By Jacob Stockinger
PLEASE FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR SHARE IT (not just “Like It”) IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event.
This Saturday, Oct. 6, the new 10-opera season of the series “Live From the Met in HD” starts with Giuseppe Verdi’s popular late masterpiece and epic opera “Aida.”
The hi-definition broadcast of a live performance from the Metropolitan Opera (below) in New York City – which is a revival production with the superstar Russian soprano Anna Netrebko — starts at 11:55 a.m. and runs until 4:13 p.m. The encore showings are on next Wednesday, Oct. 10, at 1 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.
The opera will be sung in Italian with supertitles in English, German, Spanish and Italian.
Tickets are for Saturday broadcasts are $24 for adults and $22 for seniors. For encore showings, all tickets are $18.
The cinemas where the opera can be seen are two Marcus Cinemas: the Point Cinema on the west side of Madison and the Palace Cinema in Sun Prairie.
Here is a link to the Marcus website for address and more information:
http://www.marcustheatres.com/movies/met-aida-live
Get out your datebooks!
Here is a link to the Metropolitan Opera’s web site where you can find the titles, dates, casts, production information and video clips of all 10 productions in the 2018-19 season, which include operas by Bizet, Wagner, Donizetti, Saint-Saens, Puccini, Cilea and Poulenc plus a new work, “Marnie,” by Nico Muhly. (You can also see and hear the season trailer in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
https://www.metopera.org/season/in-cinemas/
Here is a link to a very positive review of “Aida” — Anna Netrebko as Aida is on the left in the photo by Sara Krulwich for The New York Times — by senior music critic Anthony Tommasini that appeared in The New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/27/arts/music/anna-netrebko-aida-met-opera-review.html
Here is a link to a synopsis and cast list, which can be printed out:
Here is a link to other information about the production of “Aida,” including photos and audiovisual clips:
https://www.metopera.org/season/2018-19-season/aida/
And here is a Wikipedia history of the successful broadcast series that gives you more information about how many cinemas it uses, the size of the worldwide audience – now including Russia, China and Israel — and how much money it makes for The Met.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Opera_Live_in_HD
By Jacob Stockinger
For tenors, High C’s are the brass ring on the carousel of opera.
The late great Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti and the very busy Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Florez both earned fame and fortune with their singing of the astonishing nine high C’s in Gaetano Donizetti’s bel canto opera “La Fille du Regiment.”
In fact, Florez repeated the same nine high C’s as an encore and it brought down the house.
But it seems there may be another King of the High C’s in the making.
He is a native of New Orleans (isn’t that fitting?) and he is America tenor Bryan Hymel (below, in a photo by Dario Acosta for Warner Classics), who was recently featured on the terrific blog “Deceptive Cadence” for NPR (National Public Radio).
You will surely be hearing more about him. The 35-year-old Hymel has already made his debut at the famed Metropolitan Opera, where he has sung in “Les Troyens” by Hector Berlioz — a role he also sang at the Royal Opera House in London. And he will open the Met’s 2018 season in “Samson and Delilah” by Camille Saint-Saens.
Here is a link to that story by Tom Huizenga. It is complete with sound samples from Hymel’s debut album “Héroïque” — in particular the difficult aria “Asile héréditaire” from the opera “William Tell” by Giachino Rossini — and the CD features a total of 19 high C’s. That led Huizenga to proclaim: “This is why we listen to opera!”
http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2015/02/25/388783314/bryan-hymels-hefty-high-cs
The Amazon.com reader reviews of the new all-French album (below, with an audiovisual clip of the behind-the-scenes recording process) not only praise Hymel for his high C’s – and C-sharps and even D’s — but single out the quality of his singing.
You can hear that strong, pitch-accurate and seemingly effortless quality in one of The Ear’s favorite tenor arias: “Nessun dorma” from “Turandot” by Giacomo Puccini, which Hymel signs with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra in a YouTube video at the bottom.
ALERT: This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale, held from 12:15 to 1 p.m. at the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive, features violinist Kangwon Kim (below) and pianist Junghwa Moon Auer in music by Antonin Dvorak, Johann Sebastian Bach, Fritz Kreisler, Frederic Chopin, Claude Debussy and Sergei Rachmaninoff.
By Jacob Stockinger
The Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO) will present its first concerts of the new season, the Evelyn Steenbock Fall Concerts, on this Saturday afternoon, Nov. 15, and then on Saturday afternoon, Dec. 13.
More than 350 young musicians will display their great talents to the community during the three concerts, which are dedicated to private and school music teachers.
These young musicians, who get into WYSO through competitive auditions, are really good.
They also play to some of the liveliest and most responsive and enthusiastic audiences in the city.
THIS SATURDAY
WYSO’s string orchestra, Sinfonietta (below), will kick off the concert series at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday afternoon with “Highland Cathedral” by Korb and Roever; the “Danse Infernal” by Del Borgo; Eureka! by Sharp; “Fantasia on Theme from Thailand” by Meyer; the “Haunted Carousel” by Newbold; and “Tuxedo Junction” by Hawkins, Feyne, Johnson and Dash.
The Concert Orchestra (below) will then take over with Washburn’s “St. Lawrence” Overture, Del Borgo’s “Meditation,” “A Pirate’s Legend” by Newbold and Slavonic Dances by Antonin Dvorak.
At 4 p.m. on Saturday, the popular Percussion Ensemble will perform “Spanish Point” by Ben Wahlund and the “Danse Bacchanale” from the opera “Samson and Delilah” by Camille Saint-Saens.
The Philharmonia Orchestra will then end the concert with Ernest Bloch’s Concerto Grosso No. 1, the Danse Macabre, Op. 40, by Camille Saint-Saens; the “Pavane pour une infante defunte” by Maurice Ravel, featuring Logan Willis on piano; the fourth movement, “March to the Scaffold,” from the “Symphonie Fantastique” by Hector Berlioz; and the Hoedown from Aaron Copland’s “Rodeo,” featuring Moqiu Cheng on piano.
DECEMBER 13
At 1 p.m. on Saturday afternoon, Dec. 13, the Harp Ensemble (below top) will perform before the Youth Orchestra (below bottom) closes out the concert series with “The Roman Carnival” Overture by Hector Berlioz; Excerpts from “Die Meistersinger” by Richard Wagner; and movements 1, 3 and 4 from the Symphony No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 13, by Sergei Rachmaninoff.
TICKETS AND OTHER INFORMATION
The Evelyn Steenbock Fall Concerts will be held in Mills Concert Hall in the UW-Madison George Mosse Humanities Building, 455 North Park Street in Madison on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
WYSO concerts are generally about an hour and a half in length, providing a great orchestral concert opportunity for families.
Tickets for each concert are available at the door, $10 for adults and $5 for youth 18 and under.
This project is supported by Dane Arts with additional funding from the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation and the Endres Mfg. Company Foundation. This project is also supported by the Alliant Energy Foundation and by a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts.