Joyce DiDonato Headlines Bastille Day Concert At Eiffel Tower

Bryn Terfel and Joyce DiDonato during a rehearsal in Paris

"She's no stranger to singing at major outdoor gatherings broadcast to a television audience of millions around the world, as she did last year when she performed the national anthem at the final game of the Major League Baseball World Series. Tonight Joyce DiDonato is an American in Paris, singing at the foot of the Eiffel Tower for Paris' annual Bastille Day classical gala, the Grand Concert de Musique Classique. Performing alongside the likes of Bryn Terfel (the duet 'La ci darem la mano' from Mozart's Don Giovanni), Lang Lang and Gautier Capuçon. The 2014 extravaganza was headed by the beloved homegrown soprano Natalie Dessay, but this year's vocal pyrotechnics come from the Kansas-born mezzo-soprano who received a major award from French classical music magazine Diapason d'Or for

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her last album of rare Italian arias, Stella di Napoli. There will certainly be an American flavour to proceedings, with Bernstein and Gershwin on the programme. Erato is proud of its strong French routes and early championing of French music and artists - but also of its international outlook today. Joyce singing for the people of Paris and viewers around the world in front of the Eiffel Tower could sum up perfectly Erato and Warner Classics' vision today. The concert will finish, as it does every year, with a spectacular fireworks display. Vive la France, vive la musique!" [Source] See the program and star-studded roster after the jump.

Wenn Lang Lang Ist Nicht Am Klavier

"I recently saw the Wagner opera Rheingold at the Berlin Opera. Wagner's music has been used a lot in movies. I love the effect that music has on films. I also recently saw La Traviata at The Metropolitan Opera in New York, starring Marina Poplavskaya." [Source]

Chinese Politics Matter in Music

Chinese bass Hao Jiang Tian

"Lang Lang's choice of music for a state dinner in the US was both lauded and chided, although it has evolved to be another folk song about love of country. Depending on your view, pianist Lang Lang either pulled off a sucker punch or committed a diplomatic faux pas last week. He played a tune from a movie that has anti-American subject matter at the Jan. 19 state banquet US President Barack Obama gave to the visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao. Even though it did not evolve into a diplomatic skirmish, it created some hoopla on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. As a student, before the bass singer Hao Jiang Tian became famous at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, he used to moonlight