The 2009 Opera Vista Festival and competition just finished up down here in Houston. Line Tørnhøj of Aarhus, Denmark was voted by the audience as the winner with her opera Anorexia Sacra. Second place went to Camilo Santostefano of Buenos Aries, Argentina, and his opera El Fin de Narciso. Tørnhøj received a check for $1,500 [...]

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Interpretations continues its twentieth season of provocative programming in New York City. Founded and curated by baritone Thomas Buckner in 1989, Interpretations focuses on the relationship between contemporary composers from both jazz and classical backgrounds and their interpreters, whether the composers themselves or performers who specialize in new music. To celebrate, Jerry Bowles has invited [...]

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Baritone Eric Owens is busy this fall - his Met debut as General Leslie Groves in John Adams’ Dr. Atomic is just a start to his performances this season in New York, Atlanta, London and Los Angeles.
Today is the release of A Flowering Tree on Nonesuch Records with Owens as the storyteller, another role he [...]

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Ben Rosen, former Board Member of the Met, has a fascinating post at his blog about the Met’s turnaround under the leadership of Peter Gelb. (Thanks to Alex Ross for pointing it out.) The whole essay is worth reading if you have any interest in the future of the classical music business or [...]

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Charles Wuorinen, who turns seventy today, has been commissioned by New York City Opera to compose an opera based on Annie Proulx’s short story Brokeback Mountain. It is scheduled to be produced in 2013.
Happy Birthday CW!
http://pressroom.nycopera.com/pr/nycopera/news/_prv-BrokebackMountain.aspx

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6J14flyMOQo

 
Human behavior’s funny. The more we try to change the more we don’t seem able to. Are we cursed to repeat the same mistakes in our private lives — with lovers, friends — as well as in our public ones? Are we genetically condemned to disjunction, discord, and war, like Sisyphus trying to keep that [...]

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Okay, he stayed too long at the fair.  The idea of a 60-year-old, 400-pound man playing a starving artist failed to suspend disbelief.  The three tenors crap was execrable.  He probably inspired Andrea Bocelli.
But, once upon a time, there was this voice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CC9U43BFio

Alex Ross, Steve Smith, Marcus Maroney, Charles T. Downey, Tim Mangan, Marc Geelhoed, Opera Chic

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From today’s Deutsche Welle:
Germany’s annual Bayreuth Festival of Wagner operas began on Wednesday with a highly anticipated, make-or-break production by the 29-year-old great-granddaughter of the composer Richard Wagner.
And while the applause after the first two acts of Wagner’s only “comic” opera was friendly, the audience — which included a smorgasbord of German political and social [...]

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Beverly Sills, the All-American diva from Brooklyn, has died of cancer.  Bubbles, as she was known to all, was a big lady with a big heart whose down-to-earth personality, talent and lifelong dedication to Lincoln Center made her a treasure for the city’s arts establishment.  I never heard her sing live in her prime but there are those [...]

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So, the wonderful Serbian film director Emir Kusterica’s new opera Time of the Gypsies (based on his zany film of the same name) opened last night in Paris.  Woody Allen is directing Puccini and David Cronenberg is prepping The Fly for L.A.  Anthony Minghella, Michael Haneke, Zhang Yimou. What is happening here? Have we run out of [...]

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