparently the players have not lost their team spirit and pride in playing well. Even in social-distance formation – 43 looking more like 60 as spread across the stage of the Maison symphonique – the MSO sounded like a balanced and cohesive ensemble. The start could not have been…

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