It’s a weekend for the slightly unusual, beginning with Florida Grand Opera’s first-ever mounting of a zarzuela, and a quirky recital program Sunday that features a beautiful instrument that hardly anyone plays. Zarzuela is Spanish operetta, meaning that it features spoken dialogue between musical numbers, much like the American musical (which itself descends from Viennese [...]
It’s hard to imagine today’s opera companies without the music of Giacomo Puccini, and indeed it’s likely that many an opera company might not be here today were it not for the box-office reliability of the Italian composer’s work. Puccini’s life was relatively long if tragically abbreviated — he died in 1924 at age 65 [...]
One of the more interesting things I discovered, silly as this sounds, when I first saw the Jean-Paul Rappeneau film of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac (with Gerard Depardieu in the title role) more than 20 years ago, was how good a play it was. Having never seen it in French, only several bad versions [...]
This week, Knight Foundation awarded $3.8 million to the newest winners of the Knight Arts Challenge Miami – and the ceremony at the Knight Concert Hall was imbued with art. Singers from the Florida Grand Opera, dressed as regular attendees, surprised the audience with a performance Toreador Aria, from Bizet’s Carmen – a nod to [...]
To continue cultivating a new audience for opera by offering discount tickets to winners and entrants in last winter’s Knight-supported drawing for free tickets to Carmen.
Eglise Gutierrez and Israel Lozano in Florida Grand Opera’s 2009-10 season production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. (Photo by Gaston de Cardenas) Last month, representatives from two local opera companies flew to Los Angeles for a conference hosted by the New York-based service organization Opera America, where they discussed the challenges facing their companies and [...]
Georges Bizet’s Carmen is the biggest brand in opera, and of the best known in all the performing arts. It’s got gypsies, girl fights, love triangles, and great songs everyone knows. So it’s no surprise that the Florida Grand Opera‘s production has been selling out during it’s current run at the Adrienne Arsht Center. Go, [...]
Sarah Coburn as Rosina in The Barber of Seville. In the performances I’ve attended this season at the Palm Beach Opera and Florida Grand Opera, I’ve seen a good number of younger faces, and that’s been encouraging. After all, opera is a lot more accessible these days than it used to be not too long [...]
Cellist Alban Gerhardt. Seems like all anyone wants to do these days is talk about Art, as in ArtBasel. But if you’re more inclined to the sonic arts, this is a good week for classical music-making here in South Florida. Here are six events that make that point: Haydn and Brahms: One of the better-known [...]
Kelly Kaduce as Suor Angelica, a role she will sing at Florida Grand Opera. Opera has its roots in the late 16th century as an entertainment for the cognoscenti, and it’s arguable that no other art form is so artificial. And yet it’s also true that few other art forms have enjoyed the new lease [...]
