Boheme Opera NJ is marking its 30th anniversary this season, and the regional opera company is not celebrating quietly. In this past weekend’s productions at the College of New Jersey’s Kendall Mainstage Theater, Boheme Opera NJ took on a blockbuster from a master of Italian dramatic opera in Giuseppe Verdi’s monumental Aida. An opera in four acts...
READ MOREThe Santa Barbara Symphony continues its 65th Anniversary season with two nights of Giuseppe Verdi's masterpiece Messa da Requiem on Saturday, April 13 at 8:00 pm and Sunday, April 14 at 3:00 pm at The Granada Theatre. Both performances feature Maestro Nir Kabaretti conducting, alongside soloists Colleen Daly, Natascha Petrinsky, Harold Meers, Luca...
READ MOREThursday, March 14, 2019 – 12:00 Noon-4:00 PM. The Italian Cultural Foundation at Casa Belvedere, 79 Howard Avenue, Staten Island, NY 10301. Three-Course Lunch includes wine and soft drinks. $60 per person (plus gratuities). Reservations with pre-payment required. Call us at 718-273-7660. CLICK HERE TO RSVP ONLINE. Come enjoy great food & company w...
READ MOREIn one form or another, most of the great opera classics are about two things: love and death. While some explore these interlocking themes by looking at the lives of the gods and other mythic creatures, the Italian masters most often focused on the fates of ordinary human beings, even if many were royalty and aristocrats. And few did it as powerfu...
READ MOREMichael Mayer's 2013 production of Verdi's Rigoletto, set in a 1960s Las Vegas casino, returns to the Met on February 12, with conductor Nicola Luisotti leading an all-star cast. Initial performances star Nadine Sierra as Gilda, Vittorio Grigolo as the Duke, Roberto Frontali as Rigoletto, Štefan Kocán as Sparafucile, and Ramona Zaharia in her Met d...
READ MORESung in Italian with projected English translations, “La traviata” will be on stage at Chicago’s Lyric Opera from February 16-March 22, 2019. Verdi’s ambitious “La traviata” completes Verdi’s popular trilogy, the two preceding works being “Rigoletto” and “Il trovatore.” The opera also remains one of the most successful classical works in the repert...
READ MORE“Barezzi’s house, on the great market’s square, was one of the most important in Busseto; above the warehouses on the ground floor, the family had its home – which included a spacious room where the Philharmonic Society met to rehears, two or three times a week. Signor Barezzi […] indeed was not only a good businessman, but most importantly a great...
READ MOREWhile working on “Otello” and “Falstaff,” his final two operas, the composer Giuseppe Verdi tucked dozens of pages of musical drafts and sketches into folders, scribbling on their covers: “Burn these papers.” Fortunately, his heirs never carried out those orders. But for years, scholars have complained that for all the access they had to them, thos...
READ MOREOpera star Renée Fleming drew concern last year after a New York Times profile suggested the acclaimed soprano would be retiring. Luckily for fans, it turned out to be a false alarm. But if Fleming does ever start to ponder retirement, she might consider a move to Milan — where she'd likely be welcomed with open arms at Casa Verdi, a retirement hom...
READ MOREIt was his first public performance in Salt Lake City, and Andrea Bocelli held nothing back. Donning a suit topped with a bright blue jacket and black bow tie, the 60-year-old Italian tenor took the stage and immediately illustrated one thing to his Utah fans: While his hair may be a dignified silver, the vocal prowess that popularized him more tha...
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