Latest Opera News
La Scala's gala premiere of 'Don Carlo' celebrates Italian opera's new status as cultural treasure
MILAN (AP) — Italian melodrama's official recognition as a global cultural treasure was celebrated Thursday during La Scala’s season premiere of Verdi’s “Don Carlo,” with some of the drama spilling out into the theater with a pair of anti-fascist cries before the curtain went up. ...
Hannah Waddingham takes viewers 'Home for Christmas' with holiday special featuring 'Ted Lasso' pals
Hannah Waddingham's friends weren't exactly ready to celebrate Christmas when they received an invitation to attend a live taping of her holiday special last May at the London Coliseum. It “was uncommonly sweaty in London,” recalled Waddingham, "and there was us putting out an...
A century after her birth, opera great Maria Callas is honored with a new museum in Greece
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Finishing her class at The Juilliard School of the arts in New York, Greek opera great Maria Callas gave her students a final word of advice. “Keep on going the proper way: Not with fireworks, not with easy applause, but with the expression of the words, the...
‘Grounded,’ a new opera about a female fighter pilot turned drone operator, prepares to take off
WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 10 years after it was first imagined as an opera, “Grounded” is ready to take flight. With music by Jeanine Tesori and a libretto adapted by George Brant from his own play, “Grounded” tells the story of an F-16 fighter pilot who becomes pregnant and...
Sister Helen Prejean's 'Dead Man Walking' arrives at Met in Jake Heggie's operatic version
NEW YORK (AP) — Sister Helen Prejean remembered when she first spoke with Jake Heggie about adapting her book “Dead Man Walking.” “I don’t know boo-scat about opera,” she told him. “I just got two requests. One, you’re not going to do that atonal thing, are you? Are...
`10 Days in a Madhouse' opera premieres in Philadelphia, celebrating women's voices
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Kiera Duffy is disturbed by “10 Days in a Madhouse” as much as an 1887 public was outraged by the squalid surroundings exposed by trailblazing reporter Nellie Bly. “The idea of the hysterical woman trope really does persist today,” the soprano said ahead...
In break with the past, Met opera is devoting a third of its productions to recent work
NEW YORK (AP) — Jake Heggie recalls that after “Dead Man Walking” premiered in San Francisco in 2000, his first opera was quickly taken up by other companies, but there was “not even a whisper of possibility” that the Metropolitan Opera might be interested. When Anthony...
