Christopher Alden News

Lyric Opera of Kansas City General Director and CEO Deborah Sandler today announced the four conductors for the 2015-2016 season in the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. Gary Thor Wedow (pictured, left, Mozart's Don Giovanni), and David Charles Abell (Bizet's Carmen) will be returning to the Lyric Opera. Alexander Polianichko (Dvorak's Rusalka) and Christopher Allen (Donizetti's The Elixir of Love) will be making their Lyric Opera debut.

The Canadian Opera Company opens its 2015/2016 season with Verdi's enduring masterpiece, La Traviata. This sumptuous new COC production is set in the demi-monde of glittering 1850s Paris, evoking the social realities, rhythms and debauchery of a rapidly changing society.

Lyric Opera of Kansas City General Director and CEO Deborah Sandler today announced the four conductors for the 2015-2016 season in the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. Gary Thor Wedow (pictured, left, Mozart's Don Giovanni), and David Charles Abell (Bizet's Carmen) will be returning to the Lyric Opera. Alexander Polianichko (Dvorak's Rusalka) and Christopher Allen (Donizetti's The Elixir of Love) will be making their Lyric Opera debut.

Toronto – The world premiere of a new Canadian opera awaits Canadian Opera Company audiences this fall at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. In a new company production, the COC proudly presents Barbara Monk Feldman's first opera, Pyramus and Thisbe (2010), performed with two early Baroque opera classics, Claudio Monteverdi'sLamento d'Arianna (1608) and Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda(1624). Pyramus and Thisbe runs for seven performances on October 20, 23, 25, 28,November 5, 7 (two performances), 2015.

She was hand-picked by Leonard Bernstein to sing Mimi in his Grammy nominated La boheme

The Glimmerglass Festival, Central New York's opera and musical theater company, has announced its 2016 season.

The Glimmerglass Festival, Central New York's opera and musical theater company, has announced its 2016 season.

The New York Philharmonic will present the U.S. Premiere of director Co?me de Bellescize's staging of Honegger's dramatic oratorio Joan of Arc at the Stake in season-finale performances conducted by Alan Gilbert and starring Academy Award-winning actress Marion Cotillard as Joan of Arc.

Gotham Chamber Opera announces Edward Barnes as the company's new Executive Director, effective June 1, 2015. Mr. Barnes will succeed Gotham's previous executive director, David Bennett, who will become general director of the San Diego Opera. In addition, David Rubeo has been promoted to Associate Director.

Through it's grant-making to thousands of nonprofits each year, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) promotes opportunities for people in communities across America to experience the arts and exercise their creativity.

Gotham Chamber Opera announces its 15th Anniversary Season, which will begin in the fall of 2015 with a 15th Anniversary Celebration Concert (date and venue tba). The season continues in February 2016 with Alessandro Stradella's 1675 San Giovanni Battista (Saint John the Baptist)in a co-production with the Netherlands Nationale ReisOpera, and a concert at (le) poisson rouge, 158 Bleecker Street, NYC, featuring a new work by David Hertzberg, winner of the Catherine Doctorow Prize for Music. The season concludes with the New York premiere of Charlie Parker's Yardbird, a co-production of the Apollo Theater, Gotham Chamber Opera and Opera Philadelphia, at the world famous Apollo Theater in May/June 2016.

The New York Philharmonic will present the U.S. Premiere of director Co?me de Bellescize's staging of Honegger's dramatic oratorio Joan of Arc at the Stake in season-finale performances conducted by Alan Gilbert and starring Academy Award-winning actress Marion Cotillard as Joan of Arc.

Toronto – The world premiere of a new Canadian work was one of the many operatic highlights revealed today at the public launch of the Canadian Opera Company's 2015/2016season at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. The COC's 65th season is once again comprised entirely of company productions, four of which are new to Toronto audiences, and features the COC's first mainstage world premiere since 1999, COC premieres of opera rarities and the revival of classic masterpieces.

The Collegiate Chorale continues its 2014-15 season with George F. Handel's Susanna on February 3, 2015 at 8pm at Town Hall, 123 W. 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036. Tickets are $30-$95 and are available at TicketMaster.com. For more information, visit http://collegiatechorale.org/performances/susanna.

Gotham Chamber Opera presents the final production of the 2014/2015 season, The Tempest Songbook, comprised of incidental music for The Tempest composed in 1695 and attributed to Henry Purcell and Kaija Saariaho's 2004 Tempest Songbook for soprano, baritone and period instrument ensemble, in its U.S. and World Stage Premieres.A co-production with The Martha Graham Dance Company, The Tempest Songbook will be performed in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, with three performances from March 27 - 29, 2015. Performances: Friday and Saturday at 7pm, Sunday at 3pm. Tickets range from $30 to $175 and are available at metmuseum.org/tickets.

It's a new era at Seattle Opera. The company today announced its 2015/16 season, the first to be presented by General Director Aidan Lang, and a return to full-year programming with a total of six operas, including new productions and a world premiere. Under Lang's leadership, the company hopes to serve the community through the magic of theater and music in McCaw Hall, and in learning and engagement programs across the Pacific Northwest.

It's a new era at Seattle Opera. The company today announced its 2015/16 season, the first to be presented by General Director Aidan Lang, and a return to full-year programming with a total of six operas, including new productions and a world premiere. Under Lang's leadership, the company hopes to serve the community through the magic of theater and music in McCaw Hall, and in learning and engagement programs across the Pacific Northwest.

The Alden in McLean's resident contemporary dance company, Christopher K. Morgan & Artists, returns for its fourth annual season with an evening of mixed repertory that includes two world premieres. 'Inconstancy' will be performed at 8 p.m. tonight and Saturday, Nov. 14 and 15. Tickets are $30, $20 for McLean tax district residents. The Alden is located inside the McLean Community Center, 1234 Ingleside Ave.

? The Yale School of Music continues its acclaimed Yale in New York series when singers of Yale Opera bring manuscripts to life in a concert on Sunday, December 7 at 7:30 p.m. in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall.

When I got back from Tanzania I was presenting in the Proms on television for the BBC. It was so surreal to try to piece all of that together.