Vocal - my/maSCENA

Hartwick to Host Summer Opera Camp

By Newswire on 11 April 2017 Arts Industry, Classical Music, Newswire, Violin, Vocal

ONEONTA, NY—Hartwick College will host the Foothills Opera Experience, an opera camp for graduate, undergraduate, and some gifted high school students going into opera performance, from June 9-18, 2017. This is the first year the Foothills Opera Experience has been held outside of Binghamton, and the first major summer music program to be held on the College campus since 2012. The program will take students from “page to stage” in one week. It will offer an intensive, personal curriculum that will focus on creative process, diction, opera coaching, voice coaching, and movement/dance. Participants will also perform in at least two…

Canadian Baritone Philip Kalmanovitch Makes Finals of 20th Annual Lotte Lenya Competition

By Newswire on 5 April 2017 Art Song, Arts Industry, Choral, Education, Opera, Vocal

The Kurt Weill Foundation is pleased to announce the fourteen young singer/actors named as finalists for the 20th annual Lotte Lenya Competition: Curtis Bannister (31, Green Bay, WI) Gan-ya Ben-gur Akselrod (29, Tel Aviv, ISR) Felipe Bombonato (28, Gainesville, FL) Molly Dunn (28, South Orange, NJ) Jasmine Habersham (27, Macon, GA) Michael Hewitt (26, Denver, CO) Philip Kalmanovitch (32, Ottawa, ON) Marie Oppert (19, Paris, FR) Tony Potts (24, Fargo, ND) Taylor Raven (25, Fayetteville, NC) Katherine Riddle (25, Annapolis, MD) Lisa Rogali (22, Bergenfield, NJ) Bradley Smoak (32, Cary, NC) Paulina Villareal (27, Torreón, MX) The contestants represent a…

CMIM Voice 2018 Applications Are Open

By Newswire on 5 April 2017 Art Song, Arts Industry, Choral, Newswire, Opera, Vocal

Montreal, April 4, 2017 – Applications for the next Voice edition of the CMIM (Concours musical international de Montréal) taking place May 27 to June 7, 2018 are now open. Singers around the world born on January 1, 1983 or later are invited to apply by December 15, 2017. The online application form, as well the rules and conditions for participation and the required repertoire are all available on CMIM’s official website at concoursmontreal.ca/voice. Transportation and accommodations are offered to the candidates who are selected, in accordance with the terms of the Competition. Starting in 2018, the vocal competition features…

Louis Riel, UBC dress 2010, Photo: Evan Kreider

Deciphering Harry Somers’ Opera Louis Riel

By Réa Beaumont on 1 April 2017 150/375, Canadian Music, La Scena Spotlight, Opera

Louis Riel is one of the most important Canadian operas ever written. It was inspired by the life of controversial Métis hero Louis Riel (1844-1885) and events surrounding Canadian Confederation in 1867 that became defining moments in the country’s history. With a libretto by Canadian playwright Mavor Moore in collaboration with Jacques Languirand and music by Harry Somers, Louis Riel was premiered in Toronto by the Canadian Opera Company for Canada’s centennial celebrations and performed soon after at Montreal’s Expo ’67. Louis Riel is being programmed this year by the COC as a co-production with the National Arts Centre to…

Philippe Bourque

Philippe Bourque’s Mendelssohn Elijah

By Xenia Hanusiak on 1 April 2017 Choral, Romantic

In 1846, when Felix Mendelssohn conducted the commissioned premiere of his oratorio Elijah for the Birmingham Festival he presided over an orchestra of one hundred and twenty five musicians, ten soloists, and a chorus of four hundred singers. Mendelssohn was in his mid thirties. Fast-forward one hundred and seventy years, and another conductor in his mid- thirties will direct one of the most popular oratorios of the choral repertoire. On March 9, for the 45th anniversary of the St. Lawrence Choir, its Artistic Director Philippe Bourque will debut his first Elijah. “This work is intensely personal for me,” says Bourque.…

Sultan's Pool, Jerusalem

The Jerusalem Opera Festival: Lyrical adventure in the Middle East

By Caroline Rodgers on 1 April 2017 Concert Reviews, Opera

When we think of opera, cities like Vienna, Milan, Paris or New York spring to mind, rather than Jerusalem. But the holy city has been expending considerable energy these last few years to create an operatic scene worthy of the name. The Jerusalem Opera Festival, in its third edition this summer, is the result of these efforts to bring an artistic dream to fruition. To publicize the festival, in June 2016 Israel’s Department of Tourism invited around 40 journalists from all over the world to cover the event. Top of the bill was Verdi’s Rigoletto, with a cast of singers…

LoftOpera's Otello, Photo: Robert Altman

With Rossini’s Otello, LoftOpera Tells a Hell of a Wife’s Tale

By Charles Geyer on 24 March 2017 Concert Reviews, Opera, Romantic

REVIEW: LoftOpera’s new production of Rossini’s Otello; INTERVIEWS: with maestro Sean Kelly, director John de los Santos, and soprano Cecilia Violetta López. They’ve Done It Again Scrappy, iconoclastic, resourceful, and unaffectedly hip, the LoftOpera company has been doing its own thing since 2013, demonstrating time and again – and with streetwise savvy – how an opera grows in Brooklyn. No rarefied proscenium-framed hothouse required. Just outer-borough grit, plus equal parts determination and talent. Then watch what springs up in a loft on the Gowanus Canal or a repurposed Navy Yard garage; a former brass foundry, a derelict warehouse, or a…

Canadian Opera Company Assembles All-Canadian Cast for Louis Riel

By Newswire on 23 March 2017 Newswire, Opera

Toronto – The Canadian Opera Company has brought together an all-Canadian cast, led by renowned Canadian baritone Russell Braun in the title role, for its highly anticipated revival of Harry Somers’ Louis Riel. This new production of Louis Riel is co-produced with the National Arts Centre in anticipation of Canada’s sesquicentennial and runs for seven performances by the COC on April 20, 23, 26, 29, May 2, 5, 13, 2017 at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. This production will have its premiere in Ottawa by the NAC on June 15 and 17, 2017. Composed by Harry Somers…

Another Brick in the Wall, Photo: Yves Renaud

‘Another Brick in the Wall’ a Thoroughly Montréalais Work

By Claire McLeish on 23 March 2017 Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Opera, Quebec Music

Review: Another Brick in the Wall, l’Opéra de Montréal Viewed: March 13, 2017 At first glance, an adaptation of Pink Floyd’s 1979 concept album The Wall seems an odd choice for part of Montreal’s 375th Anniversary. However, a brief reflection on the genesis of the album brings this choice into better focus. According to rock legend, the story for The Wall came to Pink Floyd bassist and songwriter Roger Waters after a performance in Montreal: after allegedly spitting on a fan at show at the Olympic Stadium in July 1977, Waters turned inward and began to reflect on the excesses…

Mark Adamo's Little Women

Singing Our National Stories – The AMERICAN LYRIC THEATER… Part I – Beyond Words and Music, with Mark Adamo

By Charles Geyer on 21 March 2017 Contemporary, Interviews, Opera

Mark Adamo, in conversation with Charles Geyer It started as an idea over drinks. It became a quest to “achieve everything.” In 2002, Larry Edelson, then an assistant opera director completing his graduate degree at NYU, and Mark Adamo, the celebrated American composer-librettist of Little Women (one of the most oft-produced and critically lauded new operas of recent decades), were discussing – take a guess – American opera. Not how great it was, or how imperiled it was; not its funding nor its popularity – but something much more fundamental, and mysterious: Where it came from. The opera field was…

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