Opera Music

Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden, GermanyMay 23, 2013DON GIOVANNIDramma giocoso in two actsMusic by Wolfgang Amadeus MozartLibretto by Lorenzo da PonteThomas Hengelbrock, Musical DirectionPhilipp Himmelmann, StagingFlorence von Gerkan, CostumesJohannes Leiacker, Stage DesignBalthasar-Neumann-ChoirBalthasar-Neumann-OrchestraJory Vinikour PianoAnna Netrebko, Donna AnnaErwin Schrott, Don GiovanniLuca Pisaroni, LeporelloMalena Ernman, Donna ElviraCharles Castronovo, Don OttavioKatija Dragojevic, ZerlinaJonathan Lemalu, MasettoMario Luperi, KomturPHOTOSDon Giovanni, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden 23. May 2013. Photo: HerbertDon Giovanni, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden 23. May 2013. Photo: HerbertDon Giovanni, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden 23. May 2013. Photo: HerbertDon Giovanni, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden 23. May 2013. Photo: HerbertDon Giovanni, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden 23. May 2013. Photo: HerbertDon Giovanni, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden 23. May 2013. Photo: HerbertDon Giovanni, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden 23. May 2013. Photo: HerbertDon Giovanni, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden 23. May 2013. Photo: HerbertDon Giovanni, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden 23. May 2013. Photo: Herbert

CLOSING DATE 26 JULY 2013 The search for the next BBC Young Musician has launched and for the first time the competition will also include a Jazz Award. The Jazz competition will see young hopefuls perform in two audition stages before the final on 8 March 2014, which will be held at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Applications for the Jazz Award will open on 1 August 2013 and the closing date is 18 October 2013. The format for the five classical competitions – Brass, Keyboard, Percussion, Strings and Woodwind – is the same as in previous years. Competitors will have to get through two audition stages before the category finals and semi-finals at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. The final for the 2014 competition will be held in Usher Hall in Edinburgh. Applications are now open for the classical competition and the closing date is 26 July 2013. BBC Young Musician 2012 was won by cellist Laura van der Heijden who said: ‘BBC Young Musician has changed my life, me as a musician and as a person. It has given me the most unbelievable start to me career! Immediately after the final I started to have new expectations of myself.’ The final stages of the competition will broadcast on BBC Four and Radio 3. Audition information Regional auditions Cardiff: 23-27 Sept Manchester: 30 Sept – 4 Oct Newcastle Gateshead: 8 Oct Glasgow: 9-10 Oct Belfast: 11 Oct London: 14-18 Oct; 23-24 Oct Category auditions will take place at BBC Hoddinott Hall and Grace Williams Studio, Cardiff Bay. ~~ You can find all the information you need in the Entry Brochure, including eligibility requirements, instructions for all stages of the competition and the entry form itself. The closing date for entries is Friday 26th July 2013. Download the Entry Brochure for BBC Young Musician 2014  BBC Young Musician website. You can send or email your completed form with accompanying documents to: BBC Young Musician 2014, Cardiff, CF5 2YQ or young.musician@bbc.co.uk. ~~ Filed under: BBC, Young Musician

Photo: Alastair Muir Sara Jakubiak (Marie) and Leigh Melrose (Wozzeck) in ENO's Wozzeck It was a very good, and extremely well attended, evening at the Cliseum for English National Opera's hugely successful new production of Wozzeck.  There is little that I can add to the deserved pauditis it has received.  But I should note a particular welcome for Sara Jakubiak's Marie.  Sara was with us at COT in Jake Heggie's Three Decembers back in 2010 - and had been a particular favorite of mine when she was at Yale in Doris Cross's excellent program.  She is a tremendously valuable versatile singer and actress - so many exciting things for her in the future I feel sure. And as the Doctor we had the luxury casting of James Morris (Glyndebourne class of 1969 and for many years elsewhere since!).  Leigh Melrose was superb in the title role, Edward Gardner sumptuously lyrical and passionate in the pit, and Carrie Cracknell has created a landmark production that can do her no harm. So yes, another fine evening for the consistently high performing English National Opera.

Looking forward!

La Scala tightens its belt as it rolls out the 2013-14 season, streamlined under Italy's unflinching economic crisis, down from...

It was widely expected that La Scala would use the opportunity of today's 2013-14 season launch to reveal the replacement for Stéphane Lissner, who vacates the post of Superintendant in 2015. But there was no such announcement. Instead, the invited audience were treated to a tirade from music director Daniel Barenboim. He bluntly slammed the organisational inflexibility which he says is behind the failure to come to a decision. This failure, he said, has paralysed programming for the eight months since Lissner announced his departure. In what might be interpreted as support for the main non-Italian candidate, Alexander Pereira, Barenboim also had some sharp words for anyone bringing nationality into the debate. "When I see discussion about whether the new Superintendant is Italian or not, instead of whether he has culture, whether he can do programming, I find it dreadful." "What is the difference between Verdi and Beethoven? The birth certificate? I think not."

I confess I have been following Cecilia Bartoli's foray into Bellini's Norma like a deer caught in the headlights. Even the very idea of it is fascinating.I read everything in the English and German press, the vast majority positive, about both the new recording and the performances in Salzburg.We know that Cecilia is self-identified with the greatest of all divas--Maria Malibran, a woman whose legend was amplified out of all human proportion by her early death.She also carries another less positive obsession with another transcendent diva--Maria Callas. In Cecilia's native Italy time seems to have stopped with Callas. The style of performance most represented by Callas is the only one the average opera-devoted Italian cares to hear. Cecilia's countrymen are to this day completely fascinated with Callas and care not at all for her. When Cecilia sings at La Scala, they boo.Both of Cecilia's obsession divas scored triumphs in the role of Norma. Callas was particularly known for her portrayal, recording it 5 times. I am personally astounded that La Bartoli would take this on, but should I be? It begins to seem inevitable.Cecilia Bartoli is an awesome individual. (If there were any way to invest in her, I would. Could she please incorporate herself.) You only imagined that she doesn't have the right voice for Norma. She bends reality to her will. I can't stop watching. And listening.

It was bound to happen, a porno opera. Of course, it it had to be in either the Netherlands or Germany. I guess Germany figured it had featured enough soft-porn Regie productions, so the "honor" goes to the Netherlands. Operadagen Rotterdam 2013 will be presenting the world premiere of Pornographia on Friday, May 31 and Saturday, June 1. The opera, which is being described as a mix of performance art and opera is the first part of a series of three about contemporary sociocultural trends in society. The other two will be Megalomania and Nostalgia. The "score" of the opera will be the full soundtrack of a gay porn movie with fragments inspired by twentieth century music classics. The opera is about a small society of three figures whose mundane life is intervened by the entrance of a handsome young man. The need to satisfy their feelings of lust drives them crazy and eventually leads them to destruct what they crave for. The May 31st performance will be preceeded by a panel discussion about the pornofication of the contemporary artistic discourse in the Netherlands. Pornographia is being described as a new experimental operatic performance about our collective need for immediate gratification of our desires.PornographiaDirector Sjaron Minailo says he is using pornography as a metaphor for a culture in which the desires of the consumer are the only engine of production; A culture in which the desire for realism results in the opposite: the pornographic illustration of sexuality consumes the sexuality itself. Admission is € 10 and tickets are available online.

Nmon FordWhen one thinks of the operatic version of Macbeth, one immediately thinks of Giuseppe Verdi. However, the Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch wrote a highly dramatic version in 1906, which has only been performed once in the U.S., at the Juilliard School of Music in New York in 1973.The opera is about to double the number of U.S. performances it has received, with performances at the Long Beach Opera from June 15-23, 2013 and again at the Chicago Opera Theater from September 13-21, 2014. The Long Beach performances will feature Panamanian-American barihunk Nmon Ford in the title role and Suzan Hanson as his scheming wife Lady Macbeth. Adding to the dramatic effect will be the location of the performance, which will be in a vast industrial space at the Port of Los Angeles. The Chicago Opera Theater has not confirmed casting. The great Inge Borkh sings Bloch's Macbeth: Bloch’s opera reveals the influence of Wagner's music dramas and Claude Debussy's symbolist opera "Pelleas et Melisande." Bloch's probing and dramatic score powerfully illuminates the central couple, and deeply examines the temptation of promised power and its influence over our actions. but it did not receive its first performance until November 30, 1910 by the Opéra-Comique Paris. After the premiere production, the opera was staged in 1938 in Naples, but was then banned on orders of the Fascist government. Subsequently, the opera was produced in Rome in 1953, and in Trieste.

May 28th-June 3rd, Opera Music Broadcast Webcasts the InsightALT Festival, Live from NYC A festival of new operas in development at American Lyric Theater Event: Insight ALT Festival Venue: JCC Manhattan Date/Time: May 28th-June 3rd, 2013 (check each event for starting times) “OMB not only efficiently reached a much broader audience than what is possible [...]