Tabla de contenidos para Summer 2025 en Opera Now

Two weeks ago I was looking for a singer to write a piece for the mental health column at the back of the magazine. I did my usual research, but struggled to find any more singers, beyond the few I knew about, who had been open about their mental health online. In a slight panic, I decided to take to social media, asking whether anyone would be interested in writing a piece and sharing their story. Within hours I was overwhelmed by singers who wanted to share. It made me wonder: was it because the mental health of singers is at an all-time low, or that the culture has changed and people now feel able to speak openly about what they’ve been through? I think it’s mainly the latter. Opera…

ON SALE 31 JULY MILES MYKKANEN The Finnish-American tenor prepares for his Metropolitan Opera debut in Mason Bates’ world premiere The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. He shares his journey to singing on the world stage, setting up his music festival and living closely to his beliefs and identity. ALSO • Conductor Daniela Candillari explores her career in new opera, debuting in London and leading the Opera Theatre of St Louis • We visit Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute’s Opera School to explore the unique programme on offer for young singers • London-based Gothic Opera is our small company focus as the Halloween season approaches • Our top picks of the worldwide 2025-26 season www.operanow.co.uk…

Nigerian American baritone Babatunde Akinboboye began posting his fusion opera-hip hop videos on social media in 2018. Following a viral video, Akinboboye set his sights on advocating for both this new genre and his own love of opera. Akinboboye’s childhood was punctuated by his love of hip-hop, but then unexpectedly joining a high school choir class lead to a dedication to opera that has defined his career. Today, Akinboboye is an advocate for performance of art song and operatic works written by African, and African American composers. With more than 500,000 Instagram followers, he creates educational online content telling the stories of operatic icons such as Jessye Norman, Leontyne Price and Grace Bumbry, as well as stories of the composers behind the world’s best-loved operas.…

I write this column at the end of the most intense week of opera I have experienced for a decade. In seven days, I saw three full-scale new productions from three opera companies in three opera houses. It started on the Monday with the Danish National Opera’s staging of Poul Schierbeck’s Fête galante – the first complete performance of this 1931 romantic farce for 65 years. It continued two days later with Peter Grimes at The Gothenburg Opera. And it wrapped up on the Sunday with the biggest, longest opera from a composer not known for his brevity: Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the Royal Danish Opera. Some readers may regularly put themselves through weeks like that and plenty of colleagues do. But it’s rare for me. I left London…

If you want an aerial view of the US opera scene, Marc Scorca is your man. For the last 35 years, he has served as president and CEO of Opera America – a membership organisation comprised of more than 600 opera companies, educational institutions and other opera adjacent entities – but has recently announced his retirement. What better time, then, to find out what he sees from his perch. I met up with Scorca on a warm March afternoon in the library of the National Opera Center, a well-0rganised nest of offices and rehearsal rooms plus a compact concert hall tucked away in an office building on Seventh Avenue in New York City. The facility, which opened in 2012, is but one of Scorca’s myriad achievements at Opera America. ‘You’re…

UK FRINGE By Robert Thicknesse The opening fanfares of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Te Deum will forever evoke the camp madness of the Eurovision Song Contest. If you can conceive such a thing, David Bates and La Nuova Musica made them sound even more exciting than that – even with a band of only 18. With Elsa Bradley battering away on the timps and a couple of trumpets, this was a rousing start to a Wigmore concert that gave us a good slice of a far too-little-heard composer. The Te Deum was a curtain raiser for the hour-long dramatic cantata La descente d’Orphée aux enfers, in a strong and gorgeous performance with the band slimmed down even further. Charpentier was one of the composers forever oppressed by the shadow (and not just…

Don Carlo Verdi Orfeo C230163 Poor Horst Stein. Apparently, the conductor received hate mail for weeks before the 1970 premiere of Don Carlo at the Vienna Staatsoper simply because he wasn’t Karajan, and then to his great distress he was booed offstage at his curtain call. They grew to love him – I saw him there many years later enjoying great adulation. And his conducting on this live recording is very good indeed, with both vigour and pathos. I know it is deeply unfashionable to enjoy the 1884 four-act Milan version of Don Carlo, but there is something satisfying in having enjoyed Carlo’s opening aria, his duet with Rodrigo and then Eboli’s ‘Veil Song’ before half an hour is up. Franco Corelli is on top form in the title role,…

What do you love about composing for the stage? Fundamentally I love writing for the stage for the same reason that I love conducting it: it demands so much more than sheer craftsmanship or skill. It also requires humility, collaboration, and a willingness to be hugely self-critical. Music can absolutely enhance text, add rhythm and character, and drive a story – but the relationship must be carefully controlled. It is this element of problem-solving that I love most. Why do you think opera is so suited to political satire? Opera has had a long and enormously fruitful relationship with satire. Many of the satires still thrive today because the cold, hard truth is that nothing much has changed; the characters and events are just as relevant now as they were…

Guy Verrall-Withers, founder of Oxfordshire’s Waterperry Opera Festival, is the new director of audiences and impact at The Grange Festival. The new role is to showcase The Grange’s‘commitment to growing audiences’ and follows the arrival of chief executive Tyler Stoops, who joined in July 2024. Musicians from more than 20 orchestras across the UK have signed an open letter urging the government to reform copyright law and ensure streaming royalties are paid to all performers – including non-featured orchestral players. Spearheaded by the Musicians’ Union, the letter casts a light on the financial situation facing British musicians and calls for immediate action from the minister of state for media, tourism and creative industries. Welsh National Opera has reported substantial improvement in pain management, mental and emotional health, and overall quality…

Performing arts and entertainment union Equity has announced that its members in the Welsh National Opera Chorus have again voted in favour of industrial action. The decision is the result of a re-ballot of the chorus, who will continue to take action short of a strike. The re-ballot allows the chorus to continue industrial action in its dispute with WNO management over proposals to cut the size of the full-time chorus, and make unsustainable cuts to its terms and conditions after the original six-month mandate for action expired. WNO Equity members voted 95 per cent in favour of action short of strike and 91 per cent in favour of strike action on a 100 per cent turnout. Equity’s Wales official Simon Curtis said: ’We have been clear from the very…

This year is the 400th anniversary of the premiere of Francesca Caccini’s opera La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina. Although not her only written composition for the stage, it is the only one known to have survived in its entirety to the present day. Caccini’s opera is therefore considered to be the oldest surviving opera written and published by a woman. Nicknamed ‘La Cecchina’, she was born to a musical family in September 1587. Her father, Giulio Caccini, was a prolific composer and innovator within Italian Baroque music, and her sister, Settimia, was a famous soprano, who sang alongside Francesca at the wedding of Maria de’ Medici and Henry IV of France. Francesca Caccini closely studied music with her father at the Medici court in Florence and became a colleague…

On Tuesday 30 January 1996, with three friends from work, I attended Scottish Opera’s production of La traviata in Theatre Royal Glasgow. I had already been told that I was in for a treat as performing the role of Violetta was Claire Rutter. Sitting in the front row of the Dress Circle I don’t think I was fully prepared for the immersive experience of a live operatic performance. Live opera is so much more than the dazzling arias and the sweeping music of the orchestra. It’s a feast for all the senses, but within all of that, some performers do stand out and truly come alive on stage. Claire Rutter as Violetta on that night was just such a case, she physically grew taller and lit up when she sang…

The generously moustachioed Gabriel Fauré featuring in the august pages of Opera Now may seem like an imposter. Highly regarded for his songs and chamber music – and the most consoling of Requiems – Fauré is not exactly renowned for his operatic output, which totals a single work. Inspired by the final pages of Homer’s Odyssey, Fauré’s Pénélope is a true operatic rarity. However, 100 years after the composer’s death, the Bayerische Staatsoper (Bavarian State Opera) is putting that right this summer with its first ever staging. It is being directed by Andrea Breth, a regular at Staatsoper Berlin and Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. I begin by asking her why she thinks the opera is so rarely performed. ‘Fauré is especially known as a composer of art songs,’ she responds, ‘and not…

One of the first things we are taught as performers is to leave our problems at the door. It makes sense. In the room, we are a diverse group of people with a job to do and a schedule to meet. Outside of the room, we express our wins and cast shade over our losses. The phrase ‘nailing it’ rings in my ears from that decade of my twenties. A stoic pursuit of excellence and a relentless work ethic was celebrated as we scrambled to our idea of the top. How we really felt laid very deep beneath the surface. I began performing as a child after being picked to sing the solos in the Christmas nativity at primary school. I decided, then, that this was my dream, that this…

Actor Ralph Fiennes is to direct a new production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin for Opéra national de Paris in February 2026 as part of the company’s new season. A longtime connoisseur of the work of Pushkin, on whose work the opera is based, Feinnes appeared in the title role of the film Onegin (1999), directed by his sister Martha, with Liv Tyler as Tatyana Larina. Russian baritone Boris Pinkhasovich will appear in the title role of the opera, alongside Ruzan Mantashyan as Tatyana, Marvic Monreal as Olga, and Bogdan Volkov as Lensky. Music direction will initially be by the Soviet-born American conductor Semyon Bychkov, followed by Case Scaglione, making his Palais Garnier debut. Other new productions announced include Antonia Bembo’s Ercole amante in June 2026 and the completion of Calixto…

The Royal Ballet and Opera has unveiled its 2025-26 season, marking a new chapter for the organisation with world premieres, new commissions, and high-profile revivals across opera and ballet. It will be the first season under Jakub Hrůša as music director of The Royal Opera, joined by Speranza Scappucci as principal guest conductor and Koen Kessels as music director of the Royal Ballet. Antonio Pappano is set to return to conduct the third instalment of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, Siegfried. The season opens with a new production of Tosca – replacing the long-running Jonathan Kent production – conducted by Hrůša, who will also lead the Royal Opera’s first-ever staging of Janáček’s The Makropulos Case, a revival of Peter Grimes, and a concert of music by Bartók and Dvořák. The Linbury Theatre…

John Nelson, the conductor acclaimed for his interpretations of the epic works of Berlioz – including award-winning recordings – as well as other large-scale works by Bach and Beethoven, has died aged 83. Born in 1941 in Costa Rica to Protestant missionaries, he studied at Juilliard with conductor Jean Morel, receiving the Irving Berlin Conducting Prize, before becoming music director of the Greenwich Philharmonia in Connecticut and the New Jersey Pro Arte Chorale, and also joining the conducting staff of the New York Metropolitan Opera. His career took a huge step in 1972, however, with the beginning of a life-long dedication to the music of Berlioz. Nelson and Matthew Epstein co-produced the New York premiere of Les Troyens at Carnegie Hall, in the wake of which the New York City…

Andrey Tikhomirov – composer Is classical opera in danger? Many optimists among opera lovers and professionals would say no. Those worried about the future usually speak of a lack of funding for theatres, empathetic productions and the quality of vocals. Opera is first and foremost a work of art. In its heyday, it was a living, evolving art form where the composer’s high professional skill combined with the direct emotional impact on the audience. In the 20th century this principle was broken. Theatre managers realised that the flow of contemporary operas appealing to audiences had dried up, and concentrated on the standard classic repertoire. But musical language is subject to change from generation to generation, just like any other language. In my opinion, what the art of opera needs today…

Many artistic directors will tell you that while string quartets give performances of varying quality to consistently full audiences, even some of the most celebrated song recitalists walk out to empty seats. In 2016, Bachtrack described song recitals as ‘the simplest and cheapest form of vocal concert to organise, but artistically the most exigent’. This is a problem for those of us who both sing for our supper and love the repertoire. Yet, wrestling with the idea, I can see there’s much to unpack. What constitutes a song? Why are audiences accepting of some styles and not others? Why do many composers, whose instrumental music is core orchestral fare, find that their songs are relegated to the edge of ‘standard’ repertoire? Is it a language or performance issue? Whatever the…

What more Wagnerian reason could there be for a soprano to drop out of Die Walküre than being pregnant with twins? Lise Davidsen’s appearance as Sieglinde in Barrie Kosky’s new production for the Royal Opera House had been hotly anticipated; her imminent happy event meant that the theatre had to find a replacement. And here she is: Natalya Romaniw, the Welsh soprano whose operatic trajectory has been studded with stellar performances from Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta at Opera Holland Park and Rusalka at Garsington to Tosca herself at the ROH, plus the role of Helena in Mark-Anthony Turnage’s recent smash-hit, Festen. ‘I’m not one of these big, aspiring Wagnerian singers,’ Romaniw insists, ‘so I felt, at first, slightly fraudulent, because most people would give their right arm to sing this role.’ She…

When do you start designing for an opera production? An opera house invites a director to lead a production, and the director brings in their creative team – designer, costume designer, lighting, movement, and sometimes a dramaturg. I’m usually the second person through the door. Did you grow up in a creative household? Definitely a visually literate one. My dad was a modernist architect, and he was especially involved in repurposing old buildings. I grew up in Bristol and spent a lot of time visiting old buildings with him – thinking about who might have used them and what those spaces meant to people. That’s where my visual storytelling probably began. My mum is a ceramicist, and we lived in a house my dad designed and built. Were you always…