Stephen Costello Leans On Family Member During Tough Times

Familial Lifeline: Stephen Costello (left) with his cousin
Brian Costello (Photo: Facebook)

"'Not trusting people, not believing you have anyone there to support you. I did have people, but I just didn’t know they were there.' One of the few people who knew the full story was Costello’s cousin Brian Costello. They grew up together in the working class suburb of Northeast Philadelphia. Brian’s dad Pat co-founded a boxing club for underprivileged teens from the neighborhood with their uncle, Tim, named the Jack Costello Boxing Club after their father, Costello and Brian’s grandfather. At the opening of the boxing club in 1996, Stephen sang the national anthem for the inaugural exhibition fight, in which Brian fought. They were 15. Born less than a month apart, Costello and Brian grew up together having sleepovers every weekend, watching horror movies, and eating pizza. Costello’s interest in music started in sixth grade; Brian played the saxophone and Costello “wanted to be like Brian,” so he took up the trumpet. Brian, sober since 2010, lives in their grandmother’s old house in the Tacony section of Philadelphia right down the street from the boxing club with his wife Nicole and two children. When Costello first decided to divorce he called Brian, who flew immediately to be with him in Chicago. In the midst of his Traviata cancellation crisis, Costello called Brian again, just after he had pulled out of the first performance, and the second one approaching. Brian told The Daily Beast, 'He called me and I could barely hear him. He had such a depressed tone. He felt like he let people down.' Brian told Costello he had to let go of everything that happened prior, and the stress of worrying about what people thought and how things looked. He came to join him in New York, and attended Costello’s second night of Traviata, Brian’s first opera at the Met, and the first opera he had seen Costello in. Brian gave Costello the 24-hour AA coin they had given him the day he left rehab. 'I told him what happened yesterday or last week

Georgia Jarman Returns Triumphant In Santa Fe Opera "Rigoletto"

Gilda In The Desert: Jarman sings the Verdi role
at The Santa Fe Opera (Photo: Ken Howard)

Former Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Georgia Jarman currently sings the lead role of Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto at the Santa Fe Opera: "The plot, derived from a Victor Hugo play, revolves around the curse to which Rigoletto is referring just then. It focuses specifically on how he loses his daughter, Gilda, to the decadent Duke of Mantua, whom Rigoletto serves as court jester. Soprano Georgia Jarman proves to be a splendid Gilda, acting the part with forthright simplicity and displaying the vocal heft, timbre and agility needed to meet its demands. One of the evening’s high points was her aria 'Caro nome,' which started in loveliness and ended five minutes later in otherworldly beauty — her coloratura encompassing some clearly articulated, sustained trills, to boot. Conductor Jader Bignamini had led a sturdy interpretation up to that point, but in the aria he and the orchestra supported Gilda’s musings by allowing breathing room of their own. Jarman’s aria 'Tutte le feste al tempio' was similarly affecting, and the duet with her father into which it escalates was one of the evening’s most touching highpoints." [Source] Watch a video interview with the soprano discussing her role, after the jump.

Bryan Hymel On Family, Santa Fe Opera, High Notes, "Les Troyens"

Shaken, Not Stirred: Bryan Hymel brings cool to opera with his heroic high notes. (Photo: Dario Acosta)

"French grand opera makes great demands on singers, with performances clocking in at times that rival Wagner and orchestras crowding the pit. New Orleans native, Bryan Hymel (pronounced ee-mel) will continue to embrace that repertoire in performances of epic works like Les Troyens in San Francisco next month and Les[sic] Damnation de Faust in Paris this coming December. In between, he’ll sing the roles of the Duke in Rigoletto and Don Jose in Carmen at Santa Fe and Washington National Opera respectively. His bow as Rodolfo at the Met last year earned him continued praise from the New York press, which had welcomed his triumph on short notice in 2012, stepping in for a save-the-day kind of performance in Les Troyens appropriate for someone whose voice type is most often described as heroic. His list of awards is long, and illustrious, and includes the Metropolitan Opera’s Beverly Sills Artist Award and first

Sonya Yoncheva Makes Vogue Magazine Spread For Debut

A Star is Born: Soprano Sonya Yoncheva Arrives

"As Yoncheva made her debut in major operas in Europe, word of her singular range and tone made its way to Gelb. 'We have a very sophisticated scouting system,' he later explained by phone. 'Sometimes I hear reports about young singers that make it clear we should bring them in. European opera houses are typically smaller than the Met. Singers who can make an impression in a smaller European house sometimes do not have the same success on stage at the Met. The singer has to be even more intensely charismatic on stage.' Following her turn as Gilda, Gelb said, Yoncheva has been on a 'meteoric rise to operatic stardom.' Tonight, Yoncheva will begin the first of four performances in La Traviata, one day after releasing her first album, the result of an exclusive, long-term deal with Sony Classical. She is now booked five years out, including in the opening of the Met’s next season, when she will sing the part of Desdemona in a new production of Verdi’s Otello that is slated for a live-broadcast in movie theaters around the world." [Source] Read the full article "Meet Sonya Yoncheva: Opera's Brightest New Star" by clicking here and see more photos by Vogue's Ruven Afanador after the jump. Sonya Yoncheva will be appearing at the Metropolitan Gift Shop on January 22 to sign copies of her new CD, see details here. Sample tracks off the soprano's new album are also after the jump. 

Bolshoi Theatre Revives Robert Carsen Circus "Rigoletto"

Kristina Mkhitaryan as Gilda

"Giuseppe Verdi's immensely popular opera Rigoletto returned to the Bolshoi Theater earlier this month, after an absence of 25 years, in a staging by Canadian director Robert Carsen co-produced by the Bolshoi, the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, in France, where it originated in the summer of 2013, and the opera houses of Brussels, Strasbourg and Geneva. The Bolshoi played host to the Russian premiere of Rigoletto in 1859 and over the next 130 years the opera went on to become one of the theater's most-performed works, appearing nearly 1,600 times in 11 different stagings. To say that Carsen's production is unlike any seen before at the Bolshoi would amount to a gross understatement. Moving the action from its

Justina Gringyte as Maddalena and Sergey 
Romanovsky as the Duke of Mantua

original locale, the 16th-century ducal court of Mantua, in northern Italy, to a modern-day circus arena, Carsen has turned the libidinous Duke into an equally libidinous circus director and the court jester, Rigoletto, into a clown. To conduct Rigoletto, the Bolshoi engaged prominent Italian conductor Evelino Pido, who encountered certain difficulties in coordinating his forces and for whom the orchestra played rather insensitively at times. The principal treat vocally on opening night was the Duke of Sergei Romanovsky, who, after a brief stint with Novaya Opera, left Russia in 2009 to pursue a career abroad. His bright, technically secure lyric tenor proved a near-perfect fit to the music, marred only by a few cracked high notes. And he played the philandering Duke with enormous gusto and conviction. Kristina Mkhitaryan, a

Dimitris Tiliakos as Rigoletto

member of the Bolshoi's Young Opera Artists Program, showed considerable potential in her sympathetic account of the doomed Gilda, though she lacked, on opening night at least, the pure, bell-like high notes heard from the part's finest interpreters. The vocal disappointment of the evening was the Rigoletto of Greek baritone Dimitris Tiliakos, who seemed to possess several different voices, principal among them an only intermittently full-bodied sound in the mid-range of a sort that marks the true 'Verdi baritone' and rather weak and fluttering notes in music's upper reaches." [Source] Click here for information about Rigoletto performances at the Bolshoi. Watch a video after the jump.

Duke of Mantua Becomes Adman For Visa & Chelsea Ristorante

A new commercial for Municipal Credit Union Visa features New York City's Chelsea Ristorante in order to sell its low-interest card. The music playing under the commercial is the Duke of Mantua's canzone "La donna è mobile" from the beginning of Act 3 of Giuseppe Verdi's opera Rigoletto from 1851. Judging from the gallery on the restaurants website, it is a favorite for "Sopranos." For more information about the MCU, click here.

Duke of Mantua Does Crossfit: Stephen Costello And James Valenti

Stephen Costello (left) at Houston Grand Opera and James Valenti (right) at Dallas Opera, share the same Peter J. Hall-designed robe as the Duke of Mantua in Michael Yeargan's production of Rigoletto that was shared by the two companies. It's clear both tenors get gym time into their schedule to be as healthy as possible for the athletic sport of singing.

Tonino Benacquista Book-Turned-Movie Gets The Verdi Treatment

La Famiglia: Click here to watch an advertisement, featuring "La donna é mobile" from Verdi's Rigoletto, promoting the release of the DVD/Blu Ray for the 2013 film The Family.

"A mafia boss and his family are relocated to a sleepy town in France under the witness protection program after snitching on the mob. Despite the best efforts of CIA Agent Stansfield (Tommy Lee Jones) to keep them in line, Fred Manzoni (Robert De Niro), his wife Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer) and their children Belle (Dianna Agron) and Warren (John D'Leo) can't help but revert to old habits and blow their cover by handling their problems the 'family' way, enabling their former mafia cronies to track them down. Chaos ensues as old scores are settled in the unlikeliest of settings in this darkly funny film by Luc Besson (Taken, Transporter)." [Source]

Fabio Luisi Tweets About Death Of Conductor Angleo Campori

Fabio Luisi took to Twitter on November 25 to discuss the death of fellow Italian conductor Angelo Campori. Luisi also commented that Campori, who died at age 79, "was one of the last Italian conductors who knew exactly what Italian opera means and how to conduct it." Maestro Campori worked with many of the great opera sopranos: Renata Scotto, Maria Chiara, Raina Kabaivanska, Giusy Devinu, and Anna Caterina Antonacci. "For the soundtrack to Woody Allen's Hannah and her Sisters, the indie film auteur, who knows his opera, plumped for an authentically Italian excerpt from Puccini's Manon Lescaut. The cast was from the Ragio Theater of Turin, the conductor was Angelo Campori. And the complete performance from which that was taken is indicative of the conductor Campori became--a noted exponent of musical Italy. It featured in its cast good voices that were idiomatically Italianate, with Maria Chiara and Nicola Martinucci in the leads...His closest associations were with the Teatro Regio in Parma and with the Verona Arena. But he had an American profile, as well. He had been close to Leonard Bernstein and had performed at the Metropolitan Opera, in Philadelphia and elsewhere. He had been seriously ill a decade ago and had required heart surgery, since when he'd been almost completely unable to perform. He left several recordings. As well as that Manon Lescaut, there's a film of Lucia Di Lammermoor from Parma starring Alfredo Kraus and Luciana Serra, Soliva's rarely-heard Guilia E Sesto Pompeo on the CPO label and Licinio Refice's Cecilia with Renata Scotto on VAI Audio." [Source] More about the conductor, and a riveting performance he conducted of Renato Bruson in "Cortigiani, vil razza dannata" from Verdi's Rigoletto, after the jump.

Super Bowl XLVI Commercials Offer Up Some Verdi and Rossini

Christopher Alden Sets the Record Straight About "Rigoletto"

Ekaterina Sadovnikova as Gilda and Quinn Kelsey as Rigoletto in
the Canadian Opera Company production. (Photo: Michael Cooper)

"One of the busiest opera directors on the international opera circuit today, Christopher Alden was in Toronto this September for the rehearsals of the new production of Verdi’s Rigoletto at the Canadian Opera Company. His creative team chose to set the work in the period in which Verdi composed the opera. The Chicago Lyric Opera decided not to revive this production due to donor pressure, but Toronto audiences seem to be more open to innovative readings of the old operatic mainstays. The new Rigoletto premiered at the COC on Sept. 29 and will be on stage until Oct. 22." The revealing interview by Tandem's Lydia Perovic goes on to discuss topics such as the director's rule for adapting the Rigoletto production for modern time, the environment of arts organizations in the United States, how music dictates his directing, his view of why so women die in opera, whether Italy has conservative views on new productions and whether or not there has been an opera too challenging for him to conceptualize. Read the whole story here.

Side note: The Lyric Opera of Chicago replaced the Alden production in 2006 with a more traditional approach led by director Stefano Vizioli.

James Valenti and Laura Claycomb Are Dallas Opera Stars

"Laura Claycomb (Gilda) is a highly acclaimed soprano long overdue on the Dallas stage. An operatic moment that Rigoletto fans look forward to is Gilda’s coloratura trills send high notes flying to Mount Everest heights without the arduous climb. The love song 'Caro Nome (Sweet name)' shows off Claycomb's amazing lyrical vocal abilities with pure high notes effortlessly placed with a light airiness.

 Tenor James Valenti (the Duke of Mantua) is not only a rising international opera star, he is also has striking leading man looks. His Duke of Mantua is a believable scoundrel as exemplified in the famous song 'La donna é mobile.'" [Source]

Photos: Michael L. Haynes