Veteran opera manager Anthony Freud has led the Welsh National Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, and most recently the Lyric Opera of Chicago. This summer, he is retiring and returning to his home in London. On a Zoom call, we looked back at his long, varied career in opera. Freud spoke with practiced eloquence about […]

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Sam Taskinen recently celebrated the premiere of a new staging of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold,” playing the giant Fasolt, in Erfurt, Germany. Possessing a warm, sonorous bass-baritone, she has sung many of the important roles for her voice type: Fra Melitone in Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino,” Kaspar in Weber’s “Der Freischütz,” and Angelotti in Puccini’s […]

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200 years ago, Schubert completed his sleek and touching song cycle “Die schöne Müllerin.” When tenor and lieder expert Christoph Prégardien sings the work, his voice has a lean tone and a silvery shimmer; each verse seems to flow out of him, both freshly invented and fully formed. Prégardien’s voice embodies Schubert’s actual protagonist: a […]

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“When I was at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, I was so startled that all the singers were running around and doing anything other than what I could see seems necessary,” Mark Sampson, a bass and the founder and artistic director of the Berlin Opera Academy (BOA), tells me. “And they were too […]

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“Kateryna,” a new opera by Ukrainian composer Alexander Rodin, was scheduled to premiere in Odessa at the end of March 2022. Then Russia invaded Ukraine and the opera house had to temporarily close down. Against all odds, rehearsals resumed in the summer. Directed by Oksana Taranenko, the production celebrated its opening night on September 17 […]

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For a long time, the world of opera was blindingly white—until soprano Camilla Williams became the first Black singer to perform on a major American opera stage. In 1946, she made her debut at the New York City Opera as Madame Butterfly, opening a door that had been closed to people of color up until […]

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