Tabla de contenidos para Autumn 2025 en Opera Now

This issue of Opera Now has a firm focus on American opera, highlighting a number of individuals making an impact in the States. Our cover star Miles Mykkanen speaks to Hannah Edgar about his musical theatre roots, founding a festival in his rural hometown and taking on major roles in contemporary operas at the Met Opera this season. Last autumn during my visit to New York, I sat down with conductor Daniela Candillari, Music Director of the Opera Theater of Saint Louis to learn more about her journey to becoming an in-demand conductor of new opera. She speaks about the impact her upbringing in Serbia and Slovenia has had on her dedicated work ethic, as well as growing up around her opera singing grandmother’s teaching studio. One of Candillari’s recent…

More than 600 young performers from Waltham Forest came together in June to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Bizet’s Carmen, in a special production titled This Is Carmen. The event included members of the Little Choir of Joy, Waltham Forest Youth Orchestra, and All the Young Dudes Guitar Group, as well as a massed choir from 17 local primary schools. The production, created and directed by Italian soprano and choir leader Maya Sapone, was a collaborative effort between Waltham Forest Music Service and the Royal Ballet and Opera. It aimed to introduce young people to the musical and storytelling traditions of opera. The retelling of Carmen explored the life of Bizet and the creation of his masterpiece, first performed in 1875. This Is Carmen marks the third opera project undertaken…

The premiere of Rene Orth’s asylumbased opera, 10 Days in a Madhouse, shook Philadelphia in September 2023. The set was bleak and circular, with the orchestra out of sight, suspended above the stage, while the singers performed below. I was captivated by the production, but most of all how the music didn’t fall apart in spite of this obvious physical barrier. A few days after the premiere, the composer of 10 Days Rene Orth wrote on her Instagram: ‘The reviews for 10 Days have all been amazing but there’s a couple of people who haven’t been highlighted or commended enough, in my humble opinion. There is no way in the world this whole thing could’ve happened without our literally genius conductor, Daniela Candillari … Daniela’s musical interpretation is 99 per…

UK FRINGE By Robert Thicknesse One of the top things about the fringe opera scene is how it’s not just about doing standard shows on a smaller scale, but actually celebrates the vast range available. Bampton, Hampstead Garden Opera, Blackheath Halls, University College Opera, Gothic Opera… without these, so many (often wrongly) forgotten pieces would never get their moment in the sun.,. New Sussex Opera, very much part of that list, took an unknown opera by Camille Saint-Saëns around the south of England, and performed it in great style, but you couldn’t call the houses packed out. I caught The Silver Bell (Le timbre d’argent), a thing Saint-Saëns tinkered with for 50 years after its composition, in Winchester. And it’s a real eye-opener – as the 2017 Opéra-Comique revival, and…

How did you enter this career? I come from a small city in Greece called Sykia and we have a beautiful ancient Greek theatre, so I joined the amateur theatre team when I was 12. I did acting, choreography, set and costumes and by 16, I thought ‘OK, I want to be a set and costume designer!’ Did you grow up in an artistic household? Yes and no. My dad is a pharmacist, so no. But my mum had an artistic eye, and she had a sensibility about art. So, once she realised I liked art, she tried to expose me as much as she could by having opera playing or by taking me to concerts, the theatre, or to whatever was available. Where did you study? I’ve had a…

Congratulations on winning the 2025 Concours musical international de Montréal! Tell us about how you found the process of the competition. It was a rollercoaster – full of crazy ups and downs. My pianist, Yuriko Watanabe, told me about the competition about a year earlier when we first met at the Britten Pears Young Artist Programme. We’d just been partnered for a recital and hit it off instantly. I didn’t think much more about the competition until I got a reminder email that applications were open. I submitted a very last-minute application – literally on the day of the deadline – and somehow found a pianist willing to record with me at the 11th hour. (Not a process I recommend!) This prize isn’t just about prestige. The scholarship makes a…

Bass-baritone and director John Savournin has been appointed as CEO and Artistic Director of Waterperry Opera Festival, replacing Guy Verrall-Withers, who leaves in September to join The Grange Festival. Savournin joins Waterperry from his current position of CEO and Artistic Director of Charles Court Opera. Newcastle’s Tyne Theatre and Opera House has announced a conference, Opera Unplugged, which will take place 3-5 September. The conference features a keynote from Sir Thomas Allen, a special presentation by Tommaso Sabbatini on the meticulous editing of a landmark 1903 Tosca at the Paris Opéra Comique, and Hannah Scott’s exploration of Scottish identity expressed through costume on the Parisian operatic stage. South Korean baritone Geon Kim has won the 43rd International Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition in Bern. The final on 21 June saw…

ON SALE 28 OCT JULIA BULLOCK The American soprano debuting at the Royal Opera in October speaks to Jessica Duchen about her career, life on stage and perspective on the landscape of the arts. ALSO • The Lambeth-based Pegasus Opera brings together operatic excellence, community and a commitment to the next generation • Marking 25 years of Jake Heggie’s landmark opera Dead Man Walking, we speak to the mezzos who have defined the role of Sister Helen through the years • We go behind the scenes at Curtis Opera School in its 100th year, meeting those in charge and learning about the secrets to its success • As Scottish Opera prepares for the world premiere of The Great Wave we preview the production, telling the story of Katsushika Hokusai and…

This year marks 120 years since the first performance of Richard Strauss’s Salome, an opera that stunned audiences and redefined what could be depicted in musical drama. Premiered at the Königliches Opernhaus in Dresden in the winter of 1905, the work was immediately controversial for its depiction of violence, eroticism, and biblical figures. Oscar Wilde’s play Salome, on which Strauss based his opera, was not without its own controversy. Due to British censors forbidding biblical depictions on stage, his play was banned in London, forcing Wilde to produce it in France (and in French). Strauss saw potential in Wilde’s play, calling it ‘a poem with symphonic development’. Even before rehearsals began, the opera was causing unease. Marie Wittich, the soprano who created the role of Salome, refused to perform the…

It wasn’t often that I had the opportunity to attend a Visconti-Schippers production of an opera. One of their most stunning was the performance of Giacomo Puccini’s Manon Lescaut at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy in the summer of 1973. Rarely had I seen such a sumptuous and memorable performance of an opera. The enviable cast was directed by Luchino Visconti. His scenes and costumes were insuperable, astonishing, and a triumph of his customary splendid taste. But when Schippers stepped to the podium, raising his baton, hypnotising with the force of his personality and his elegance of gesture, it was no longer just a striking presentation. It turned into one of the most mesmerising performances I have ever had the pleasure to attend. Schippers’s perception of Puccini’s…

As I sit down to speak to Francesca Zambello, Artistic Director of Washington National Opera (WNO), I touch on the ongoing political context surrounding the company, or rather the Kennedy Center, the institution which houses the WNO. ‘How we’re coping after the coup d’état?’ she wryly responds. Zambello is referring to when US President Donald Trump seized control of the Kennedy Center. He ousted David Rubenstein and placed himself as Chair of the board as well as firing Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter. He replaced 13 other board members with Republican choices, for example, Susie Wiles, his Chief of Staff, and Usha Vance, the Vice President’s wife. He appointed as interim Executive Director Richard Grenell, who served as both Ambassador to Germany and acting Director of National Intelligence in Trump’s…

The Great Wave (Dai Fujikura) Where: Scottish Opera, Glasgow Director: Satoshi Miyagi Conductor: Stuart Stratford Dai Fujikura’s opera, to a libretto by Harry Ross, is an extravagant story about artist Katsushika Hokusai, his creative triumphs and struggles, and his famous woodblock print The Great Wave off Kanagawa. Opens: 12 February 2026 An Enemy of the People (Francisco Coll) Where: Teatro Real, Madrid Director: Àlex Rigola Conductor: Francisco Coll Based on Henrik Ibsen’s realist play of the same name, Francisco Coll’s new opera promises to be a political work about the risk of democracy degenerating into demagoguery. Marta Fontanals-Simmons creates the role of Marta (Aslaksen in Ibsen’s play). Opens: 12 February 2026 Theory of Flames (Michel van der Aa) Where: Dutch National Opera, Amsterdam Director: Michel van der Aa Conductor: Elena…

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Music Director of Volksoper Wien Ben Glassberg has announced he will be leaving the company after two and a half years of collaboration due to illness. In a statement, Artistic Director Lotte de Beer said, ‘Ben Glassberg brought many outstanding artistic moments to Volksoper Wien during his time as a Music Director. We wish him all the best for the future.’ Glassberg added: ‘It has been a privilege to be able to share in groundbreaking music as Music Director and before that as principal guest conductor of the Volksoper Wien, and I have great respect for Lotte de Beer and the entire Volksoper team. I have tried very hard to be open with my colleagues and friends about my current mental health challenges. Thankfully, I am making great progress and…

I like the phrase ‘Field to Fork’. It encapsulates the journey. I’m happy to be reminded that the food I’m eating started life somewhere – ideally in the ground and not in a factory – and that there’s a whole ecosystem in play. In musical terms, perhaps we could talk about from scheme to sound, from plan to performance, from concept to concert? When it’s something totally new – the commissioning of a new work – where does the journey start, and what’s the route map? Last September, I gave the world premiere of a new orchestral song cycle by Helen Grime with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth. This detail isn’t meant as a biographical plug, but because all the elements here formed part of the…

Some people box up parts of themselves and pack them neatly away. Like Sam Clay in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, who walks away from his relationship with a man out of fear of persecution. Or the Groom in Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence, whose nuptials dredge up his connection to a tragic school shooting years earlier. Not Miles Mykkanen. Singing both those roles at the Met next season, the 34-year-old tenor is a proud ‘ Yooper’– that is, a resident of Michigan’s remote Upper Peninsula, or UP. He returned to his hometown of Bessemer (population 1,800) during the pandemic and, despite living out of a suitcase most months, hasn’t really left. He founded the region’s summertime Emberlight Festival, which he still leads as Artistic Director. And while most people…

When a fresh-faced 25-year-old George Frideric Handel arrived in London in 1710, he was stepping into a new world of music performance and consumption. At the heart of a global empire and the rumblings of the industrial revolution on the horizon, Great Britain was entertaining an unprecedented rise in the middle class quite unlike anywhere else in Europe. All these people needed something to spend their newly acquired disposable cash on, and the latest Italian operas fit the bill. It only took one year before Handel’s opera Rinaldo was staged at The Queen’s Theatre in London’s Haymarket (now the site of His Majesty’s Theatre). It was the first opera in Italian written for London audiences and complete with enchanted gardens, airborne chariots and a whole flock of live birds –…

Performance runs starting in August and running to October 2025. Listings are in alphabetical order by city within each country heading. M = Matinee performance. Comprehensive Worldwide Listings are available at www.operabase.com UNITED KINGDOM LEEDS OPERA NORTH operanorth.co.uk Susanna | Handel LEEDS GRAND THEATRE OCT 04, 11, 20, 22 (&NOV IN MANCHESTER) Stage director Olivia Fuchs Conductor Johanna Soller Set & costume Designer Zahra Mansouri CAST Susanna Anna Dennis Joacim James Hall First Elder Colin Judson Chelsias Matthew Brook GLASGOW SCOTTISH OPERA scottishopera.org.uk L'heure Espagnole/The Bear | Ravel/Walton HADDINGTON SEP 04; THEATRE ROYAL GLASGOW OCT 18, 22 Stage director Jacopo Spirei Conductor Alexandra Cravero Designer Kenneth Macleod CAST Concepción Lea Shaw Yelena Ivanovna Popova Chloe Harris Luka Edward Jowle Torquemada Jamie MacDougall La bohème | Puccini THEATRE ROYAL GLASGOW OCT 11, 15, 21,…

My journey with mental health has been long, complex and deeply personal. It began in childhood. From a very young age, I was relentlessly bullied at school. My high voice, my gestures, the way I expressed myself – these things made me a target. I was mocked, isolated, and made to feel like I didn’t belong, simply for being who I am. Those experiences left a lasting impact. They planted seeds of selfdoubt and shame that I carried with me for years. I struggled to accept myself. I internalised the belief that there was something wrong with me, that I needed to change in order to be loved, to feel safe, to be accepted. As I grew older, I turned to music – specifically opera – as a space where…