Articles & Interviews

The master list of news, features and interviews

San Francisco Opera in 2021/22

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An unusual 2021-2022 season for San Francisco Opera

SFO’s new music director Eun Sun Kim (c) Marc Olivier Le Blanc

San Francisco Opera’s upcoming 2021-2022 season looks very different from anything they have ever done. It is not the repertory – which consists of familiar works by Mozart, Beethoven and Puccini and a reprise of one of its more successful contemporary commissions – but the format.

Live performances in the War Memorial Opera House for the first time since December 2019 feature five fully staged operas and two concerts. For the first time in the company’s history, operas will not be run in repertory. Instead, they are spread out to allow three weeks between opera runs, a concession to COVID-19 protocols.

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The London Opera Company’s Die Walküre at St John’s Church, Waterloo, on Saturday 3 July

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The London Opera Company will perform a new semi-staged production of Wagner’s Die Walküre at St John’s Church, Waterloo, London on Saturday 3 July 2021, with a company of top-flight international singers and musicians. The London Opera Company formed last summer to give fellow musicians and international opera singers who had lost their work to … Read more

Leeds Lieder four-day festival – 17 to 20 June 2021

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Leeds Lieder, the finest festival of art song in the North, returns from 17-20 June 2021

Its most diverse and ambitious programme yet is hosted for the first time by Leeds Town Hall and director Joseph Middleton has devised a covid-secure festival celebrating the multifaceted art of song. The programme includes appearances from Alice Coote, Mark Padmore, Iestyn Davies, James Gilchrist, Roderick Williams, Carolyn Sampson, Ema Nikolovska, William Thomas and pianists Graham Johnson, Iain Burnside, Anna Tilbrook, Joseph Middleton and Christian Blackshaw.

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Pittsburgh Opera in 2020/21

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Pittsburgh Opera announces 2021/2022 season

Pittsburgh Opera will be returning to larger venues in its upcoming season, beginning with Mozart’s The Magic Flute in November. During the height of the COVID pandemic, Pittsburgh Opera was able to combine live performances with limited, socially-distanced audiences and live-streams of each production. For the 2021/2022 season, the company will be returning to the Benedum Center and August Wilson African American Cultural Center, while also staging operas at its headquarters.

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The Hallé’s Summer Season has six live concerts (3 June to 22 July 2021)

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THE HALLÉ IS BACK! LIVE AT THE BRIDGEWATER HALL

The Hallé is delighted to announce its Summer Season of six live, socially distanced concerts in Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall. Each programme will be performed twice at 2.15pm and 7pm, to allow as many people as possible to hear the orchestra live once more. Three of these concerts (3 & 17 June, 22 July) will also be available for online broadcast in the same style as the Hallé’s hugely successful Winter Season.

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An important premiere at the Three Choirs Festival – Gabriel Jackson introduces The World Imagined

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Gabriel Jackson’s new The World Imagined

When Covid restrictions caused the cancellation of the 2020 Three Choirs Festival I regretted that decision on many levels. One of my main disappointments was that the cancellation deprived us of the opportunity to hear the world premiere of a major new work by Gabriel Jackson, The World Imagined. Happily, it has been possible to reschedule the premiere and include it in the plans for the 2021 Three Choirs Festival. I have been an admirer of this composer’s music, especially his choral works, for many years now so the prospect of such a significant new score is enticing. Consequently, I seized the chance to discuss the new work with Gabriel, albeit in a socially distanced way.

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s t a r g a z e – the contemporary orchestral collective – present a Post-Beethoven-Fest (10 and 11 June 2021)

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Post-Beethoven-Fest 2021 

For the third time since 2014, contemporary orchestral collective s t a r g a z e present one of their trademark ‘weekender’ festivals of new collaborative work and genre-defying commissions in the liminal realms of new classical, electronic and alternative music The Post-Beethoven-Fest 2021 will be Recorded and streamed from Volksbühne Berlin, 10 and 11 June, 8pm (CET)

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City of Birmingham Symphony links up with marquee.tv to show unseen and existing performances

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CITY OF BIRMINGHAM SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA PARTNERS WITH MARQUEE TV

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) is delighted to announce it has agreed a two-year partnership with the leading arts streaming service, Marquee TV.

Launching on Saturday 5 June, six broadcasts of previously unseen and existing CBSO performances will be released throughout June and July on marquee.tv. Featuring repertoire ranging from Nielsen to Gilbert and Sullivan, the broadcasts will enable global audiences to experience the CBSO, building on the orchestra’s work throughout the pandemic to connect digitally with music-lovers worldwide.

The six-concert series will premiere five previously unseen performances including music by Clyne, Coleridge-Taylor, Dvořák, Glinka, Glazunov, Shaw, Mendelssohn, Nielsen, Saint-Saëns, Sibelius, Takemitsu and Tchaikovsky conducted by Ryan Bancroft, Jonathan Bloxham, Ben Gernon, John Wilson and Kazuki Yamada. Stephen Hough performs Mendelssohn’s First Piano Concerto with Alpesh Chauhan and in a special programme of British light music, John Wilson joins the orchestra to shine a spotlight on Coates, Delius, Elgar, Gilbert and Sullivan and Haydn Wood.

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