Cinci Opera

This is creative marketing from Cincinnati Opera. Makes me want to go...

A Bloggers Opera

Here is an interesting take... How do you combine Opera with social media? Looks like Sweeden and Vietnam have figured it out together. An odd coupling of cultures and medium. I would be interested to see the result.

Vietnamese and Swedish artists collaborate on the new opera being devised by bloggers from the two countries.

What a great idea. This would be an interesting education program...

New Opera Reviewers

Apparently Opera North (thats in the UK not in Phili) is doing a wonderful job at pulling in new audiences. Their recent Macbeth was reviewed twice today by seemingly new opera goers.

Gripped by First Opera - Evening Chronicle

Opera Was No Tragedy - Journal Live

I hope that Kentucky Opera's upcoming Otello will fair as well.

Opera Star

Here is a sweet story. Brittan's version of American Idol has found another opera star. This time its a 12 year old girl. Hear her sing here.

A Convenient Opera

A new opera is in the making and expected to be at La Scala in Milan in 2011. Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" will be transformed into an opera by Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli.
Not a lot of news about this but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Here is the story from the Wall Street Journal, Image from NY mag blog.

Elijah's Kite

I learned about an opera created for school kids in 2006 about bullying. Elijah's Kite was created by a Canadian group called Tapestry and was composed by James Rolfe and writer Camyar Chai.

Elijah’s Kite is a morality tale that deals with bullying and school violence. It is written with tenderness and humour, and explores the issues of friendship, loneliness and self image. Nine year old Elijah feels alone in the school yard and is often bullied by Big Billy Brett. For comfort, Elijah brings his favourite kite to school and dreams of flying away. One day, Elijah meets a
strong new girl named Miriam who isn’t afraid of Billy and stands up to him. However, Miriam soon learns to use her new power in the peer group in a negative manner and begins bullying others herself. In the end, by developing empathy for each other and appreciating diversity, they all discover what it takes to make Elijah’s kite fly: caring and cooperation!

What a wonderful way to bring opera to students with issues that directly effect their generation. The performance I read about included a hands on art activity where students got to make kites and then launched them with the opera singers. The study guide is available on line for teachers and students.

FYI: I am still absorbing the art from Chicago, I will blog about the good the bad and the ugly when I have processed.

Opera in the News

Some interesting opera stories out there today.

This one caught my eye. When I first started with Kentucky Opera, I had a meeting with the editor of Louisville Music News who had this crazy idea of trying to get a younger crowd of hard core & heavy metal music, suggesting that the audiences while very different, have similar values toward their musical tastes.

It seems as though the Canadian Opera Company was a fly on the wall of that conversation...
As JOSHUA OSTROFF writes in Wednesday's Globe and Mail:

If you had to pick a pair of musical genres furthest apart from each other, opera and hip hop would be a fairly safe bet. One thing they do share is sizable purist fan bases, which, whether they use the phrase or not, prefer practitioners to keep it real. Nonetheless, these star-crossed genres are coming together in a performance called The Hip Hopera, a new collaboration by the Canadian Opera Company and the Royal Conservatory of Music. read more

Kudos to this collaboration that blends genres.


Another bit of news comes from Chicago - My boss just saw this Giovanni and said it was pretty spectacular, and only moments did the conducting lack in power that the music would have preferred.

ANDREW PATNER of the Chicago Sun Times review:

Journalists try to stay away from quoting marketing materials. But what to do when those materials are on the money? "Opera less ordinary," proclaims this year's COT brochure. "Less inhibited. Less predictable. Less expected." read more

Scott C. Morgan of Windy City Times reviews:

If Chicago Opera Theater's ( COT's ) new production of Don Giovanni was a movie, it would be slapped with an “R” rating for sexuality and violence. Thank heaven for that. read more

In any case, both of these stories exemplify the way opera is trying to appeal to a younger audience, the question now, is it working? By modernizing Mozart & merging contemporary music styles, is this changing the art form into something else?


I want to say no. If you run your fingers through any Opera News, the lush and provocative images are from the contemporary renditions and those visuals make me want to go and check it out. The image is from Faust produced in Dresden. Don't you wish you could have seen that set?

Ask Shakespeare - Most theater companies who have a large Shakespearian rep have modernized at least one of their productions.

We will look into this phenomenon.