Netrebko, Florez, El-khoury To Sing At Lebanon's Beiteddine Festival

The Venue: Beiteddine Palace lies 45 km southeast of Beirut and is situated
 900 meters above sea level. Click to enlarge the panoramic photo.

"For the first time in the Arab World, the prodigiously gifted soprano Anna Netrebko will perform at Beiteddine Art Festival in Lebanon, an event scheduled to take place between 27 July and 5 September. Considered one of the biggest international stars, Netrebko has appeared in all the world’s great opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, London’s Royal Opera House, La Scala, Vienna State Opera, Paris Opera, Berlin State Opera, and the Mariinsky Theatre. Netrebko will be one of the few notable international and regional artists to take a stage the Beiteddine palace, on the outskirts of Beirut, in what is considered an anniversary (30th) edition of the annual festival. Other musicians include tenor Juan Diego Florez, Lebanese composer, singer and songwriter Marcel Khalife, singers Kadim Al-Sahir and Reham Abdelhakim among others. The festival will open on 27 July with the Bel Canto tenor Juan Diego Florez and guest soprano Joyce El-Khoury, accompanied by the Filarmonica Gioachino Rossini Orchestra, under the baton of Christopher Franklin. Internationally acclaimed Lebanese musician Marcel Khalifé and Al-Mayadine Ensemble will take to the stage on 5 August, reviving his most famous songs, such as Rita wal Boundoukiyya, Oummi. Khalife's works have been critically acclaimed both in the Arab region and the world over. On 8 August, the Armenian National Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Chamber Choir of Armenia and the Hover Chamber will be conducted by Eduard Topchjan and the programme will feature well known classical music works. Soprano Anna Netrebko with guest tenor Yusif Eyvazov will perform towards the festival's end, on 27 August. A number of

Beiteddine Palace is a masterpiece of the early 19th century Lebanese 
architecture built by Emir Bechir Chehab II around a small 
Muslim-Druze hermitage. Click to enlarge.

other well known musicians will be featured in the anniversary year of the festival, including Rebecca Ferguson who will perform the greatest hits of legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday, and David Gray who has established himself as one of the UK’s leading rock artists. Launched in 1985, the Beiteddine Art Festival 'came as an act of faith in Lebanon’s cultural role and power of creativity, a call for normality amidst the chaos and madness of war. It was born and has grown in very difficult times and made it against all odds,' we read on the festival's website. 'As of 1987, when Nora Joumblat and an Executive Committee took over the organisation of the Festival, it gradually gained regional and international recognition' and throughout the years it hosted hundreds of important international artists and spanning across music, performing and visual arts. All events take place within the 200-year old Palace in the Chouf mountains, considered to be a jewel of Lebanese architecture." [Source]

Angela Gheorghiu Will Travel To China For Arts Festival In October

Cover Girl Gheorghiu: China & Romania have a history
 of several decades of economic and cultural exchanges.
Read more about that history by clicking here.

"Organizers of the 16th China Shanghai International Arts Festival say there will be more original performances at this year's event. Scheduled to run from October 17th to November 16th, the festival will have 45 musical, dance and theatrical works, including 25 from abroad. Here's more about it. The opening show will be a four-act Chinese opera called The River Flows to the East, which looks at the history of Shanghai. It will star Chinese opera tenor Liao Changyong and soprano Huang Ying. Organizers say one-third of the performances this year will be originals and Shanghai premiers. During the art festival, world-famous art troupes such as the St. Petersburg Academic Philharmonic, the Orchestra de Paris and the National Ballet of the Netherlands will give performances. Meanwhile, original Chinese productions including Shaoxing Opera will also be staged. 'We want to use this opportunity to introduce the world of Chinese original operas and art performances, to expand the influence of Chinese culture around the globe,' said Liu Wenguo, deputy secretary-general of Shanghai International Arts Festival. The closing performance will be a co-production of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, by over 300 artists from the Bejart Ballet Lausanne, the Tokyo Ballet, the Shanghai Ballet and the Shanghai Opera House." [Source] The festival will also includes performers Kyung Wha Chung, Mischa Maisky, Paavo Jarvi, and Kent Nagano. October 30, 2014, will feature soprano Angela Gheorghiu in recital with accompanist Alexandru Petrovici. Details of the recital are after the jump.

iTunes Festival Recruits Plácido Domingo As Closing Among Pop Stars

"Opera singer Placido Domingo has joined Kasabian and Kylie Minogue in the line-up for this year's iTunes Festival. The Spanish tenor is perhaps a surprising choice for the event, which tends to feature pop and rock acts. Domingo, 73, will perform at the Roundhouse in London on September 30 and will be the last act in a month of concerts. Deadmau5 kicks off the concerts on Monday night, followed by headline sets from pop names like Pharrell Williams, Calvin Harris, The Script and Ed Sheeran. Kylie Minogue, Kasabian, Mary J Blige, Blondie, Maroon 5 and Robert Plant are also playing the festival. The organisers quoted Domingo as saying he was thrilled to appear and for 'the recognition that this brings to the unique and magnificent world of opera and of classical music.' Tickets are for competition winners, but gigs can be streamed live in more than 100 countries or watched on-demand."[Source]

Nuccia Focile To Sing Evening Concert At Llandeilo Fawr Festival

Sicilian Soprano: Nuccia Focile

"The vocal highlight of this year's Llandeilo Fawr festival will be a visit from one of the world's leading operatic sopranos. Opera lovers in Wales will know Nuccia Focile from her acclaimed portrayal of the tragic heroine, Violetta, in Welsh National Opera's sell-out production of Verdi's La Traviata, a few years back. Llandeilo Fawr has gained a justifiable reputation for the star quality of its vocal artists and Nuccia Focile will be the latest in a long line of world-class singers to have visited the festival. The list of leading roles which she has played is awesome and she has appeared at most of the world's leading opera houses, including the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, Metropolitan Opera in New York, Paris Opera, La Scala, Milan,and the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. Her many opera recordings have enjoyed immense critical acclaim and she has worked with some of the most admired conductors, including Sir Chatles Mackerras, Sir Colin Davies, Seji Osawa, James Levine and Antonio Pappano.

Piano Man: Gary Matthewman

She will be accompanied by a pianist who has received plaudits wherever he has performed. Garry [sic] Matthewman ranks among the finest of British piano accompanists, having appeared at Wigmore Hall in London, Carnegie Hall in New York and the Musikverein in Vienna as well as in Paris, Prague, Toronto and Sydney. He has also accompanied at the prestigious BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition and enjoys the distinction of having his disc of Schubert's Winterreise, with baritone Matthew Rose, feature as 'Recording of the Month' in Gramophone Magazine. Nuccia Focile will be at St. Teilo's Church, on Friday, July 18, at 7pm." [Source] The festival describes itself as "Beautiful Music Performed By Great Artists In An Idyllic Hill-Top Setting." For more information about the Llandeilo Fawr Festival, click here.

Astoria Music Festival Presents "Ariadne" For Strauss 150th

Marie Plette will sing the title role of Ariadne.

2014 marks the 150th birthday of Richard Strauss. Festivals and opera houses around the world have celebrated this special anniversary. Now the Northwest brings one of his most famous operas to life for the Astoria Music Festival. "Not heard in Oregon for nearly fifty years, Strauss’s operatic mash-up juxtaposes high-minded opera with ribald comedy. The richest man in Vienna has invited you to a party, for which he’s commissioned a new opera – a tragedy of the jilted Ariadne – and a comic farce, The Fickle Zerbinetta and her Four Lovers, but dinner’s running late, so we’ll save time and present them simultaneously, resulting in some of history’s most glorious music, brilliant coloratura, arching melodies, and a kaleidoscope of lush orchestral color." The cast for Ariadne auf Naxos includes Marie Plette (Ariadne), Maria Aleida (Zerbinetta), Angela Niederloh (Composer), Matthew Hayward (Harlequin), and Allan Glassman (Bacchus). [Source] Other opera stars that have already appeared at this year's Astoria Music Festival are Angela Meade, Richard Zeller, Amber Wagner, and Amy Hansen. The festival will conclude with a performance of Mozart's Cosí fan tutte. Get more information here.

Glimpse Joseph Calleja 2013 Festival Performances In Malta

Click on the above image to see a video of performances from the festival in Malta that Joseph Calleja built to bring classical music to larger audiences.

Roman Bath Setting For Purcell's Dido and Aeneas

Baby, It's Cold Outside: -30 Degree Music Festival in Sweden

Soprano Avemo sings to keep warm at Vinterfest

"As concert venues go, this one is perfect – a barn-like structure, whose pine timbers emit a fragrance not unlike that of a sauna, whose long glass windows look out across oxon-red wooden Swedish farmsteads and the frozen expanse of Lake Orsasjön. The Vattnäs Konsertlada is the labour of love of local girl, the international opera singer Pers Anna Larsson, and is being used at Sweden's by now best-known music festival, Vinterfest, for the first time. Guests are streaming into the barn, stepping on pine branches strewn across the entrance to stop them sliding on the ice. Meanwhile the artists for the lunchtime concert whose eclectic offerings range from Ophelia's madness scene from Ambroise Thomas' 1868 Hamlet, to Robert Schumann's Piano Quartet in E flat major have taken pre-concert refuge down the road in this hamlet in central Sweden at the house of local silversmith Bernd Janusch who has given them use of his artist's studio, his bedroom and the baby grand in his living room, to warm up. Kerstin Avemo, the Swedish soprano probably best known for her portrayal of Lucia in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor at the Gothenburg Opera last year, about which critics raved, is the first to arrive in the Konsertlada, in a car whose winter tires grip the icy sloped road between Janusch's cosy [sic] blue and white bungalow and the barn. If she possessed any diva-like qualities she has been forced to leave them at the door along with her fur-trimmed winter coat and knee-high snow boots which she replaces with a pair of dainty pale pink heels, sniggering along with the audience as she slips them on before taking up her position on the stage." [Source]

Gergiev Brings Berlioz and Rimsky-Korsakov to Festival

(Photo: Howard Schatz)

"The sixteenth Rotterdam Philharmonic Gergiev Festival will revolve around the 'Sea & the City', the organisers have announced. The festival will begin on 8 September with a performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony and Britten’s Death in Venice Suite conducted by Valery Gergiev. On 9 September he will conduct Berlioz’s Les Troyens and on 10 September the Dutch premiere of Rimski-Korsakov’s opera Sadko. Mr Gergiev, who is from Russia, was the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra’s principal conductor between 1995 and 2008, and currently is the festival’s artistic director. The festival will also include performances by other ensembles." [Source]

For more information visit http://www.gergievfestival.nl/.

Birds of a Feather Flock to the Canary Islands

Some of the world's most exotic opera canaries will be landing on the archipelago, from January 7th to February 12th, to celebrate the 27th year of the music festival. A wonderful way to spend the first winter months of 2011. Artist line-up after the jump.