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.

Is Rising Star Director Stefan Herheim MET Opera Bound?

The director in picturesque Salzburg. (Photo: Kerstin Joensson/AP)

"Stefan Herheim started directing operas at age 6, moving puppets around a tiny stage to recordings of his favorite works. No surprise then that the man known today for the intellectual rigor of his productions also infuses them with a sense of childlike wonder. Herheim's father played viola in the Norwegian National Opera in Oslo, and as a youngster he often attended performances and then re-enacted what he had seen. 'It was my need to be God and have my own opera house and conquer this world of my own,' Herheim said in an interview a day before his latest production — Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg — opened at the Salzburg Festival on Friday night. (It plays five more times through Aug. 27.) Conquer this world he has, at the age of 43, and though he doesn't have his own opera house, he works regularly at Europe's best. And now he's coming to the U.S. as well: Peter Gelb, who runs the Metropolitan Opera, was in the audience for the Meistersinger opening and afterward made preliminary arrangements to bring it to the Met in a future season. Herheim got his musical training playing cello, then spent time as a production assistant at the Oslo opera and even ran a touring marionette troupe. In his 20s, he moved to Hamburg, Germany, to study opera production with the legendary Goetz Friedrich." [Source]

Danielle De Niese Gives Glyndebourne "Don Pasquale" Tour

Danielle de Niese stars in Donizetti's Don Pasquale at the Glyndebourne Festival this season. Watch a backstage video tour of the final rehearsal after the jump. Click here to read an article in The Guardian where Miss de Niese "...reveals how she became one of the world's most sought-after sopranos."

Sondra Radvanovsky Talks Norma Role At Festival Castell de Peralada

Click on the above photo to watch the press conference and an excerpt of "Casta Diva" is after the jump.

Anna Netrebko Presents More Verdi In New English DG Trailer

As a follow-up to the previous post about the Verdi album due out this August, Deutsche Grammophon has released a new video EPK with the soprano explaining her approach to the composer and how she likes the music to be sung. Plenty of screen caps and the video can be found after the jump.

Talented (And Adorable) Nick Phan Talks About Gay Britten

(Photo: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times)

"Grecchinois, the name of Nicholas Phan’s engaging blog, reflects the Greek and Chinese heritage of this 34-year-old American tenor, who has fast made a name for himself as an expressive interpreter of the British composer Benjamin Britten. Raised Greek Orthodox in Ann Arbor, Mich., Mr. Phan, who initially studied the violin and played in a youth orchestra, discovered Britten when he played his 'Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.' In college, as a gay man, he became fascinated with the relationship between Britten and the tenor Peter Pears, who lived together at a time when homosexual acts were illegal in Britain. He cites an experience performing Britten in a recital at Truman State University in Kirksville, Mo., around early 2006 as proof that the music, with its 'beautiful combination of head and heart,' speaks to audiences everywhere." Read the entire article by clicking here.

Thomas Hampson Defends Opera on BBC News HARDTalk Program

Interviewer Sarah Montague sets out to skewer Thomas Hampson as if he were the nearest Capulet in a 100 mile radius. As she stretches the boundaries of HARDTalk to border on ATTACK-with-random-surveys-and-loose-facts, she manages to coax the baritone into one of his best roles to date: extraordinarily intelligent wordsmith. Here we have a opera singer who has not only a complete mastery of the English language, but knows how to calmly engage in oral debate. He seems a bit surprised at some of the questions (or perhaps it was just the tone of the delivery he was reacting to....), so it seems he wasn't warned in advance to prepare talking points.

Blue-Eyed Countertenor David Hansen Releases Debut Album

The release date in Germany for Rivals: Arias for Farinelli & Co. is August 23, 2013. Purchase your copy by clicking here. Video EPK and album cover art can both be found after the jump.

Bulgarian Soprano Nellie Petrova Tapped To Entertain Lobby Guests

"Designer luggage and fussing bellhops were rarely part of the backdrop for the soprano Nellie Petrova. Then the Bulgarian-born opera singer landed the unusual mission of helping a new UAE five-star hotel go the extra octave to give guests a sophisticated experience. Now, four nights a week, Petrova’s voice greets guests at the spectacular lobby of the Venetian-inspired Ritz-Carlton Abu Dhabi, Grand Canal, as sunset illuminates the neighbouring Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. Although it’s a contrast to the concert halls she is used to, Petrova is bewitched by the setting. 'This is an elegant venue to perform in,' she says, 'an awesome venue, so beautiful, I feel like I am in a movie.' And she should know; the soprano claims a brief appearance in Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Although Petrova admits that while she didn’t meet Tom Cruise, officially, she worked alongside him. 'You could see me in a bright red dress, on his left, as he leaves the bar in the Mumbai party scene.'"

Joyeux Quatorze Juillet!

Celebrate Bastille Day by listening to Hildegard Behrens interpret

 "Les nuits d'été" of Hector Berlioz.  

Les nuits d'été (Op. 7):
I. Villanelle
II. Le spectre de la rose
III. Sur les lagunes
IV. Absence
V. Au cimetière
VI. L'île inconnue

Royal Baby Will Light Up Opera House In New Zealand

"One of Wanganui's most historic buildings will be bathed in light the night after the birth of the new royal baby. The city is joining the nationwide 'light-up' initiative, organised by Monarchy New Zealand, which will mark the birth of the first child for Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge. The due date for the royal baby is today. The Royal Wanganui Opera House will be lit in pink or blue - depending on the gender of the baby - on the night following the announcement of the birth. Mayor Annette Main said lighting up the Opera House was an appropriate way to recognise the birth of a future King or Queen of New Zealand. 'Wanganui already has an association with the royal family, with Prince Edward having lived here during his time as a junior master at Wanganui Collegiate in 1982,' Ms Main said. The Opera House celebrated its centennial in 1999. In October that year it was given a Royal Charter as part of the centennial celebrations, changing the name to the Royal Wanganui Opera House." [Source]

Beverly Sills Lives On In Rare Recordings Released From Ohio

Beverly Sills as Tosca (Photo: Cleveland Public Library)

"DoeHeads – those die-hard fans of Douglas Moore’s opera, The Ballad of Baby Doe – have new reason to rejoice. Among the eight live recordings of operas performed at Musicarnival in Warrensville Heights in the 1950s and 1960s soon to be available to the public is a 1958 production of Baby Doe starring soprano Beverly Sills in one of her signature roles. There’s a lot more here than Moore, who served as director of music at the Cleveland Museum of Art in the 1920s and conducted the Cleveland Orchestra in the premiere of his Four Museum Pieces in 1923. Sills, who lived in Cleveland in the late 1950s, appears in four other productions in the Musicarnival series, including the title roles in two great potboilers – Bizet’s Carmen and Puccini’s Tosca – she performed only in John L. Price’s tent theater-in-the-round. By the end of

The Ansonia Featured Everything From Opera Singers To Gay Baths

Vanity Fair tells the story of this famed New York landmark that Enrico Caruso and Arturo Toscanini once called home. From the laying of the cornerstone to Steve Ostrow's gay Continental Baths, this building has quite a history. Not even Eleanor Steber could stay away!

Renée Fleming Receives National Medal of Arts From President Obama

Seems as though the soprano cracks up the commander-in-chief while receiving her honor. For a complete list of honorees go to the official White House website by clicking here. Look at more pictures of the ceremony and watch the video (Ms. Fleming comes on at 14:09...) after the jump.

Is Angela Gheorghiu Tasting Forbidden Fruit At The Opera?

After last week's revelations about Ms. Gheorghiu's tumultuous marriage to Roberto Alagna and her affair with Cezar Ouatu, Romanian websites (1, 2, and 3) are trying to romantically link her to co-star tenor Charles Castronovo. He was formerly involved with another soprano before settling down into marriage with Russian soprano Ekaterina Siurina. The rumored pair are performing together in La Rondine at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in London. One has to wonder how long it will be before accusations start to fly that she had a fling with former tenor colleague James Valenti. Pictures of all the gentlemen are after the jump.

Deutsche Grammophon Previews Anna Netrekbo Extended Clips

(Photo: Kristian Schuller/Deutsche Grammophon)

Watch the Deutsche Grammophon tribute video, celebrating Anna Netrebko's 10-year anniversary with the label, after the jump.