REVIEW: 'Capriccio' by Lyric Opera of Chicago

Here's the review. 

Renee Fleming has taken her time bringing one of her most celebrated operatic roles, Countess Madeleine in Richard Strauss' "Capriccio," to the company for which she serves as creative consultant.
But the wait has been worth it.
Strauss' 15th and final opera returned to the Lyric Opera repertory after a 20-year absence Monday night at the Civic Opera House, with Fleming, who had not appeared in a fully staged production at Lyric since 2008, heading a superb ensemble, well, superbly.

ISGAP Fellow Phyllis Chesler on The Hijacking of History by Opera: The Death of Klinghoffer

More on the controversy about the opera surrounding the events which led to the death of Leon Klinghofer.

I love opera. I was once a regular contributor to NPR's "At the Opera," and that privilege lasted for almost three years. I attend the Metropolitan opera as often as I can—I also attend the Chelsea Opera, the NY City Opera (when it existed), and the Glimmerglass Opera Festival in Cooperstown almost every summer.
The Metropolitan Opera's General Manager, Peter Gelb, has a constitutional as well as an artistic right to produce whatever he wants. However, his choice of The Death of Klinghofferis an abdication of moral responsibility, political sensitivity, and gravitas. Gelb's showcasing of this opera is equivalent to a college president's decision to allow ISIS, Hamas, al-Qaeda, or the Taliban to speak on campus because "all sides must be heard and understood" because "all points of view are equally valid."

Blood libels against Israel and the Jews, mythic pseudo-histories—genocidal narratives—have permeated the Western campuses. These dangerous falsehoods claim the privilege of free speech and academic freedom and they have been welcomed by the intelligentsia. Now, these same ideas are making their debut amidst the trappings of high culture.

Sarah Brightman

More Criticism of the Klinghofer Opera

This comes from a conservative blogger.

John Adams, the composer, is an American genius. Among his truly remarkable achievements are the operas, Nixon in China (1977 and Doctor Atomic (2005). His orchestral works include The Transmigration of Souls (2002), commissioned by the New York Philharmonic as a memorial to the 9-11-2001 attacks on the USA. That work received the Pulitzer Prize.

His opera, Death of Klinghoffer (1991), was picketed in New York recently, in a revival performance at the Met. The problem was not with Adams’ music but with the libretto. In key passages singers emphasize with the Palestinian cause, and romanticize the murderers of the wheelchair-bound Jew, Dr. Klinghoffer.

Check out previous stories about this opera, here and here.  

Klonghoffer "lackluster" in Premiere

This story was covered yesterday. According to the Times of Israel, the premiere was "lackluster.

But let’s back things up a bit. I was at the Metropolitan Opera’s Monday premiere of “The Death of Klinghoffer,” a work dating from 1991 about the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro. The ship was taken by members of the Palestinian Liberation Front who subsequently murdered a wheelchair-bound New York Jewish passenger named Leon Klinghoffer.

Prior to the performance I attended a two-hour rally, a peaceful scrum in a tiny traffic triangle where Broadway meets Columbus Avenue at West 64th Street. A few hundred people were there, many carrying signs declaring that the opera was anti-Semitic propaganda. Most felt the show should be shut down. No one I spoke to had actually seen it, though as New York City-based protester Noah Cohen put it, “I have no need to go look in a mirror and see a distorted version of my own face.”
The problem with the work, whose detractors included former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, former governor David Patterson and US Congressional representatives Carolyn Maloney and Peter King (a nice combination of Democrats and Republicans), seemed to stem from the fact that the opera does not portray the hijackers as mindless bloodthirsty monsters, but dares to give the men and their cause a degree of backstory.

Opera v. truth: The fetid fouls of 'Death of Klinghoffer'

Phyllis Chesler says opera based on the act of terror which left Israeli citizen Leon Klinghoffer dead is anti Semitic, check out the piece.

I love opera. For almost three years, I regularly contributed to NPR's "At the Opera." I attend the Metropolitan Opera House as often as I can. But the decision to stage "The Death of Klinghoffer" represents an abdication of moral responsibility, political sensitivity and gravitas.
Met Opera General Manager Peter Gelb has a constitutional and artistic right to produce whatever he wants. Yet showcasing this opera is equivalent to a college president's inviting a member of ISIS, Hamas, or the Taliban to speak on campus because "all sides must be heard" and "all points of view are equally valid."
As a feminist, I wouldn't boycott an opera because the female heroes are betrayed, go mad or are murdered. As in life, our great operas are tragedies in which the heroes die.
But, where there are heroes there are also villains.
The villain in Puccini's "Tosca" is unmistakable: He is Scarpia, the police chief of Rome who tortures political prisoners and attempts to rape the great singer, Floria Tosca. We don't get a backstory about Scarpia's dysfunctional childhood, nor do we sympathize or identify with him.
He is a heartless villain and the opera doesn't allow (let alone ask) us to pity or sympathize with him. We are meant to fear and despise him, perhaps even hate him.

Paris Opera expels veiled woman during performance

Here's part of the story. 

France's government is drawing up a new set of rules for theatres after the Paris Opera ejected a woman for wearing a veil during a performance, the institution's deputy director said Sunday.

The incident took place when a veiled woman was spotted on the front row of a performance of La Traviata at the Opera Bastille, Jean-Philippe Thiellay told AFP, confirming a media report.

France brought in a law in 2011 banning anyone from wearing clothing that conceals the face in a public space, or face a 150 euro ($190) fine. 

Romantic Love Songs - Opera

Patience

Patience is an opera which has been performed in a number of places for more than a century. It was created by the duo Gilbert and Sullivan. First performed in London, here's a performance from Colorado State University.

Carmen

Here's the Wikipedia page for the Opera. 

Carmen is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on a novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, on 3 March 1875, and at first was not particularly successful. Its initial run extended to 36 performances, before the conclusion of which Bizet died suddenly, and thus knew nothing of the opera's later celebrity.

Check out this page for more information. 

It recently was featured in Chicago, check out some of the reviews here.



The opera was also featured in the Scottish classic Trainspotting.

Chicago Opera Theater's Joan of Arc

Lindsey Stirling - Phantom of the Opera Live @ Vic Chicago 3/9/13

Britain's Got Talent Lucy Kay Beautiful Opera Singer

Orpheus & Euridice at the Chicago Opera Theater

Superb Opera Behind the Scenes

Chamber Opera Theater of Chicago Touring London

Check out their feature of Jane Austin's Persuasion.

Don Giovanni at the Chicago Lyric Opera

It's coming up this week, check out the schedule here. Here's a plug for another version.

Moonlight Sonata

by Beethoven

Schubert - Ave Maria (Opera)

Andrea Bocelli

Verdi opera Aida - Price, Vickers, Solti

Paul Potts sings Nessun Dorma

Opera Training Institute of Chicago

Want to get training in opera, check out the Opera Training Institute of Chicago. 

Clip from Phantom of the Opera

Chicago Lyric Opera Opening Night Gala

Check out Opera News for all the details and photos.

In a hurry-up, rush-rush, cell-phone-to-the-ear world, Lyric Opera of Chicago's Opening Night Gala Performance and Ball is a charmed interlude when time slows to an early-twentieth-century pace, pomp and formality reign and the core of the city's Establishment gathers to support and celebrate a beloved institution with a magnificent event produced by Lyric's Women's Board. The annual ritual began last Saturday afternoon before 5:00 with limousines lining up in front of the Civic Opera House on Wacker Drive, where elegantly dressed couples stepped out onto a red carpet before a performance of Carmen. Once again, it was the Chicago of Mary Garden, Samuel Insull and Edith Rockefeller McCormick - well, maybe not quite. At last year's Lyric Opening, ultra-chic Women's Board member Katherine Harvey arrived on the red carpet wearing a superb black strapless John Galliano gown, impeccable in every detail - except that around its waist was not Edith McCormick's diamond stomacher but a denim jeans jacket. "It was a Dior jeans jacket," insists Mrs. Harvey, whose composer husband, Julian, descends from the Fred Harvey who smartened up railway depot dining along the "Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe," as sung by Judy Garland in the 1946 Hollywood film "The Harvey Girls."

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Review of As One

Here's the review from Opera News.

Laura Kaminsky’s chamber opera, As One, had its world premiere at BAM’s Fisher Space on September 4. The draw of As One, which has a libretto by Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed, lies in its very human depiction of the internal and external issues faced by transgender individuals in the twenty-first century. Commissioned by American Opera Projects, As One is one of the first operas, if not the first, to address this topic; however, it is not just the “transgender opera” but a piece that haunts and challenges its audience with questions about identity, authenticity, compassion and the human desire for self-love and peace.

Best Opera Arias: Turandot, La Traviata, Rigoletto, Cavalleria Rusticana, La Boheme, Aida,

New Head Named at Chicago Symphony Orchestra

The CSO will have a new President, Jeffrey Alexander. Check out the morning drive from WBEZ for details on the story. 

1. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association has picked a new president. Jeff Alexander will start in mid-January. He’s currently president and CEO of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. He’s credited with helping start new programs like a community music school, increasing revenue and ticket sales and re-establishing the orchestra’s domestic and international touring programs. The CSO Association's former president, Deborah F. Rutter, left to lead the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Jeff Alexander joins us to talk about his new job, and what might be in store for the CSO

Check out MacBeth at the Chicago Opera Theater

Here's the details. 

From the moment the curtain rises, this 110-minute non-stop thriller captures the dark and bloody world where ambition and revenge run rampant.  Nmon Ford as Macbeth is “compelling, weak, nervous, delusional in his courageousness. His voice crisp and burnished.” (Opera News).
The 26-year-old Swiss-American composer Bloch wrote this highly dramatic version in 1906. He invests Shakespeare’s original text with an emotional, hair-raising score of tremendous power, “teeming with Richard Strauss flourishes and echoes of Wagner…. a gripping, close-up case for a rare piece that deserves to be heard.” (Los Angeles Times). Experience this long overdue Chicago Premiere.

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Chicago Lyric Opera Hosts Costume Sale

Check out the story from WBEZ. 

Already on the lookout for a Halloween costume? Or possibly your next Comic Con or Renaissance Faire outfit? The Lyric Opera of Chicago has got your back.
This Saturday marks only the second time in Lyric history that the company will be selling some 3,000 pieces of their handmade costume collection to the public. Costume Director Maureen Reilly said the Lyric doesn’t have enough room in their storage for all of the costumes - some dating back almost 100 years.
Some costumes, she said, have even become a bit repetitive.

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Death of a Legend

Here's the story from Opera News.

Magda Olivero, whose career spanned five decades of the twentieth century and established her as an important link between the era of the verismo composers and the modern opera stage, has died. She was 104.

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Madame Butterfly

I Got A Feeling Black Eyed Peas (live) Opera's Season Kickoff

Brokeback Mountain the Opera

Check out the review from Opera News.

At one of the many press events surrounding the January 28 world premiere of Brokeback Mountain at the Teatro Real, American tenor Tom Randle, who created the role of Jack Twist in Charles Wuorinen's opera, confessed that he had never seen Ang Lee's Oscar-winning 2005 film of Annie Proulx's 1997 short story. "But somebody told me we were more handsome," Randle added. The Spanish-language translator, seated next to the tenor, said, "You sure are," and everybody laughed, creating a mood of elation that seemed to linger on the following night at the opera's first performance.

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Nicole Scherzinger Phantom Of The Opera

Civic Opera in Chicago

Check out another of Chicago's fine opera venues here.

Queenie Pie at the Chicago Opera Theater

Fiorenza Cossotto as Cherubino

Check out the video here. 

Opera Duo on Britain's Got Talent

Mukhtar Mai: The Opera

Check out the story here. 

Verdi: Aïda

Maria Callas

Check out this performance...

Hannibal (2001) - Opera Scene 'Vide Cor Meum'

Harriet Tubman turned into an opera

Check out the story from Voice of America.

A new opera, written by a second-generation Nigerian-American, tells the story of Harriet Tubman, who, a century-and-a-half ago, escaped from slavery and led others to freedom.
When Nkeiru Okoye was a little girl, she spent a lot of time shuttling between the United States - her mother’s home country - and her father’s homeland, Nigeria.  While she found the culture shock disorienting, there were some things that remained constant.  For one,
“I don’t remember ever not knowing about Harriet Tubman," she said. "My mother used to love to read my sister and me stories, so my mother probably told me about her even before I learned about Harriet in school.”

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