Opera Magazine

September 2025 in Articles Opera with Opera News November 2025 Sarasota Opera’s general director Richard Russell makes a point of mingling with patrons before performances and during intermission at Sarasota Opera House, as does the company’s artistic director Victor DeRenzi when he is not conducting. ‘I love the interaction with our audience,’ says Russell, who has held the West Florida company’s top administrative post since 2012. ‘It’s one of the great things about this situation.

October 2024 in Articles Opera with Opera News November 2024 Beethoven’s Fidelio, which opens Washington National Opera’s 2024-5 season, has significance for Francesca Zambello, the company’s artistic director. ‘I thought we should do it in the fall of an election year,’ she says. ‘Who knew that our country was going to be in such upheaval?

September 2024 in Articles The story of the real-life Fisk Jubilee Singers Opera with Opera News October 2024 issue When the writer and director Tazewell Thompson’s ‘Jubilee’—the story of the real-life Fisk Jubilee Singers, an ensemble that was founded in 1871 at Fisk University in Nashville and introduced the world to the music of Black America—opened at Arena Stage in Washington DC in 2019, it was ‘told in a nearly unbroken cascade of song’, according to the Washington Post theatre critic...

June 2024 in Articles Cori Ellison on the rediscovery of Carolina Uccelli What do these European composers—Hildegard von Bingen, Vittoria Aleotti, Francesca Caccini, Barbara Strozzi, Isabella Leonarda, Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, Marianna Martines, Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Wieck Schumann, Pauline Viardot, Josephine Lang—have in common, besides a pair of X chromosomes? Like most pre-contemporary female composers, they were either nuns or the scions of well-connected musical families.

February 2024 in Reviews Royal Opera at Covent Garden, February 1 2024 Review by Mark Valencia – Opera with Opera News April 2024 Photo: Camilla Greenwell Mimì died with pain-free elegance in this revival of the Royal Opera’s La Bohème. Angela Gheorghiu languished gracefully until, on cue, the muff fell from her fingers and she was gone.

September 2023 in News, Press Dear readers Two great magazines together: Opera News, the monthly publication of the Metropolitan Opera Guild, will come under the Opera umbrella from the December 2023 issue. This follows the news that the Metropolitan Opera Guild, an independent not-for-profit organization from the Metropolitan Opera, is winding down its operations and will cease to publish Opera News.

January 2023 in Reviews OPERA ON FILM Review by GEORGE HALL – Opera Magazine February 2023 This film about the Cornish Heldentenor John Treleaven—born John Richards—is a family affair. The producer is the tenor’s son, Lawrence Richards, while his wife, the soprano Roxane Richards—who gave up her own promising (as a video of her Jewel Song testifies) career to look after her husband’s, as well as their children—makes a notable contribution.

June 2023 in Articles Right to Reply Read the full reply from Miguel Esteban (Anna Netrebko’s general manager) here. Feature by Warwick Thompson – Opera Magazine June 2023 Can there be a more polarizing name in the current world of opera than that of Anna ‘La Putina’ Netrebko? Because of her stance on the war in Ukraine, the Russian-Austrian soprano currently attracts boos and cheers with equal ferocity. As a little reminder, here’s why.

April 2023 in Reviews Review by Ati Metwaly – Opera Magazine May 2023 Photo: Ahmed Hassan Although Western classical music is not daily fare for Egyptian audiences, the country has a noteworthy history of operatic and symphonic performances. Egypt was home to the first opera house in North Africa, the Khedivial Opera, which was inaugurated in 1869 but burnt down in 1971, to be replaced by the Cairo Opera House in 1988.

February 2023 in Articles, News THE CREATORS OF ‘A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS’ TALK TO JESSICA DUCHEN Opera Magazine February 2023 Driving down the highway at 60mph with tears streaming down my face,’ says Sheila Silver, ‘I thought, “This is an opera.”’ The composer, the multiple award-winning Professor Emerita of Music at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, was listening to an audiobook of A Thousand Splendid Suns by the Afghan author Khaled Hosseini.