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4 weeks ago | 
operatoday.com | Gary Hoffman
It seems entirely appropriate that Holland Park Opera’s first venture into Richard Wagner should be Der fliegende Holländer. And where better in London to experience its storm-tossed drama within an open-sided auditorium where you felt every gust of wind, even the canvas roof billowing like sails from the Dutchman’s ghostly ship. Directed by Julia Burbach, this new production steers a canny path between Gothic fantasy and reality.
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1 month ago | 
operatoday.com | Gary Hoffman
Company launches its own label and will collaborate with LSO Live on new recordings of HGO performances HOUSTON—May 14, 2025—Houston Grand Opera (HGO) is proud to announce a new partnership with the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), uniting the newly launched Houston Grand Opera label with pioneering label LSO Live.
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1 month ago | 
operatoday.com | Gary Hoffman
Las Vegas, NV – (May 6, 2025) Opera Las Vegas (OLV) announced today that it has hired celebrated Mexican-American Soprano Cecilia “Ceci” Violetta López as General Director and CEO effective July 1, 2025. Having performed her first professional role in the 2012 Opera Las Vegas production of Don Giovanni, Ms. López returns to Southern Nevada as only the fifth General Director in the company’s 27-year history.
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1 month ago | 
operatoday.com | Gary Hoffman
Telemann’s Pimpinone (1725) is perhaps second only to Pergolesi’s La serva padrona (whose plot it pre-empts) as one of the best-known examples of that curiosity of 18th century musical theatre, the intermezzo. As this description indicates, it was a work which was designed to be performed – really as two or three episodes, not continuously – between the parts of another opera.
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Nov 8, 2024 | 
operatoday.com | Gary Hoffman
HCO Singer of the Year Competition 2024, semi-finals and finals2 Nov, St Swithun’s School, WinchesterLast weekend saw the semi-finals and finals of the seventh HCO Singer of the Year Competition, run for the third consecutive year in collaboration with The Grange Festival.
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Aug 25, 2024 | 
operatoday.com | Gary Hoffman
In the great pantheon of German Romanticism there is a natural association of certain poets with certain composers: Heine and Schumann or Mörike and Wolf, for instance. Friedrich Rückert is a lesser name among poets, but he published some six thousand poems during his lifetime and there are 121 settings of his work, including by Schubert, the two Schumanns, Brahms, Bruch, Reger and Richard Strauss.
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Aug 3, 2024 | 
operatoday.com | Gary Hoffman
Santa Fe Opera’s piquant, frolicsome version of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore (The Elixir of Love) is currently regaling audiences with a revival of its popular 2009 staging. Director Stephen Lawless and his formidable creative team have set the tale in an Italian village that has been liberated by US soldiers just after World War Two. Ashley Martin-Davis’ set design has the upstage dominated by a huge billboard with scrolling artwork that reflects the shifting mood of the moment.
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Aug 1, 2024 | 
khrono.no | Gary Hoffman |Nord universitet |Campus Nesna
Denne teksten er et debattinnlegg. Innholdet i teksten uttrykker forfatterens egen mening. Originally an American jazz musician fromNew Orleans, in 2001, through quite an unusual set of circumstances, I foundmyself in Nesna, newly married, and freshly employed as a music teacher at «Høgskolen i Nesna», now Nord University. In the ensuing years, I haveexperienced a whirlwind of changes within Norway’s educational system.
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Jul 18, 2024 | 
operatoday.com | Gary Hoffman
Des Moines Metro Opera’s World Premiere of Damien Geter and Lila Palmer’s American Apollo could hardly have been more of an “occasion.”This intriguing musical exploration of the artistic and personal relationship between famed New England artist John Singer Sargent and his model Thomas Eugene McKeller has a lot going for it, not least of which is the abundance of prodigious talent evident in composer Geter and librettist Palmer.
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Jul 4, 2024 | 
operatoday.com | Gary Hoffman
Der Ring des Nibelungen is the centre piece of this year’s Longborough Festival – all four instalments of Wagner’s epic staged over three successive weeks. That the performances take place in a converted barn in rural Gloucestershire says much for the inspiration and resourcefulness of Martin and Lizzie Graham who established the enterprise back in 1991 – a founding year that brought an operatic dream of a British Bayreuth to reality.
