Where possible we will try and update our news page with all the latest information about what is happening in the UK opera scene.

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ENO 2013/14 season

English National Opera announced their new season this morning, boasting ten new (or ‘new to the UK’) productions and four classic revivals. Film director and Monty Python veteran Terry Gilliam returns to ENO to lend his talent to a new production of Berlioz’s rarely performed Benvenuto Cellini, with the American rising star Corrine Winters (this season’s stunning Violetta) taking the role of Teresa – the cast also includes Michael Spyres in the title role and Willard White and will be conducted by ENO Music DirectorEdward Gardner. If it’s anywhere near as good as Gilliam’s wacky but brilliant Damnation of Faust then we should all be in for an extraordinary evening.

Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert

South African soprano Elizabeth Connell (1946 - 2012) was acclaimed for her performances of the great Strauss, Verdi and Wagner heroines. On Saturday 27 April a special concert to honour her memory will be held at St John's, Smith Square, with all proceeds being donated to the Musicians' Benevolent Fund as well as the Elizabeth Connell Prize, an annual award for young dramatic sopranos.

Jennifer Rowley speaks out

Jennifer Rowley, the replacement Isabelle who found herself replaced at short notice before the premiere of Laurent Pelly’s production of Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable at the Royal Opera House this season, has spoken out about what really happened.

Royal Opera unveils 2013-14 season

This morning the Royal Opera announced its plans for next season. While some of the productions and casts have been known for some time in opera press and blogging spheres, there’s always a frisson of excitement at the official unveiling of what lies ahead.

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Julia Lezhneva

On Thursday 7th March the exciting young Russian soprano Julia Lezhneva will make her London solo concert debut at St James's Church, Piccadilly in a special charity event with proceeds going towards Pushkin House, the London Russian cultural centre. Though only 23 years old, Ms Lezhneva has been building a very promising career since her professional debut five years ago which includes operatic appearances at Salzburg and La Monnaie as well as several recordings.

Massimo Giordano

Currently appearing at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, as Cavaradossi, tenor Massimo Giordano’s debut album will be released shortly. An exclusive BMG artist, the Italian tenor has recorded signature arias by Italian composers such as Verdi, Puccini and Giordano including arias from, among others, Don Carlo, Manon Lescaut and Andrea Chénier on a disc entitled ‘Amore e tormento’.

WNO 2013/14 season

Welsh National Opera continues its exploration of opera with themed seasons in 2013/14, turning the spotlight on to an infamous royal dynasty, women behaving badly and religion. Eight new productions including a World premiere and a British premiere will be performed as well as a special Welsh National Youth Opera celebration of Benjamin Britten’s centenary year. The Orchestra of WNO will also perform in the International Concert Series at St David’s Hall in Cardiff and at residencies at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.

WNO sets up summer camp at Covent Garden

Welsh National Opera announced today that it will perform in London in an exciting new collaboration with the Royal Opera House. An initial series of three operas will be seen in the Capital including the first London performances of Richard Ayres’s Peter Pan.

Over three years WNO will stage the productions in the main house starting in 2014 with Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron. This will be followed in 2015 with Peter Pan and there will be a new commission in 2016 to commemorate WNO’s 70^th birthday.

Royal Opera Live

On Monday 7th January, opera fans will have the chance to experience "unprecedented and unparalleled" access behind the scenes at Covent Garden as a live internet broadcast on The Space will show an entire day in the life of the opera house; including rehearsals for The Minotaur and the new Eugene Onegin, a masterclass with Sir Antonio Pappano, interviews with Sir John Tomlinson,Christine Rice, Harrison Birtwistle and Ryan Wigglesworth. Royal Opera Live culminates with an exclusive behind the scenes look at a performance of Act III of Die Walküre, which was recorded earlier in the season. The broadcast starts at 10.30am and finishes at 9.30pm and promises to provide a fascinating and informative insight into the world of The Royal Opera. Watch the trailer here.

2013 Glyndebourne Festival unveiled

Glyndebourne has announced details of its 2013 Season, the 79^th Festival, which marks the final year of Vladimir Jurowski’s 13 year tenure as Music Director. He will conduct a new production of Richard Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos directed by Katharina Thoma.

The year’s big anniversaries of Verdi, Wagner and Britten are all marked, with revivals of Falstaff and Billy Budd, plus a cinema screening of Tristan und Isolde.

Barbican Winter Season

This winter the Barbican Centre once again plays host to recitals by some of the greatest opera stars in the world today, starting with Latvian mezzo Elina Garanca who will be singing excerpts from Carmen as well as arias by Massenet, Tchaikovsky and Gounod on 2 October, accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra. On 15 November it’s the turn of the dazzling Cecilia Bartoli and the Kammerorchester Basel (programme to be confirmed), followed by America’s best-loved soprano Renée Fleming who will be performing Lieder by Mahler, Wolf, Arnold, Zemlinsky and Korngold on 9 December.

La traviata from Sydney Harbour

Recorded live in high-definition in March 2012, Opera Australia will be broadcasting Francesca Zambello's spectacular production of La traviata to cinemas in the UK and Ireland on Tuesday 31 July. Starring the dazzling Australian soprano Emma Matthews as the tragic Violetta, this open-air performance takes place on a floating stage in Sydney Harbour and promises to be a unique and very memorable event, complete with fireworks!

For details of participating cinemas and timings please click here

Torre del Lago Puccini Festival unveiled

Finally, after so much distress, and just two weeks before opening night, the programme of the fifty-eighth Puccini Festival of Torre del Lago was unveiled on the 7^th of July. I will not linger on the difficulties (deriving – in brief -from government aid that had been promised and then denied) that jeopardized the very existence of this edition of the Festival. This being Italy, a last minute solution is always found, among compromises of every kind: the original ambitious intention of presenting at least two new productions had to be scrapped and this year the Festival will present only old mise-en-scènes. It will also be the first time that a Verdi opera appears at the Puccini Festival, La traviata, a co-production with other Tuscan regional opera companies.

McVicar McKnighted

Congratulations to Scottish opera director David McVicar who receives a knighthood in the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Birthday Honours. About to direct Berlioz's epic Les Troyens for the first time at the Royal Opera House, McVicar is widely regarded as one of the UK's top directors, whose work is sought internationally.

Trojan Hoarse

After missing several recent engagements (and having to lip-synch at the Champions League final in Munich last week), Jonas Kaufmann has withdrawn from the eagerly anticipated new Royal Opera production of Les Troyens in June. Bryan Hymel, who had already joined rehearsals at Covent Garden, has been announced as a replacement Enée.

ENO unveils 2012-13 season

ENO recently scooped two Olivier Awards (which doubtless tasted even sweeter for being held at the Royal Opera House): the Best New Opera Production for Rameau’s Castor and Pollux and the Outstanding Achievement in Opera award for ‘The Breadth and Diversity of the Artistic Programme’. That breadth and diversity is there in spades for the 2012-13 season, unveiled this morning at the Coliseum. Another bold, risk-taking season lies ahead, headed by two new works, ensuring this is no Mickey Mouse season!

Opera at the BBC Proms

The unveiling of the annual BBC Proms prospectus is always a cause for anticipation, even if, operatically, some of the key events have been open secrets for some time. Among the ‘known unknowns’ is Glyndebourne’s Le nozze di Figaro on 28th August. Conducted by Robin Ticciati, there’s a strong cast led by Vito Priante (Figaro), Lydia Teuscher (Susanna), Sally Matthews soprano (Countess Almaviva) and Audun Iversen (Almaviva). Dinner jackets and tiaras at the ready!

Covent Garden 2012-13 season announcement

News and thoughts about the 2012-13 season from the Royal Opera, with full dates and casting information can be found here. The production of Rossini’s La donna del lago by Lluis Pasqual, a co-production with Paris and La Scala, has been scrapped after the disappointing reception it received and the Royal Opera has commissioned its own staging (oh that they had done the same with the Salzburg Rusalka!). John Fulljames now directs, with designs by Dick Bird. Starring Juan Diego Flórez, Joyce DiDonato, Colin Lee and a long-overdue House debut for Daniela Barcellona, it should be one of the musical highlights of the season.

Sight-reading help for iPad users

If your piano sight reading leaves a great deal to be desired then hope is at hand with a clever new iPad app which allows budding pianists to improve their sight reading skills while practising pieces from a library of over a thousand music samples of varying difficulty levels. SightRead4Piano was created by Dr Christopher Wiltshire of Wessar International in conjunction with the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music and various other examining boards, allowing piano students to download the official sight reading samples for each grade onto their iPad.

The app trains the brain and eye to achieve continuity and forces the pianist to keep going and constantly look ahead by quite literally making each bar disappear from the iPad screen as you play it. SightRead4Piano has been endorsed by the pianist Howard Shelley and goes on sale via the Apple app store at the end of January with average prices of less than £6 per grade. There are also plans to develop this interesting app for singers in the near future, as well as for guitar, strings, brass, woodwind and percussion.

WNO announces 2012-14 season

Welsh National Opera announced details of their 2012-2014 seasons at a press conference today, where new Chief Executive and Artistic DirectorDavid Pountney unveiled plans including eight ambitious new productions and emphasised “the importance of risk taking and adventure, in spite of the economic challenges lying ahead”.

Wagner fans will be treated to a new production ofLohengrin to celebrate the bi-centenary of the composer’s birth while bel canto enthusiasts have a Donizetti trilogy to look forward to in autumn 2013 with three new productions of the Tudor operasAnna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux.

A Knight at the Opera

Congratulations to Antonio Pappano, music director of The Royal Opera, who was awarded a knighthood for services to music in the 2012 New Year Honours list. Pappano, who celebrated his 52nd birthday yesterday (30th December), has been at the helm at Covent Garden since the 2002-3 season and is also music director of the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Rome. He has featured on BBC television during recent years, explaining the world of opera to a wider public.

Mirella Freni investigated over allegations of money laundering

Known to her fans as La Prudentissima, Legendary Italian soprano Mirella Freni is currently being investigated by the District Attorney's Office in Bologna over

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allegations of money laundering and exporting money abroad.

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Lehman pulls out of Met 'Siegfried'

Gary Lehman, who was due to sing the title role of Siegfried in Robert Lepage's new production at the Metropolitan Opera, has pulled out because of illness, the Met have announced. Jay Hunter Morris, who made his Met debut in 2007 and performed the role of Siegfried in San Francisco Opera's recent production, replaces Lehman. Morris made his Met debut in 2007 as Števa in Janácek's Jenufa. Siegfried is conducted by Fabio Luisi, and also features Deborah Voigt as Brünnhilde, Bryn Terfel as the Wanderer, Eric Owens as Alberich, Gerhard Siegel as Mime and Mojca Erdmann as the Woodbird. It opens on 27th October, with the 5th November matinee broadcast in cinemas in high definition.

Royal Opera: Cast change

Due to ill health, German bass-baritone Falk Struckmann has withdrawn from singing the title role in the Royal Opera’s production of Der fliegender Holländer.

Ed Gardner interview: Mackerras Memorial Concert

Paul Guest talks to Ed Gardner ahead of ENO concert

On Sunday,Edward Gardner, music director of the English National Opera will take to the podium to honour the great Sir Charles Mackerras along with his colleagues Paul Daniel, Sir Mark Elder and a host of singers ready to remember the work of a much-loved colleague.

Ed kindly gave up some of his time to talk to me about the concert and Sir Charles himself.

Mozart Vocal Works at the Barbican

The Great Performers season at the Barbican continues in June with performances of 3 works by Mozart - Idomeneo (11 June), La finta giardiniera (24 June) and the Mass in C Minor (28 June).

The concert performance of Idomeneo on 11 June features the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble, a group known as one of the outstanding representatives of historically informed performances. Conducted by the ensemble's founder Thomas Hengelbrock, the cast includes Camilla Tilling, Steve Davislim and Khrystyna Daletska.

Further information can be found here.

English National Opera 2011-12 Season Announcement

English National Opera announced its 2011-12 season today, with the focus very much on new productions and living composers. There are new productions of John Adams’ The Death of Klinghoffer (directed by Tom Morris ofWar Horse fame), Detlev Glanert’s Caligula, Wolfgang Rihm’s Jakob Lenz and Damon Albarn’s Doctor Dee, premièred as part of the London 2012 Festival to mark the hosting of the Olympic Games.

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Garsington Opera

Garsington Opera has moved to the glorious estate of Wormsley in the Chiltern Hills, home of the Getty family, and opens its short summer season with Mozart's much-loved opera, The Magic Flute on 2 June 2011 in its beautiful, specially designed Opera Pavilion. The highlight of the season will be the British premiere of Vivaldi’s La verità in cimento, a rare treasure, by the composer best known for his violin concerto, The Four Seasons. Rossini’s delightful Il Turco in Italia completes the season that runs from 2 June – 5 July. All the coming season’s conductors and directors will be working with both established and emerging young singers, two of whom are making their British debuts.