OperaWire: Canada’s Azrieli Foundation Introduces the Azrieli Music, Arts, and Culture Center

OperaWire
By Chris Ruel

The Canadian Azrieli Foundation, known for its annual music competition and dedication to the arts, has announced the establishment of the Azrieli Music, Arts, and Culture Center (AMACC).

The creation of the Center comes after reviewing a decade of its arts support, signaling an expanded commitment from the Foundation.

AMACC reflects the Foundation’s goal to provide consistent backing as a funder and partnership as a collaborator to Canada’s art and culture community.

The Foundation’s Azrieli Music Competition has grown to become the largest composition competition in Canada, with commissions awarded for Jewish, Canadian, and international compositions.

In an official press statement, Dr. Sharon Azrieli said, “By uniting our grant-making, sector collaborations, strategic initiatives, and Azrieli Music Prizes program under the AMACC banner, we will create an impact that is greater than the sum of its parts, ensuring more Canadians of all ages enjoy a deeper relationship with the arts.”

Read more here.

Photo Credit: Danylo Bobyk

OperaWire: Grand Teton Music Festival to Livestream ‘La bohème’ with Jose Simerilla Romero & Nicole Cabell

OperaWire
By Francisco Salazar

The Grand Teton Music Festival in Wyoming is set to livestream its semi-staged production of “La bohème.”

The production will be streamed on August 27 and features an all-star cast led by Nicole Cabell as Mimì, Jose Simerilla Romero as Rodolfo, Meechot Marrero as Musetta, Ryan Speedo Green as Colline, Thomas Lehman as Marcello, and Carlton Ford as Schaunard.

Sir Donald Runnicles conducts the Festival Orchestra in the concert version directed by David Lefkowich.

Read more here.

Opera Wire: Conductor Steven Fox on the Clarion Choir, ‘Judas Maccabeus’ & Live Performances

Opera Wire
By Francisco Salazar

On Dec. 1, the Clarion Choir and Clarion Orchestra will join forces for a free concert with Isabel Leonard and Anthony Roth Costanzo to perform a suite from “Judas Maccabeus” at historic Temple Emanu-El in celebration of Hanukkah.

The program will also include arias, duets, and choruses from Händel’s “Esther,” “Israel in Egypt,” and “Rodelinda.”

OperaWire had a chance to speak with conductor and Clarion Artistic Director Steven Fox about returning to the live performances and taking on Händel’s “Judas Maccabeus.”

OperaWire: This is a return to holiday season concerts after the pandemic. How does it feel to be performing for a live audience after so long?

Steven Fox: It’s very exciting to be going in front of a live audience again. We have done some small concerts in recent months, but this will be our first Clarion production for a large audience, and we are all thrilled about it. I admire how creative musicians were in producing online content during the pandemic. But there is simply no replacement for live music. The energy that the audience brings, and the spontaneity of the performances that happen as a result of that, are part of the magic that makes us performers love to perform.

Read more here.

OperaWire: Q & A: David Stern on Opera Fuoco’s New Opera Mini-Series ‘Figaro in the City’

OperaWire
Francisco Salazar

David Stern’s opera company, Opera Fuoco, recently released a 14-part online series of “The Marriage of Figaro” which is set in 2020.

The series was created in response to the new technological developments and the new streaming era of opera which has grown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Stern is a firm believer that in the Netflix-era, people want/need to be able to consume the arts in smaller bites. As a result, the new series was created and stars members of Opera Fuoco’s Young Artist Program and world-renowned singer Laurent Naouri.
OperaWire had a chance to speak with Stern about the new series, the filming process, and the challenges of making an opera show.

OperaWire: How did you come up with the idea for “Figaro in the city?”

Read more here.

OperaWire: The Beijing Music Festival As A Microcosm For The Great Chinese City

OperaWire
Francisco Salazar

The Beijing Music Festival is celebrating its 21st anniversary by bringing a diverse array of repertoire intent on exploring its innovative and boundary-crossing initiatives.

This year alone, the festival is showcasing a half-dozen diverse works of music drama and theatre.

Read more here.

OperaWire: Yannick Nézet-Séguin To Lead Staged ‘Tosca’ At Bravo! Vail Music Festival In 2019

OperaWire
David Salazar

The Philadelphia Orchestra will be back in 2019 to showcase Puccini’s “Tosca” as Bravo! Vail Music Festival’s debut opera production. Performances are set for July 11 and 13, 2019 at the outdoor Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater.

The announcement was made by Bravo! Vail’s Music Festival’s Artistic Director Anne-Marie McDermott during a concert by the ensemble, as led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Nézet-Séguin will conduct with director James Alexander leading production company Symphony V in the rendition of the famed Puccini opera. The production will be set in the 1800s and the opera will showcase an all-star cast that will be revealed at a later date.

Read more here.

Opera Wire: A Passionate Duo at Prague Summer Nights

Opera Wire
By Francisco Salazar

Sherrill Milnes & Maria Zouves

What do you do after you’ve taught, formed a young artist program and had a legendary career as a singer and conductor?

The answer? Direct opera.

That is exactly what famed baritone Sherrill Milnes has embarked on alongside his wife, Maria Zouves. In collaboration with the Prague Summer Nights, presented by Classical Movements, the duo has already directed two Mozart masterpieces with the festival and have garnered rave reviews.

Passing On Tradition

When the Prague Summer Nights Festival was started Artistic Director John Nardolillo contacted Milnes and Zouves with the idea of bringing them to the program and having them work as directors. It was the opportunity to not only bring their knowledge to young artists but it was also a new opportunity for Milnes.

“I’m post-career and the idea of passing on to younger singers ideas is important,” Milnes noted in a recent interview with OperaWire.

Part of those ideas is passing down musical history. “I go back to the Bernstein, Solti, Giuliani and Karajan and all these giants. And I sang under Fritz Reiner, who was a great maestro in the old style. He was scary. I often categorize the old conductors as ‘Fear conductors’ and now from James Levine to now, I call the ‘Love conductors,'” Milnes joked.

The baritone recalled working with Reiner noting that he was part of the generation where conductors were more like enemies and often times scary to work with. However, that trend changed while he was singing. “When you look at Jim Levine or Jim Conlon, you feel like, ‘Let’s do this together.’ Psychologically you feel like you can give more. I don’t know if you actually do, But you feel like you give more when you see a face that is bright and wanting you to succeed,” he noted.

For Milnes, it is crucial that younger generations understand this newer conducting philosophy and its impact on music,  as well as the tradition and style of the old masters.

But it also goes beyond passing down history. While Milnes sang he learned a lot about languages and realized that the English language could be an obstacle when singing in Italian or French. And that is something Milnes is constantly looking to improve.

“In America, we tend to be mathematically correct, tah-tah eighth notes, 3/4 bar or whatever it is. But every language has its own contours. For example in Italian, you don’t say ‘Am-mo-re’ accenting the ‘Re’ but you say ‘amore’ smoothly. It’s mathematically precise but with a flow.

“You have to be correct, but beyond correct, there is a whole musical level. There has to be intention and meaning. Correct doesn’t make good music,” Milnes noted.

The Dynamic Directing Duo

The second opportunity that the program allowed was for Milnes and his wife Maria Zouves to collaborate as directors. Milnes would make his directorial debut, expanding his artistic horizons and also furthering his artistic relationship with Zouves.

“Maria is the stage director,” Milnes revealed. “She has the ideas. If I have a bunch of people on stage, I don’t know what to with them. She is very imaginative. She really does the staging. However, if you show me a staging, I can make it better.”

And Zouves agrees that Milnes always goes back to his experience and it is really helpful.  “He is the eyeballs. I look at him and he goes, ‘This isn’t working.’ And then he says, ‘When I did it with Jean-Pierre Ponnelle or Tito Capobianco, we did it that way.’ So the partnership works.”

Milnes has another forte while they are directing together. “I know how to cheat on stage. Audiences can judge left and right but they can not judge depth at all. Well, you never walk straight stage across for many reasons and that is important.”

As for how they approach the directing, Zouves is extremely diligent with going back to the original text as is Milnes who is always looking for meaning and intention. So before going into blocking or stage direction, they both sit down with their cast members and do what Zouves calls a “Script reading.”

But there is a twist. Zouves describes it as a Babel reading because everyone reads it in their first language. So in one reading, there could be Korean, Spanish and German.

“It’s always about reacting. In opera, we’re in a different language and we generally only speak English and you have to sing most of the time for a language which is not their language. That is tough and we’re supposed to be as good as the native speaker,” Zouves noted.

The result is that singers react more naturally in their own language, allowing them to discover the character and, as Milnes notes, “the intention becomes real.”

Zouves recalls one of the first readings she did with this technique and notes that it really created the drama. “We had a ‘Don Giovanni’ in Korean and the Leporello repeated it back in what he heard of the Korean. And he just repeated it that way as an impulse. We saw the humor in the scene and those are the responses you get when you use that gut level translation.”

She finds that this technique eventually leads to great listening when the young singers are finally on stage getting ready to perform.

The Advantages of Prague

Beyond their artistic rewards and the teaching experience they both bring to young singers, Milnes and Zouves feel a great reward seeing them grow.

The duo noted that some of the singers enter the program without having ever performed an opera and seeing them develop into their characters and learning the process is incredibly important.

“One of the Figaros this year had never been in an opera scene before. He had no operatic experience whatsoever. He came here and he had no idea what to do. Everything was new. But he got through the title character and he did a wonderful job and he feels really good now and excited. It is a huge deal. There are other singers who are a little more seasoned so it’s a little more mileage. For others, it’s a huge arch,” Zuoves revealed.

And the other important aspect is learning from each other and their environment.

“They are also able to experience a foreign language,” Milnes noted. “They are also working with international students and they are learning from each other. We have Korea, Poland, America, France, Canada, Germany, China and much more represented here. It’s the United Nations and that is very good for all.”

Milnes and Zouves also feel that working in Prague opens the possibilities for general growth.

“These types of programs where they go to another country, they also absorb what our art form has intrinsically in it, which is the international scope and they are learning how to manage their way through this. For some of them, it is the first time out of the U.S and out of their home. So they are learning how to experience foreign currency and culture and sometimes it’s not as comfortable. But they are also learning about audiences. Here in Prague, they love music. It’s part of the culture.  To have that type of audience, that’s important for a singer. When the work is done they want to have someone to perform for,” noted Zouves.

And the other aspect that makes Prague so enriching is the history. This year, for example, when the Estates Theater was closed, the festival found a venue where Mozart and Hayden gave recitals. That made the experience even more exciting for them.

“We all throw around Mozart but he was here. In fact, I was the first American to sing ‘Don Giovanni’ in the theater where it was premiered. And there is a plaque. They have redone it several times but Mozart walked there and that is awesome.”

A Changing Landscape

With the Prague Summer Festival having ended Zouves and Milnes will go back to their development program in Savannah and continue to enrich and develop new singers. And most of the young singers at Prague will not be going back with them. Some will go back to auditions while others will be back to college having learned and garnered an international performance on their resume. But some of them will face new obstacles.

In the operatic landscape, singers today are crashing and burning quickly with many promising voices faltering after a few years. And that is something that Milnes and Zouves have tried to avoid as they develop singers.

“Part of the problem is today’s culture. Today everything is instant and it’s all an app. You can’t download an app in opera. It’s a slow process and today’s instant life gets in the way of that slow process,” said Zouves.

Milnes goes back to his 42-year career and has two words of advice for young singers, “Common Sense.”

“You have to have enough rest. Sleep and the voice are very friendly. When I didn’t have to get up at 7 a.m. to do a 10 a.m. audition I was better. That means the day of a performance you better be careful. There wasn’t really a conscientious effort but it was all about being smart. One of the worst things in performing is going to a noisy nightclub after singing because you have already used your voice and then the music is so loud you have to yell. Then you really beat up the throat,” Milnes joked.

But Zouves also thinks it was due to her husband’s discipline and learning to say no when he felt uncomfortable.

“He was very disciplined. He was very good at performing and it had to do with his musicianship. There are singers who were great artistically which he was but there are also good musicians. Singers that are just singers who make beautiful sounds. When those beautiful sounds no longer work there is nothing else to do. Sherrill is a wonderful conductor and teacher and great masterclass giver. He could, as a result, take projects not just with opera. He did a lot of concerts, recitals and oratorio work. His roles diminished in terms of what he could take on. But those roles like Scarpia, Germont and all of these guys stayed constant. He was doing Scarpia up to the end and Falstaff was a defacto. Sherrill was also smart and he said no to things.”

One such thing that he did not sing,despite the insistence of  Karl Böhm, was “The Flying Dutchman.”

“It wasn’t the right fach and the center of my baritone was a little higher than what Wagner requires,” Milnes recalled.

But with the operatic world changing so quickly, both Zouves and Milnes do have faith in the future. With their Voice Experience program, both are giving singers an opportunity to perform and learn their craft as well as engage with audiences.

And the other thing that Zouves is excited about are the new initiatives and the new opera companies coming up.

“I see a lot of singers starting their own companies to start their opportunities and I think that is great. Organizations like Opera America give them more resources and that is a different idea. You have to create and that has changed.”

“It’s about the longevity of the art form. Opera is not dead because it is ingrained in our history and culture.”

Opera Wire: Prague Summer Nights Festival's Le Nozze di Figaro is a Top 10 Must-See 2017 Opera

Opera Wire
By Francisco Salazar

10 Must-See Operas During Summer 2017 [International Edition]

Last week Operawire took a look at some of the 10 must see summer operas in the United States. It featured a range of repertoire and some very intriguing new stars. This week we look at the European Festivals and see where the big stars will be and what they will be performing.

The following is a list of OperaWire’s 10 Must-See productions around the world over the summer.

10. Rigoletto

The Arena di Verona will present Verdi’s “Rigoletto” with numerous all-star casts that include Gianluca Terranova, Francesco Demuro, Arturo Chacón-Cruz, Amartuvshin Enkhbat, Carlos Álvarez, Leo Nucci, Elena Mosuc, Jessica Pratt, Irina Lungu, Jessica Nuccio and Andrea Mastroni. “Rigoletto” will be performed five times and will be directed by Ivo Guerra.

9. Le Nozze di Figaro

Legendary baritone Sherrill Milnes and Maria Zouves direct a new production of Mozart’s ‘”Le Nozze Di Figaro” at the Prague Summer Nights Festival which is set to star a number of young artists. Five performances will be given starting on July 3 and running through July 9.

8. Pinocchio

Stéphane Degout, Vincent Le Texier, Chloé Briot, Yann Beuron, Julie Boulianne and Marie-Eve Munger star in the world premiere of Philippe Boesmans’s new opera “Pinocchio” at Aix en Provence Festival. The opera promises to be something spectacular in a new production by Joël Pommerat and is later scheduled to be at the Monnaie and Opera National de Bordeaux. The opera opens on July 3, 2017, and has five performances in total.

7. Die Entfuhrung Aus Dem Serail

Teatro all Scala will celebrate the 20th anniversary of Giorgio Strehler’s death and the 10th anniversary of Luciano Damiani’s death with a revival of Mozart’s classic opera. The intriguing young cast stars Lenneke Ruiten, Sabine Devieilhe, Mauro Peter, Maximilian Schmitt, Tobias Kehrer and Cornelius Obonya. Zubin Mehta conducts the run which begins on June 17. It will also be broadcast on June 19, 2017.

6. Tannhäuser

The Bavarian State Opera will open a new production of Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” with Klaus Florian Vogt in the title role. He will make his role debut alongside Anja Harteros and Annette Dasch. Mathias Goerne and  Christian Gerhaher also star in a production by Romeo Castellucci. Music Director Kirill Petrenko conducts the momentous Wagner work which opens on May 21, 2017.

5. Adriana Lecouvreur

Anna Netrebko may be singing the role at the Vienna State Opera later in the fall but Russian audiences will get a first look as the soprano will sing her first “Adriana” at the Mariinsky theater in a new production being created for her. Isabelle Partiot-Pieri directs with Netrebko scheduled to perform on open June 19 and 22, 2017.

4. The Siege of Corinth

Beverly Sills’ famously made this work known when she made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1975. Now Nino Machaidze takes on the iconic role of Pamyra as she opens the Rossini Opera Festival on August 10, 2017, alongside Alex Esposito, John Irvin, and  Sergey Romanovsky. Roberto Abbado conducts the new production by La Fura dels Baus.

3. La Clemenza di Tito

Continuing the annual Mozart cycle, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and Rolando Villazón team up for Mozart’s Opera-seria with a star-studded cast at the Baden-Baden Festival. Sonya Yoncheva and Joyce Didonato also star alongside Regula Muhlemann, Tarra Erraught, and Adam Plachetka. The performances will take place on July 6 and 9, 2017, and are scheduled to be recorded for Deutsche Grammophon.

2. Aida

Anna Netrebko makes her role debut in Verdi’s masterpiece in the Salzburg Festival most anticipated production. The occasion will reteam the diva with Riccardo Muti and her frequent onstage partners Francesco Meli and Ekaterina Semenchuk. It will also see the extraordinary Luca Salsi and Roberto Tagliavani in what should one of the most memorable nights of the festival. Filmmaker Shirin Neshat directs a new production which opens August 6. The run is alsready sold out. 

1. Otello

Jonas Kaufmann makes his role debut in Verdi’s “Otello” in a new production by Keith Warner at the Royal Opera House. Antonio Pappano conducts the production which will also star Maria Agresta and Ludovic Tezier. Opening June 21, 2017, all of Kaufmann’s performances are sold out. Gregory Kunde takes over the run for three performances.

Opera Wire: Neeta Helms on Classical Movements & The Prague Summer Nights Festival

Opera Wire
By Francisco Salazar

Neeta Helms is the founder and owner of Classical Movements, a premiere concert tour company for the world’s great orchestras and choirs, creating meaningful cultural experiences through music in 145 countries.

During her 25 years with Classical Movements, Helms has worked with some of the most prestigious orchestras and concert artists in the world. She has traveled to 80 countries and has worked on some of the most complicated, difficult and pioneering projects in the music world.

After many years focused on touring, Classical Movements founded the Prague Summer Nights Festival to help young artists build their profile and gain exposure in the opera world. Now in its third year, Prague Summer Nights continues to grow, with the festival set to expand to Salzburg this summer. OperaWire had the chance to speak with Neeta about the development of the program and about the major challenges of putting on a festival like this one.

OperaWire: Tell me about your role with Classical Movements and the work you’ve done with classical music and opera?

Neeta Helms: I am the President and founder of Classical Movements, which is now 25 years old. We are the premiere concert touring company for orchestras and choirs, so our focus has primarily been arranging tours and concerts. We work in 145 countries and have worked in the Czech Republic for a very long time. Since we have been business, we have organized four choral festivals; we started our first in the Czech Republic 10 years after the company was founded in 1992, then started festivals in South America, Washington DC and South Africa. We work with professional orchestras, as well as conservatories, youth symphonies and choral ensembles to arrange their tours. We’re uniquely placed in the world of classical music and we have a foothold in the worlds of both choral and orchestral music.Incidentally, our involvement in the opera world began as early as 1998 when we toured with the Pittsburgh Symphony and Andrea Bocelli; we have also arranged tours for Dmitri Hvorostovsky including his 45-day tour and with Renée Fleming.

OW: Why did you start Prague Summer Nights?

NH: It came into being because one of our clients, the University of Kentucky, has a very rich music department and had spoken about collaborating on a summer program, which they would plan. They were going to organize auditions and everything. We would arrange the production and all the housing, travel, sets and costumes, but it was going to be their program, not ours. Something fell through with the university, but we were very close to the conductor John Nardolillo, who dreamed of still doing it. After investing so much into we decided, ‘Why not do it ourselves?’ We felt very well placed because we were financially strong and could invest the necessary time and the source. One has to make sure you have everything you need a year in advance. And then you have to engage faculty and when you engage someone like Sherrill Milnes, who is such a giant in the industry, you have to plan to do everything in the best way possible. I never wanted it to be a small program. There is nothing wrong with that, but if we were going into this with our level experience, I really wanted it to be international and felt that we could do that better than anyone else. We were engaged many years ago to do the YouTube Symphony Orchestra; it was a crazy program and one of the things that attracted them to us was that they knew we were able to get the word out all around. And that is something that we brought to this program, as well. We also wanted high-level faculty; together with John Nadalillo, our artistic director, we made an effort to get fabulous faculty, not just from the United States, but from Europe as well. And that has been a major goal of ours. We also have established distinct opera and orchestra programs.

OW: How has the program evolved?

NH: The first year, we were dominated by our opera program. We engaged very famous people from the opera world. We did “Don Giovanni,” and then added “Suor Angelica;” we had so many women applicants that we didn’t want to turn any away. The second year, we added “Gianni Schicchi” and really started to build up the instrumental program as well. We felt that while the orchestra plays with the opera, we wanted to really build it up on its own. This year we’ve gone from “Suor Angelica” to “Gianni Schicchi” to two major operas, “The Magic Flute” and “Le Nozze di Figaro.” We’ve also added Salzburg to the program.

OW: How did that move to Salzburg come about?

NH: Salzburg came about because of the obvious Mozart connection, but it’s also an opera-loving city and therefore a great addition for the people who are performing, a really valuable experience for our performers and our faculty. Everyone was really attracted by the prospect. We’ll be performing at the famous Mozarteum Hall, where we will do “Magic Flute” and “Le Nozze di Figaro.”

OW: Tell me a little about the program?

NH: We started out 30 days in Prague and then in our second year, we spent 11 days in this lovely town called Tabor in Bohemia before going to Prague for 19 days. It was a very fine balance. The whole town was so interested in our program. We have long hours and long days, between coachings and staging rehearsals; everybody has things going on. We have so much happening and the town is in love with the idea of music being done in the summer. We start there and then we go to Prague. This year, because the Estate Theater is completely under repair, we will be at the second home of the Prague Symphony instead. It’s a beautiful venue, where we will stage all our productions, but we also wanted to perform at a prestigious hall, so that is why Salzburg was important. Where we will go in our fourth year, we shall see – but Salzburg is turning out to be a major attraction. We have also partnered with the Prague Conservatory, which is a legendary institution.

OW: Tell me about the audition process and what is it like?

NH: That process happens both in-person and online. We hold auditions in several cities twice: we have a round of auditions in early November in London, Beijing, Los Angeles, New York, Maryland, Washington and so on. And then we repeat those and add some other locations like Indiana, so we get a lot of people from all over the country. We do these auditions in January and February. We also do online auditions for applicants around the world. Then all the major conductors, faculty and stage directors check them out and based on their consensus, we make offers.

OW: Do any of the participants come back?

NH: Yes, that is actually something I want to highlight. One of our alumni, John Holland, did Masetto the first year and then Leporello the second year. And this year, he is going to sing Figaro. He comes back because he says this program has helped him out so much; he’s got roles and it’s really building his career. Our first year, we also had Marcello Ferrero, who came back in our second year. The chance to work with Sherrill Milnes in Europe, in these productions is obviously a huge draw. We are attracting a very high level of singing and that is helping these musicians’ careers.

OW: Tell me about working with Sherrill Milnes and his work with the festival? 

NH: We’re really blessed to have him with us directing “Le Nozze di Figaro.” You know, he made his stage director debut with the Prague Summer Nights Festival program. It was major news in Europe and the press was all over it.

OW: What kinds of productions are produced?

NH: Very classic, all done the way they were meant to be done. We’re not at all avant-garde. We want to give people a chance to experience opera in the classical sense and really get them ready for these roles in their careers. Our goal is to give productions as close to the original as possible.

OW: How has the audience reacted during the first two years?

NH: Our audience tends to be half tourists and half local opera-lovers. We do a lot of promotion and so far we have had a lot of interest from the press, including coverage from the major opera press. That obviously reaches everybody in Prague and now Tabor. The tourists like to come to the Estate Theater because it’s so important to Prague. They just love the idea of seeing something in this opera house. There is a lot of word of mouth and the reviews have been good as well, so people know that the production is satisfying. We’ve had huge ovations from our audiences and have had packed halls. Our goal is to engage the locals – and if we get tourists, that is great too. But it is really exciting to see people discover opera through our festival.

For more information on Prague Summer Nights, please visit: www.praguesummernights.com.