Saint-Denis, France: Festival de Saint-Denis celebrates French artists

[caption id="attachment_77" align="aligncenter" width="810"] Photo by Alastair Muir[/caption] The ultimate femme fatale returns in a staging by the provocative director Calixto Bieito in his U.S. opera debut, which opens San Francisco Opera's summer season. SAN FRANCISCO--Hailed as "gritty and fierce", Bieito’s vision of the classic opera sets it in 1970s Spain, post-Franco's rule has been hailed as "tough, dark....and intelligent".  The production includes SF Opera favorites Irene Roberts and Ginger Costa-Jackson double cast as the gypsy heroine and Brian Jagde as Don Jose. It also marks the debut of many of its cast and its two conductors Carlo Montanaro and Jordi Benacer. All performances will be held at the War Memorial Opera House on Van Ness Avenue.  May 27 - July 2, 2016    

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CHARLESTON--The Spoleto Festival kicks off its 40th Anniversary season performing the Gershwin classic in the city which inspired librettist DuBose Heyward. David Herskovits, whose Mamba's Daughters sold out during 1999's Spoleto Festival, returns at the helm of this production. Scenic designer Johnathan Lee's sets promise to evoke the feel of early Charleston that Heyward drew from. Portraying the titular, troubled pair is “ravishing, rolling baritone" (Opera News) Lester Lynch and “radiant and compelling" (The Washington Post) Alyson Cambridge. This Porgy is a fitting celebration of Charleston and its rich history on the occasion of the Festival's 40th birthday.

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Spoleto USA and US Opera Premiere: Beloved Fairy Tale Comes to Charleston
Hans Christian Andersen’s sobering tale depicts a poor girl on a snowy street, lighting matches for a few seconds of fleeting warmth in her final hour. In his opera, avantgarde composer Helmut Lachenmann explores the girl’s last moments as she gazes into the dreams and memories conjured by the flames. Co-Directors Phelim McDermott of award-winning improvised theater makers Improbable, and Mark Down of master-puppeteers Blind Summit Theatre cast extraordinary shadows to make a show that almost isn’t there, lit by the light of a match and performed at the speed of scissors. Elevated on a platform and encircling the audience, 106 members of the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra perform this astonishingly evocative score, full of clicks, crackles, knocks, and hisses, under the baton of Resident Conductor and Director of Orchestral Activities John Kennedy. Lachenmann departs from traditional performance techniques in order to create a frigid atmosphere—a nearly meteorological effect—both animating the match girl’s world and contemplating the coldness of a society that would let a child freeze.

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Rheingold Opens Chicago Lyric's Ring Cycle CHICAGO-- The Lyric kicks off its ambitious Ring cycle, Wagner's four-part masterpiece filled with mermaids, dragons, a golden ring, and, of course, love. To this day, it is considered one of the greatest achievments of Western culture and continues to influence writers, composers, and fantasy-lovers alike. Das Rheingold, the first of the cycle, will be conducted by Lyric favorite Sir Andrew David and directed (along with the remaining operas in the cycle) by director David Pountney. In Rheingold, a magic ring that promises its owner unlimited power is stolen by Alberich. When the king of the gods, Wotan, tries to usurp the ring from Alberich a thrilling drama ensues that can only be seen to be believed.

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Jan. 13 and 15, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts: Full details

With a 2015 release titled Follow, Poet, Mohammed Fairouz became the youngest composer in the history of Deutsche Grammophon to have an album dedicated to his or her work. Such milestones keep coming rapidly for this unusually prolific 31-year-old creative voice, whose music draws on multiple cultures and looks both backward and forward. During two already sold-out performances, the Washington National Opera will present the world premiere of Fairouz's second opera, The Dictator’s Wife, based on a bitingly satirical play by the work’s Pakistani librettist, Mohammed Hanif. The hour-long opera centers on the dictator’s wife, who is forced to answer for her cowardly husband’s atrocities. The Dictator's Wife is part of the fifth season of the National Opera’s American Opera Initiative, which also includes a presentation of three new 20-minute operas on Jan. 14: What Gets Kept, by North Carolina composer Frances Pollock and librettist Vanessa Moody, about a family preparing for the death of a loved one; Adam, by composer Zach Redler and librettist Jason Carlson, about the creation of the world's first sentient artificial human; and Lifeboat, by composer Matthew Peterson and librettist Emily Roller, about three strangers stranded at sea.