Mezzo-Soprano J'Nai Bridges Gives Her Great Big Story To CNN

"J’Nai Bridges knows that most people perceive opera as being an artform for the elite. Because opera was traditionally catered towards nobility, many today still don’t feel welcome. Bridges wants to change that. The mezzo-soprano is a rising star in the opera world, with starring roles on stages around the world, including the Metropolitan Opera House and the San Francisco Opera. When she’s not belting out arias, she’s going to local schools to give students a chance to experience an opera, or teaching masterclasses at colleges. As a Black, female artist, Bridges knows the importance of showing children—especially BIPOC children—that classical music is possible. As Bridges says, when she walks into a room or onto a stage, her goal is to 'change minds, heal hearts, and make music.'" Watch the video after the jump. 

Joseph Colaneri And Francesca Zambello Talk 40th Anniversary

Opera Titan: Francesco Zambello leads the
Glimmerglass Festival into its 40th Season.
(Photo: Claire McAdams)

"The Glimmerglass Festival this year seems grander than ever before. The opera company, with its Alice Busch Theater and campus on the western shore of Otsego Lake north of Cooperstown, is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Artistic and general director Francesca Zambello has put together a remarkable season of events and activities, running from July 10 through August 23. Scheduled for the opening and closing performances is the familiar and beloved Mozart masterpiece, The Magic Flute. Other mainstage productions are Verdi’s dark tragedy Macbeth and an amazing unknown opera by Antonio Vivaldi, Cato in Utica. The traditional American musical theater offering is Leonard Bernstein’s witty and clever take on Voltaire’s classic short novel, Candide. Voltaire ends his philosophical reflection on the meaning of life with Candide’s words, 'we must cultivate our garden.' This year the Glimmerglass 'campus' will have a three-part modern landscape installation for sharing stories and quiet person reflection. 'A beautiful garden has both unity and variety,' Zambello says, and the golden thread running through this season is the importance and beauty of our natural surroundings....The festival will also present a lecture by Supreme Court Justice Ruth

Chris Powell To Leave Pittsburgh Opera For Glimmerglass Festival

"Pittsburgh Opera music administrator Chris Powell will leave the company on April 13 to grow to be director of administration and community engagement beginning on April 20 for Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, N.Y. He will oversee advertising, planning, artistic administration, public relations and community engagement. 'This is a truly exceptional chance for Chris,' says the Pittsburgh Opera's general director Christopher Hahn. Hahn hired Powell in 2001. 'He's worked through a range of responsibilities and is in a very very good position to move forward in his profession,' Hahn says. 'Glimmerglass is certainly a incredibly fine festival enterprise and the possibilities this will afford him are fantastic. I'm extremely pleased for him.' Powell, 43, is a Mt. Lebanon native who graduated from Duquesne University and the University of Miami. He was a winner as a horn player of the Music in Mt. Lebanon competition in 1991. He also was personnel manager from 2005 to ‘09 for the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in the course of James Levine's tenure with the Boston Symphony and the Tanglewood Festival. As Pittsburgh Opera's music administrator, Powell has been in charge of procurement of all added musical instruments, was personnel manager for the chorus and orchestra, in charge of the daily and extended term schedules and took care of visa, immigration and other problems for guest artists. He's also managing director of 3 Rivers Ringers, a handbell choir." [Source]

Francesca Zambello Ready to Remodel the American Musical

Directress Zambello (Photo: Daniel Chavkin)

"Opera companies are running out of popular operas to put on the stage. Luckily, there are plenty of popular musicals available to produce instead. Musicals are becoming a bigger part of the operatic repertoire: the Vancouver Opera produced a fully staged version of West Side Story last month, American opera diva Deborah Voigt appeared in a fully staged version of Annie Get Your Gun at the Glimmerglass Opera this past summer, and in early 2012, the Chicago Lyric Opera will present Show Boat. James Wright, general director of the Vancouver Opera, says that opera companies “need to be less rigid than we’ve been in the past.” In some cases, that means putting on a Broadway show instead of another La Bohème. Leonard Bernstein, the composer of West Side Story, was one of the first to suggest that musicals were the true American opera, and some opera houses have done musicals in previous decades. But the musical temptation has become greater for classically oriented theatres, even overseas: the Théâtre du Châtelet, a house known for operas and operettas, has recently brought material like The Sound of Music to Paris. It helps that these shows sell; West Side Story did well for Vancouver, and Chicago Lyric Opera general director Anthony Freud says that 'when we surveyed our subscribers, almost 70 per cent were very enthusiastic about Show Boat.'....One thing that still distinguishes musicals from operas is that musicals aren’t reinterpreted and updated the way operas routinely are; Francesca Zambello, the director who did the Glimmerglass Annie and the upcoming Chicago Show Boat, experiments more with operas than she does with musicals. 'As long as a work is under certain copyright restrictions,' Wright explains, directors 'won’t be able to do much. But when those run out, these works are going to be fair game.' When directors start deconstructing Les Misérables, we’ll know musicals have really arrived in the opera world." [Source] More about some of the above-mentioned productions is after the jump.

Deborah Voigt Gets Her Gun Ready For Glimmerglass

"Safe to say that Wagner’s Brünnhilde would never brag about shootin’ a wart off’n grandpappy’s nose, despite the warrior that she is. But then maybe she would in an alternative singing universe, the kind Deborah Voigt, the soprano, has entered here at the Glimmerglass Festival. Ms. Voigt, a heralded interpreter of Wagner, Verdi and Strauss heroines, is appearing as the backwoods sharpshooter of the title in Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun, which opens Saturday." [Source]

Bass Matt Boehler Talks About Upcoming Glimmerglass Gig

Bass Boehler has the goods (Photo: Todd Franson)

The gay opera singer is interviewed by Metroweekly of Washington, D.C., where he discusses his challenges pursuing musical theater as a bass and the path he took from his training in Wisconsin to his decision to transition into opera. "Boehler started his opera career in 2000, and then honed his craft further as a Filene Young Artist with the Wolf Trap Opera Company in the mid-2000s. He's now returning to Wolf Trap to perform in The Inspector, the second opera the Wolf Trap Foundation has commissioned. John Musto and Mark Campbell's comedy is based on Russian writer Nikolai Gogol's The Government Inspector, but the pair have transposed the play to 1930s Sicily under Mussolini's reign, and written it in English." He ends the interview being asked about the possibility of a gay opera to which he responds, "In some ways, opera is so gay that it might be like gilding the lily a little bit, you know?" [Source]

Is Juan José de León The Future Juan Diego Flórez?

Tenor  Juan José de León has just been named the winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council's Southwest Regional Auditions in San Antonio, Texas. The selections that won him the distinction included "Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête!" from Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment and "Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön" from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. Of the former 9 high-C extravaganza he said, "I wanted to wow the audience and judges, and I can roll out of bed and hit a high C, so I gave them what I do best." The next stop for the 26-year old de León will be New York City for the national semifinals competition in March on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. From this round, ten finalists will sing in the Grand Finals Concert accompanied by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and broadcast nationwide on the Metropolitan Opera Radio Network. The top prize for five lucky winners is an award of $15,000. Learn more about the tenor and watch a video performance after the jump.

Francesca Zambello Gears Up For Summer

"Pour sa première saison, qui aura lieu du 2 juillet au 23 août 2011, Zambello met en vedette: Carmen de Bizet, Médéa un opéra  de 1797 de Cherubini, la fameuse comédie musicale de Irving Berlin Annie Get Your Gun, avec orchestre complet et sans aucun amplification, ainsi que deux nouvelles œuvres américaines présentées dans un  même programme: A blizzard in Marblehead Neck, du compositeur Jeanine Tesori sur un livret de l’écrivain Tony Kushner, et Later the same evening de John Musto et Mark Campbell basé sur des peintures de Edward Hopper."