NEW YORK — Asmik Grigorian laughs when she recalls that she had been singing professionally for more than a decade when the International Opera Awards proclaimed her the “best young female singer” of 2016. “So for 12 years I was nothing, and then I immediately became the best!” the Lithuanian soprano joked in an interview. … Read more
Romeo Castellucci dropped out of his production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle at Belgium’s La Monnaie theater halfway through because of what the company said Saturday was a lack of money and time. The four-part “Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung)” is considered opera’s most ambitious work. Castellucci, a noted Italian director, began … Read more
Calixto Bieito added an element to “The Exterminating Angel” that Luis Buñuel and Thomas Adès left out: cannibalism. Adès’ opera, based on Buñuel’s 1962 film “El ángel exterminador,” details psychologically blocked dinner guests who can’t depart a mansion and the disintegration of decorum after days of dystopian detachment. Bieito’s new production opened at the Paris … Read more
Thanks to three outstanding performances, two onstage and one in the orchestra pit, this production of Jenůfa gloriously demonstrates the heights the ENO can reach as well as the magnificence of Janáček’s music. Let’s start with the music because the Czech composer Leos Janáček had a unique style, with the orchestra and the singers often seeming detached from each … Read more
The British composer and sound designer Sarah Angliss received her inspiration for this new opera from a visit to the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons where she saw the huge skeleton of the man known as The Irish Giant. The museum started as a private collection of the esteemed anatomist and surgeon … Read more
NEW YORK — The estate of Lois Kirschenbaum, an opera fanatic known for collecting autographs backstage at the Metropolitan Opera for more than a half-century, has donated $215,000 to the George and Nora London Foundation for Singers. “Lois’s love and dedication to opera and its artists was absolute,” foundation president John Hauser said in a … Read more
