Cornell Macneil News Today

Opera for beginners: A beginners guide to opera, and how to choose the best opera CDs and DVDs.

NEWBURYPORT — The Metropolitan Opera’s 2023-24 season of Saturday matinee broadcasts continues at 1 p.m. with this year’s listeners choice, a historic broadcast chosen by the Met’s international radio audience:

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With a new screen version of Bizet's Carmen now in cinemas, here's our pick of the top 10 opera films you might be inspired to catch up with.

There are baritones, and then there are Verdi baritones: the elite performers plumbing the depths of opera's most dramatically complex roles.

Rigoletto announced Verdi’s arrival at his mature operatic style and has not fallen from the repertory since its premiere 170 years ago. Mark Pullinger assesses a selection of the available recordings

Elegy: Snow in June. View here. Friday, April 30 12 pm ET: Princeton Symphony presents Buskaid: Curious Creatures & a Heavenly Harp. Rosemary Nalden, Music conducts the Buskaid Soweto String Ensemble with Jude Harpstar, guest harpist and Mzwandile Twala, violin in Carlo Farina’s Capriccio Stravagante, Debussy’s Reverie, and Kreisler’s 1 pm ET: Wiener Staatsoper presents Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. Conductor: Adam Fischer, directors: Moshe Leiser, Patrice Caurier. With Jörg Schneide...

Rescue, as well as traditional and popular songs. View here for three days. 7:30 pm ET: Met Opera Streams presents Verdi’s Luisa Miller. Starring Sonya Yoncheva, Olesya Petrova, Piotr Beczala, Plácido Domingo, Alexander Vinogradov, and Dmitry Belosselskiy, conducted by Bertrand de Billy. Production by Elijah Moshinsky. From April 14, 2018. View here and for 24 hours. 8 pm ET: Seattle Opera presents The Big Opera Show. A journey through Seattle Operas upcoming season featuring special gues...

2 pm ET: NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester presents Gilbert conducts Prokofiev. Daniil Trifonov joins Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra for Prokofiev’s First Piano Concerto under the leadership of Chief Conductor Alan Gilbert who also leads the orchestra in an account of the composer’s Classical Symphony. View here. 2 pm ET: The Royal Opera House presents Puccini’s Il Trittico. Il Tabarro, set aboard a barge on the Seine, stars Lucio Gallo as Michele, Eva-Maria Westbroek as Giorge...

1 pm ET: Wiener Staatsoper presents Giselle. Conductor: Valery Ovsyanikov, choreography: Elena Tschernischova after Jean Coralli, Jules Perrot and Marius Petipa. With Nina Poláková, Masayu Kimoto, Rebecca Horner, Andrey Kaydanovskiy, Alice Firenze, Leonardo Basílio, and Soloists and Corps de ballet des Wiener Staatsballetts. Production from September 2017. Register for free and view here. 2:30 pm ET: Philharmonie de Paris presents Casadesus conducts Debussy, Ravel, Schumann & Beethoven. Jea...