In Print

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Interview

Grace Bumbry

Calling her earlier decision to retire a mistake, the international star has returned to the opera ...

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In addition to the regular monthly features, this issue also contains a special section on this year’s St. Gallen Festival.

Interviews

Ian Bostridge – The Interview

April’s cover artist talks ...

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Interviews

Hartmut Haenchen

The former head of the Netherlands Philharmonic and General Music Director of the Netherlands Opera turns 70 this ...

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Interviews

Max Emanuel Cencic

This month’s featured artist is the former Vienna Choirboy who is now one of the world’s leading countertenors. He grew up in a musical family, where he sang and took piano lessons. He describes his ...

Interview

Franz Josef Selig

A leading international bass, particularly in the German repertoire, Selig originally studied church music at Cologne’s State Music University. ...

Interviews

José Carreras

The great Spanish tenor is this month’s cover artist and the subject of the primary interview. Although officially retired from the operatic stage, he continues to appear in concert and is busy with his charitable foundation that raises money for cancer research. In the early part of the ...

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Interview

Wolfgang Sawallisch

The conductor, who will celebrate his 90th birthday this year, looks back over his career in this interview with Kai Leuhrs-Kaiser. Some particulars:
- His recording of Richard Strauss’ Capriccio is the only one of ...

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Interviews

Danielle De Niese – The Interview

The international star soprano, who was interviewed by Opera Lively this past summer (http://operalively.com/forums/conten...ielle-de-niese), is this month’s cover artist and the subject of the lead interview. Some highlights:
- She began taking voice lessons at the age of eight, so that when she became the youngest member of the Met’s Young Artist Development Program, she already had years of preparation behind her. When she made her Met debut at 19 as Barbarina, she admired and respected her famous colleagues (Fleming, Bartoli, Terfel), but didn’t feel any sort of childish hero worship. Because of her background, she felt mature – though she admits she probably seemed like a teenager to them.
- For much of the same reason, an international career that may appear ...

Press Release

ATTENTION - WHILE ALL THE INFORMATION AND LINKS BELOW WILL REMAIN VALID ONCE THE BOOK GETS BACK INTO CIRCULATION, WE HAVE TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED SALES WHILE WE REVISE IT, BECAUSE WE'VE DECIDED TO INCLUDE THE FULL LIBRETTO WITH ENGLISH TRANSLATION, AND LENGTHEN THE SECTION ON CONTEMPORARY STAGINGS.
CHECK THIS SPACE AT SOME TIME IN MID TO LATE JANUARY 2013 AND THE ...

We'll be republishing these posts and articles by MAuer, since the initial publication had a glitch. The software will show the author as Almaviva, but the author is MAuer.

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In place of the usual “Magazine” section, which contains a selection of short articles on various subjects, this issue has an expanded number of CD/DVD reviews.

Interviews

Thomas Johannes Mayer

One of Europe’s leading Wotans, the dramatic baritone talks about his career and the heart attack he suffered at age 41, only two days after singing Macbeth in Berlin. Some highlights:
- In addition to his singing career, Mayer is a qualified music teacher and has passed state exams in history and philosophy. He originally wanted to be a teacher.
- As a teenager, he was a member of a rock band which never became well known, but did receive small recording contracts. He describes their style as a mixture of punk, rock, jazz, and pop. ...

Opera Lively Press has just released a book: "Opera Lively, The Interviews."

Front and back covers:



Here is its official description:

"This book released by Opera Lively Press is a pleasure to read for everybody who cares about opera (beginners are also welcome). It contains the best of one year of journalism from Opera Lively. Singers, conductors, stage and video directors, scholars, educators, opera company managers, ...

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Interviews

Marlis Petersen: The Interview

The German coloratura soprano is this month’s “cover girl.” Some highlights from the interview:
- Earlier in her career, she focused primarily on the German and French repertoires. (Given a choice between singing Gilda or Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier, she opted for ...

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Part 1

This issue is primarily devoted to live performance reviews, whether as full-length features or as smaller articles in the “Panorama” section. The “Magazine” area contains several smaller feature stories on a variety of subjects. One might consider the issue’s centerpiece to be two substantial features on Karlheinz Stockhausen and his opera Mittwoch aus Licht, performed this past summer in Birmingham, England. We’ll begin with them.

“Luftgeister und Luzikamel” (Spirits of the Air and Lucicamel) – Albrecht Thiemann

- Stockhausen: Mittwoch aus Licht (Wednesday from Light) – Argyle Works, Birmingham
Conductor/Sound Director: Kathinka Pasveer
Director: Graham Vick
Soloists/Ensembles: Chloé l’Abbé (flute), Fie Schouten (horn), Marco Blaauw (trumpet), Stephen Menotti (trombone), Antonio Pérez-Abellán (synthesizer); Elysian Quartet, Ex Cathedra, Birmingham Opera Company

Stockhausen’s mammoth composition Licht (Light), written over a stretch of 26 years, encompasses seven individual operas representing days of the week, making it – with a total duration of 30 hours – the world’s longest opera cycle. While there have been successful stagings of several of the other “days,” Mittwoch (Wednesday) proved a bigger hurdle than several opera houses discovered they could tackle. There were not only the enormous demands Stockhausen placed on musicians, other artists, technology, and logistics, but also the equally gigantic costs associated ...

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Interviews

Joseph Calleja

The Maltese tenor is this month’s featured artist (he’s on the cover). He has quite a few interesting things to say, from his opinions on crossover music to coping with pre-performance nerves, his repertoire plans, and what he believes helped him to improve his acting skills. The highlights:
...

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Conductor Daniel Barenboim (on the cover) and soprano Eva Maria Westbroek are the subjects of this month’s feature interviews. There are also articles devoted to Wagner’s operas, a look at opera in the Scandinavian countries, and reviews from a few of the summer festivals, along with the standard news briefs, editorials, and CD/DVD reviews.

Interviews
...

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Live Performance Reviews – End of Season

- Offenbach: Les Contes d’Hoffmann – Theater an der Wien, Vienna
Conductor: Riccardo Frizza
Director: Roland Geyer
Cast: Arturo Chacón-Cruz, Marlis Petersen, John Relyea, Roxana Constantinescu, et. al.
...

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This double issue is primarily devoted to 2012 festival performances, with reviews and special articles. But there are also a few feature interviews, and, as usual, some news briefs and a selection of CD/DVD reviews.

Interviews
...

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Tenor Bryan Hymel, who was interviewed by Opera Lively in early summer, is this month’s “cover boy” and the subject of one of the feature interviews. There are also live performance reviews from Bayreuth, Salzburg, and many of the other summer festivals.

Interviews

Bryan Hymel

Some interview highlights:
...

Tenor Saimir Pirgu is the featured artist in this issue, which also takes a look at the new 2012-13 season with recommendations of “don’t miss” productions.

Interview – Saimir Pirgu

According to the interviewer, editor-in-chief Ashutosh Khandekar, Pirgu is on the verge of an immensely successful career. In fact, the story’s sub-heading touts him as standing “to inherit the title of ‘The World’s Greatest Tenor.’” Some highlights:
...