Browsing: Vocal

Les Caprices de la Nuit with Les Violons du Roy On October 13, join violinist and conductor Anthony Marwood and Les Violons du Roy for an evening of exceptional chamber music for strings. The concert includes the String Sextet from Richard Strauss’s final opera Capriccio, Mozart’s charming String Quintet in G minor, and Schoenberg’s late-Romantic Verklärte Nacht. October 13, 8PM, Salle Raoul-Jobin, Palais Montcalm. www.violonsduroy.com James Ehnes @ 40 Continue the celebration of James Ehnes’s 40th birthday as he stops in Quebec City on his way across Canada. With longtime collaborator Andrew Armstrong, Ehnes will play chamber music by Handel,…

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British Columbian soprano Chelsea Rus’s story is straight from the movies. Already accomplished at the beginning of her international career, no one would think she had never even actually heard an opera before her first year of college. While she played piano and sang since her childhood, she did not give much attention to classical music – she was busy playing jazz and belting Ella Fitzgerald. After watching La Traviata brought her to tears, she began a whole re-education, working her voice in ways she never had before. Years of hard work have paid off: last year she won the…

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This month, Brian Current will experience something many composers would envy: the premiere and recording of one of his major works by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. The $50,000 Azrieli Prize enabled him to compose The Seven Heavenly Halls for solo tenor, choir and orchestra. The composer talked to La Scena Musicale about this work and his career. Like many musicians, Brian Current first learned piano as a child. “I was lucky my parents were so persistent and constantly got me to practice, even when I didn’t want to,” he says. “My parents weren’t musicians by profession, but they sang in…

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OPERA REVIEWS: Puccini’s Turandot; Third World Bunfight’s Macbeth (after Verdi) at Opera Philadelphia Opera Philadelphia’s Fall 2016 season fully exemplifies the company’s hallmarks – a commitment to variety and innovation, plus an enduring grounding in the classics. Besides the world premiere of Breaking the Waves (reviewed here on October 29), the season boasts a provocative and brilliant new adaptation of Verdi’s Macbeth by controversial and virtuosic South African theater troupe Third World Bunfight, as well as a glorious, quintessentially grand-opera production of Puccini’s crowning masterwork, Turandot. Puccini’s Crown Princess With his typically magnificent melodies, piquant exoticism, big passions and (atypical)…

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The classical music industry does not so much promote talent as postpone it. Faced with a gleaming young star, the male curators of fame (all men) then seek validation in endless meetings. Agents and record producers hedge and haver. They deliberate and dine out, they call another meeting, and another. Then they write a budget. No wonder the business is in such bother. It is now seven years since the South African soprano Pretty Yende burst on our ears as winner of the 2009 Hans Gabor competition in Vienna. It is five years since she won every single trophy in…

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OPERA REVIEW: Breaking the Waves at Opera Philadelphia Brotherly Love, Independence, the Phillie Phanatic – this city has always been a hotbed of innovative and big ideas. How apt, then, that Opera Philadelphia has taken on a big idea of its own, having committed to the future of indigenous American opera with a 2011 pledge to present, every season for ten years, a major new American operatic work. More than halfway through that initial pledge period, the company’s “American Repertoire Program” can claim impressive achievements, including Dark Sisters in 2012; A Coffin in Egypt in 2014; and Charlie Parker’s Yardbird…

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The Manchurian Candidate. Music by Kevin Puts. Libretto by Mark Campbell. David Adam Moore (Sergeant Raymond Shaw). John Lindsey (Captain Ben Marco). Donnie Ray Albert (Andrew Hanley). Brenda Harris (Eleanor Iselin). Daniel Sumegi (Senator Johnny Iselin). Mela Dailey (Jocelyn Jordan). David Small (Senator Thomas Jordan). Jamie Van Eyck (Rosie Chayney). Austin Opera Orchestra and Chorus/Richard Buckley. Stage Director: Alison Moritz. Projection Designer: Greg Emetaz. Lighting Designer: Kathryn Eader. Long Center, Austin, Texas. At the height of the Cold War (1947-1991), Richard Condon wrote a remarkable novel, The Manchurian Candidate. Both a political thriller and a frightening scenario for a major penetration of…

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La Scena Musicale is celebrating the Art Song with the worldwide survey, What is your favourite art song? Submit your vote at www.nextgreatartsong.com. Conductor Sergio Barza shares his three choices below. 3. Schubert – Gretchen am Spinnrade “My peace is gone, My heart is heavy, I will find it never and never more. Where I do not have him, That is the grave, The whole world Is bitter to me. My poor head Is crazy to me, My poor mind Is torn apart. My peace is gone, My heart is heavy, I will find it never and never more. For him only, I look Out the…

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Montréal, September 14, 2016 – The Concours musical international de Montréal (CMIM) is pleased to announce the addition of the Joseph-Rouleau Career Development Grant worth $50,000 to its roster of prizes for the next three editions: piano 2017, voice 2018, and violin 2019. Funded by the Azrieli Foundation and managed by the CMIM, this grant will be awarded to the First Prize winner, who will also receive $30,000 in cash from the Ville de Montréal, bringing the total value of the First Prize to $80,000. This career development grant has been created to honour internationally-renowned bass Joseph Rouleau, co-founder of…

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VO PRESENTS THREE NEW OPERA PRODUCTIONS AND BOLD PROGRAMMING AT THE INAUGURAL VANCOUVER OPERA FESTIVAL Otello, Dead Man Walking and The Marriage of Figaro feature superb singers, stunning designs Programming also includes a new commissioned video installation by award-winning artist Paul Wong, performances by vocal stylist Ute Lemper and Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq Many events and experiences for audiences of all ages Vancouver, BC ~ Three dazzling new opera productions are at the core of the inaugural Vancouver Opera Festival, April 28 to May 13, 2017. Full-scale productions of Giuseppe Verdi’s late-career masterpiece Otello, featuring powerful tenor Clifton Forbis in…

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