KVNO Presents Opera Outdoors Tonight
By Corbin Hirschhorn
Omaha, NE—Opera Omaha’s Opera Outdoors will not be an outdoor festival this year due to COVID19, but it has found a new home on the radio. Tonight, Opera Omaha and KVNO will collaborate to bring audiences a live on air recital featuring Holland Community Opera Fellows, visiting singers, and Opera Omaha’s Head of Music, Sean Kelly.
400 Voices to Sing “Lord Nelson Mass”
By Corbin Hirschhorn
Omaha, NE—This weekend, Omaha Symphony will perform a special concert, Haydn’s “Lord Nelson Mass.†Not only featuring regular symphony performers, the production will include a 400 voice choir made up of area high school students and four opera singers, like Soprano, Sarah Shafer, visiting from Philadelphia. Shafer, and the other featured singers have been travelling school-to-school, preparing eager choir students for a milestone opportunity.
Opera Omaha Presents ‘Madama Butterfly’
By Corbin Hirschhorn
Omaha, NE—1904, an American sailor lands in the port of Nagasaki, Japan, where he meets his bride-not-meant-to-be, and his deception opens the tale that leads to nightmare. It’s the plot of arguably one of the most iconic operas ever written, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, making its return to Opera Omaha this weekend. It’s also the return of Opera Omaha’s historic collaboration with famed local artist, Jun Kaneko, working with Director Leslie Swackhamer.
Opera Omaha’s Pagliacci Part 2
By Corbin Hirschhorn
Opera Omaha’s Pagliacci opens this week. It’s the story of a weary actor and a marriage falling apart. First premiered in 1892, it will be re set just after World War II.
Opera might be one of the most elaborate performative art forms, requiring so much collaboration between expert musicians, vocalists, and designers. The story is theatrical, but music holds the production together. Conducting opera is not an easy task, and there are some inherent challenges that complicate matters.
Read MoreOpera Omaha’s ‘Pagliacci’ Part 1
By Corbin Hirschhorn
Opera Omaha opens Pagliacci next week, with music and libretto by Italian composer, Ruggero Leoncavalo.
It wouldn’t be an Italian opera without romance gone wrong—in this case for Canio, wife and fellow actor, Nedda, and Silvio. For Canio, life on and off the stage are starting to become a little too similar.
Read MoreOpera Omaha Presents “Medea”
By Corbin Hirschhorn
Omaha NE—Baritone Weston Hurt has played many of the principal roles in popular operas by Verdi, Puccini, and Donizetti, and now he’s taking on Creonte in Cherubini’s Medea, Opera Omaha’s next performance as part of the ONE Festival.
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