Renée Fleming Previews The Set Of "Bel Canto" For LOC

Soprano Renée Fleming was the inspiration for
Ann Patchett's diva in her novel Bel Canto.

"In this interview with Chicago Tonight's Eddie Arruza, Renée Fleming visits the set of Bel Canto, a new opera by composer Jimmy López and librettist Nilo Cruz, that she has curated for the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and which will be premiered on December 7, 2015." Watch the video interview, the LOC announcing the world premiere of the opera, and a behind-the-scenes photo, after the jump. "Ann Patchett's best-selling novel Bel Canto took the literary world by storm — now, in a new work curated by Lyric's creative consultant, Renée Fleming, this riveting story inspired by a real-life event becomes a powerful opera. Superstar American diva Roxane Coss has flown to Peru to sing at the vice president's home for a visiting Japanese mogul who is an opera buff. Dignitaries of every nationality are there — but an international crisis explodes when terrorists storm the mansion and take everyone hostage. Isolated for months, unlikely alliances form between captors and captives as fear and anger mingle uneasily with desire and even love. Music is the one universal language — but can it draw forth the humanity that exists in us all? An extraordinary international cast is led by Danielle de Niese, who caused a sensation as Lyric's Cleopatra in 2007. Sir Andrew Davis teams up with Kevin Newbury (Anna Bolena) for this world premiere with a libretto by Pulitzer Prize winner Nilo Cruz and music by Jimmy López, a native of Peru and 'one of the most interesting young composers anywhere today.' Chicago Sun-Times" [Source] For more information about the opera, click here.

The Team Behind Bel Canto: (back row left to right) LOC General Director Anthony Freud; Curator, Creative Consultant, and Soprano Renée Fleming; Conductor Sir Andrew Davis; (front row left to right) Director Kevin Newbury; Composer Jimmy López

Rock Opera Offers New Telling Of The Psyche And Eros Story

Cast members (left to righ): Katie Kitani, Ashley Ruth Jones, Benai Alicia Boyd, Cindy Sciacca and Michael Starr. (Photo: Barry Weiss)

"For Western culture, the story of Psyche and Eros exists as a kind of mytho-religio-literary singularity, a foundational narrative of heroic romantic and erotic love whose DNA is shot through our folklore (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Rumpelstiltskin, Beauty and the Beast) as well as our psychoanalytic theory. But if its poetic resonances run deep, its epic jumble of capricious gods, fantastic labors, virtuous heroine and her iniquitous sisters, along with a host of anthropomorphized supporting players, proves a cumbersome and tedious tale to represent in toto even on the musical stage, at least if this premiere of composer-librettist Cindy Shapiro’s Psyche: A Modern Rock Opera is any measure. Michael Starr as Eros looks sexy enough in E.B. Brooks’ steampunk-accented costume design, and Ashley Ruth Jones as Psyche sounds pretty enough, belting her way through Shapiro’s double-album’s worth of somewhat monotonous power ballads and ethereal, hymnlike rockers (under Jack Wall’s expert musical direction). But not even director Michael Matthews’ sumptuously animated, Baroque staging (on Stephen Gifford’s architectural capriccio set, with Tim Swiss’ chiaroscuro-sculpted lights) can finally forgive Shapiro’s seemingly endless 34-song score and her over-ambitious but under-adapted book." [Source]

If you're looking for a more traditional approach, you might try the Baroque opera Psyché: "Psyché is an opera (tragédie lyrique) in a prologue and five acts composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully to a libretto by Thomas Corneille adapted from Molière's original play for which Lully had composed the intermèdes. Based on the love story of Cupid and Psyche, Psyché was premiered on April 19, 1678 by the Académie Royale de Musique at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris." [Source]

Terence Blanchard Honors Father With Opera About Emile Griffith

Baritone Aubrey Allicock will play Emile Griffith.

"Jazz composer Terence Blanchard couldn't have imagined how timely his opera about a gay boxer would become when he accepted a commission three years ago. Blanchard's Champion with a libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Michael Cristofer is based on the life of former world welterweight and middleweight champion Emile Griffith. Its world premiere at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis on Saturday comes just weeks after NBA center Jason Collins became the first active male pro athlete from one of the four major North American team sports to come out as gay. Griffith's greatest triumph came in a nationally televised welterweight title bout in 1962 when he knocked out Benny 'The Kid' Paret by battering him with 17 punches in seven seconds, sending his rival into a coma. Paret died 10 days later. At the weigh-in, the Cuban-born Paret had angered Griffith by using an anti-gay Spanish slur. Thirty years later, Griffith was beaten and nearly killed after leaving a gay bar near Times Square."

The composer (above) hopes to build
a bridge between jazz and opera.

"The 51-year-old Blanchard agreed to undertake the biggest musical project of his career in part to honor his father who could not realize his dream of being an opera singer in an era when companies didn't hire male black singers. His father performed with amateur opera groups, and Blanchard grew up listening to opera recordings at his New Orleans home. Blanchard knows his father would have been 'overjoyed' to see that his son had written an opera performed by a largely African-American cast, including Denyce Graves as Griffith's mother, Arthur Woodley as old Emile and Aubrey Allicock as young Emile. An 11-year-old from St. Louis, Jordan Jones, plays Emile as a boy." [ Source]

For more information about the production, visit the official website for Opera Theatre of St. Louis.

Get a Taste of Damon Albarn's English Opera "Dr. Dee"

More about the work can be found here and another video featuring the composer discussing the work can be found here.