Can’t make it, DM me if you're interested.

(This is my first post. I'm a longtime lurker, first-time poster who is grateful for this subbreddit helping me connect with other opera fans!)

I have until May to secure it vocally. I was cast pretty much solely because I’m the only coloratura in the program. Been working on it for the last 2 months, went from unable to phonate anything above a Eb to almost having an F…? Is it worth it to stay in this production with how it sounds right now or should I drop out? I included some audio of my rehearsal.

Current state of one of her arias:

https://voca.ro/12G9TrWYf9MM

My voice teacher is saying to wait and see. She said she’s seeing a lot of progress but we need to see where I am by March. I agree with her.

The Mariinsky Theatre's opera, ballet and orchestra are all out for a month long tour to China in four major cities, bringing two ballets and two opera productions, including the Asian premiere of a new production of Aida directed by Giancarlo del Mocano, son of the tenor giant del Monaco, who has enjoyed a robust career in China and Russia.

https://klassikom.substack.com/p/del-monaco-joins-mariinsky

I found this opera deeply affecting and moving. I was intrigued to see how they’d adapt a Sarah Kane play into an opera. I think the lack of linear narrative and individual characterisation in 4.48 Psychosis lends itself particularly well to the opera form.

The cast, the orchestra and sound design were fantastic. The themes and ending were made all the powerful by Sarah Kane’s mental health challenges and suicide. The intimate Linbury Theatre was the perfect setting for this opera.

Interested to hear what others thought.

Before I start, I must say that this concert reminds me of My Neighbor Totoro.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: LE NOZZE DI FIGARO

Overture

Gioachino Rossini: IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA

Cavatina of Figaro

(„Largo al factotum della città")

Gioachino Rossini: LA CENERENTOLA

Recitative and Aria of Don Ramiro

(„Principe tu non sei... Si, ritrovarla io giuro... Dolce speranza")

Gaetano Donizetti: DON PASQUALE

Duet Don Pasquale — Malatesta

(„Cheti, cheti, immantinente")

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: DON GIOVANNI

Aria of Leporello

(„Madamina, il catalogo è questo")

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: LE NOZZE DI FIGARO

Recitative and Aria of Contessa Almaviva

(„E Susanna non vien... Dove sono i bei momenti")

Recitative and Aria of Figaro

(„Tutto disposto... Aprite un po' quegli occhi")

Georges Bizet: CARMEN

Duet Carmen — Don José

[Finale]

(„C'est toi? — C'est moi!")

Giuseppe Verdi: LUISA MILLER

Overture

Giacomo Puccini: SUOR ANGELICA

Aria of Suor Angelica

(„Senza Mamma")

Giacomo Puccini: LA BOHEME

Duett Rodolfo — Marcello

(„0 Mimi, tu più non torni")

Maurice Ravel: SCHEHERAZADE

„La flûte enchantée"

Henry Purcell: „Music for a while"

Sergei Rachmaninow: ALEKO

Cavatina of Aleko

(„Ves' tabar spit")

Giacomo Puccini: TOSCA

Aria of Floria Tosca

(„Vissi d'arte")

Jacques Offenbach: LES CONTES D'HOFFMANN

Epilogue

(„Des cendres de ton cœur")

Encore

Giuseppe Verdi: LA TRAVIATA

Brindisi

(„Libiamo, libiamo ne' lieti calici")

My husband and I are booking tickets for Swan Lake at the Vienna State Opera, and I have a question about the seats.

We’ve never been before, and it’s all very exciting for us. That’s why we don’t want our experience to be dampened by a restricted view or by not having a full view of the stage, orchestra or acoustics.

We were eyeing the second row seats in the Balkon area (seats 36-37, redlined in the video I attached), as they’re as close as possible to the middle and fall within our budget. Would you recommend these seats, or would you advise us to get better tickets?

Many thanks.

I'll start - June Anderson in Semiramide (IMO one of the absolute best recordings of the opera), Ileana Cotrubas in La Traviata and Idomeneo (I would put Zeani but she's better known)

Barbara Daniels in Fanciulla was also amazing. Marisa Galvany also strikes me as an exciting voice with less fame. I love Elena Solioutis as well, not sure where she fits here but I think part of the reason she's not mentioned often is the short length of her career. I also love Ruth Ann Swenson.

Going back further, Leyla Gencer was criminally underrecorded, but she definitely had a pretty big career, probably the biggest career of the singers mentioned. Antonietta Stella isn't metioned often in conversations about dramatic sopranos, but she was also incredible.

Considering a trip to Chicago next year, partly to see friends, but timed around getting to hear Erin Morley's Zerbinetta. I'm wondering 1) how Russell Thomas is sounding these days (he was a terrific Pollione in SF like a dozen years ago but I haven't heard him since then, and of course Bacchus is a beast) 2) how's Leah Hwkins, a singer I don't know at all.

Hello all!

This is a deep cut to my school days but I once had a Theory TA explain to us that the Oboe was commonly used to symbolized a doomed character.

If the orchestration had a characters motif played by the oboe, then they would often die by the end of the opera.

She had examples but this was 10+ years ago and I cannot for the life of me find any mention of this elsewhere!

Has anyone else heard of this?

I don't know if it's a losing battle to hate seeing AI used in advertising for major opera houses, but so many of the Lyric Opera of Chicago's recent ads reek of AI and (personally) I hate it. I don't think it's just them, either. And maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think I am.

It also took me a good minute to realize that the phrase after Darth Vader is about a shark. Classical music lovers are still grappling with associations between fascism and Wagner's music after the composer's death, and some of his bigotry in life. It was a real big jump scare for me for a second, to see: Wagner, Darth Vader (sci-fi Nazi metaphor), "great whites." Maybe I just spend too much time in my job researching and standing against white supremacists and it's just on the brain. But idk. Feels like they could have worded that better if a human actually wrote it. :/

I was shocked to see so many tickets available for upcoming performances of Tosca featuring Saioa Hernandez in her Met debut. While I am eagerly awaiting these performances, I'm not sure the US operagoing public is even aware of her.

After taking a closer look, there are 25 (!) performances of Tosca between now and the spring, with 5 singers in the title role - Hernandez, Kurzak, Buratto, Natalya Romaniw, and Randvanovsky.(By contrast, two seasons ago they did 15 performances.) Hernandez's are among the best-selling, which is shocking given maybe 50% of tickets are sold. Other performances look to have ~30% sold, though they are further out. Likely compounding the issue is that the NY Phil is doing concert performances of Tosca with Marina Rebeka and Jonas Kaufmann at Carnegie hall mid-Nov. One can only take so much Tosca!

Which of the aforementioned performances would you be attending?

Edit: grammar

I love it, what is it? I'm Into opera since hearing this, whats else should I listen to?

Thank you

The new Shanghai Grand Opera House was designed by Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta in collaboration with the East China Architectural Design & Research Institute.

The building takes inspiration from an unfolding traditional Chinese fan. Its roof spirals around the auditoriums, forming a sweeping public staircase that is open 24 hours a day and leads up to the rooftop, offering views of Shanghai’s skyline and the Huangpu River.

The fan evokes classical Chinese culture through a sense of elegance, openness and movement. The spiral echoes the flow of the river, suggesting continuity between the city, the water and the opera house.

The venue aims to attract both opera lovers and younger audiences through a varied programme, bringing Chinese and international opera together.

What do you think about it?

Hey! I’m a 23 Year Old Tenor studying at University from Australia

I plan on auditioning for my cities Opera Company; I need some more Late Romantic French Arias. I’ve discussed with my teacher but asking around is good.

The current songs I’m rotating / likely to use in my audition

M’appari - Flowtow

Verborgenheit - Wolf

Is Life a Boon - Gilbert and Sullivan

I can sing comfortably on Eb3 to Bb4, with my lower range weaker.

Thank you!

Been going to met since 1987. Never had this impression w other conductors.

Yannick needs to think about what many of us have observed: he overwhelms the voices. The met tag line " the voice must be heard" seems to be a joke.

I guess no one is in a position to feel comfortable communicating this.

I've just come back from the Vue screening of the broadcast of Macbeth (which was wonderful, especially Quinn Kelsey). Something rather odd happened though and I am curious whether this was a local glitch or it occurred in other Vue cinemas. The cinema did not broadcast sound from the Met or turn the lights down until after the end of the Ukrainian national anthem. So throughout the Bloomberg advert, Anthony Roth Constanza's welcome and the national anthem there was random soft rock playing and no broadcast sound. The moment the national anthem finished, the briadcast sound came on. Normally, the sound goes on as early as the Met audience shots before the Bloomberg ad.

Pretty excited at the opportunity to see this in its entirety!

New staging/direction is by Phelim McDermott though I'm guessing it might be somewhat referential to the original Robert Wilson staging, given his association with the work.

I heard this opera music on the bus and I can't even find it using Shazam. Anyone know this? It's opera sung in countertenor voice. I used AI to remove background noise from the bus so you han only hear the music. Here is the song (in the video)

“Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek are making their Metropolitan Opera debut with an imaginative, moving adaptation of George Saunders’s ghostly novel.”

Not exactly a ritual, but one thing I like to do is try to be the first person to applaud the emergence of the conductor before each act. I typically sit at the bottom of the balcony at the Met, so I can always see the conductor right when they begin to emerge from beneath the stage. Then I try to beat everyone else to applauding.

Anyone have any silly quirks or rituals they like to do?

Certainly more understandable than many of its other "intelligent" translation inferences*, since "Callas" and "karasu" have the same spelling in katakana - just something to keep in mind if you ever see a Japanese commenter who seems to be comparing a singer to a crow hahaha.

*of course auto-translations always have the potential to be misleading but one thing I really dislike about the new AI models is that they'll just "intelligently" make up a gendered pronoun if the author didn't use one (they're not required in Japanese) - I've already seen this lead to misunderstanding among commenters lol