Opera News
Encyclopedia
Opera News is an American classical music magazine. It has been published since 1936 by the Metropolitan Opera Guild, a non-profit organization located at Lincoln Center which was founded to support the Metropolitan Opera
of New York City. Opera News was initially focused primarily on the Met, particularly providing information for listeners of the Saturday afternoon live Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts
. Over the years, the magazine has broadened its scope to include the larger American and international opera scenes. Currently published monthly, Opera News offers opera related feature articles; artist and production profiles; reviews of performances in the United States and Europe; reviews of recordings, videos, books and audio equipment; and listings of opera performances in the U.S.
The Editor-in-Chief is currently F. Paul Driscoll. Gregory Downer has been the magazine's Art Director for over 25 years. Regular contributors to the magazine, both past and present, include its current features editor, Brian Kellow, William Ashbrook
, Jochen Breiholz
, Erika Davidson
, Justin Davidson
, Peter G. Davis, Matthew Gurewitsch, Joel Honig
, Tim Page
, Judith Malafronte, Mark Thomas Ketterson
, Martin Bernheimer
, Ira Siff, Anne Midgette
, Drew Minter, William R. Braun, Phillip Kennicott, Leslie Rubinstein
, Alan Wagner
, Adam Wasserman, Oussama Zahr, and William Zakariasen
.
The magazine is also available online, with some archival content going back to 1949. The web site was redesigned in spring 2010. Some of the online content is available only to subscribers to the print edition.
) serving as the publication's first editor. It was initially intended to be a "useful, instructive, and factual weekly newspaper of Opera in New York". Its first issue was published on 7 December 1936 and consisted of only one folded broadsheet. Its second year of publication saw its transformation into a 17 page magazine with advertising, with its first magazine issue appearing on 15 November 1937. Beginning with the December 1940 issue, the magazine began to concentrate much of its content on the weekly Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts
. The magazine at this point offered bi-weekly issues of an expanded size during the Fall, Winter, and Spring, but was on hiatus during the summers. As time went on, the magazine began to take on a more international scope of coverage; but it still maintained a strong interest in the New York opera scene and the Met in particular.
In the Fall of 1957 Frank Merkling succeeded Peltz as the second chief editor of Opera News; with his first issue appearing on 14 October 1957. In 1972 the magazine became a year-round publication; adding monthly issues in the summer months while maintaining its bi-weekly schedule during the opera season. In 1974 Robert Jacobson became the magazine's third chief editor and he was in turn succeeded in 1989 by Patrick J. Smith. Under Smith's leadership the magazine switched to a monthly publication format in September 1998. Rudolph Rauch briefly served as chief editor before F. Paul Driscoll, the current chief editor, was appointed in September 2003.
Past recipients of the awards have included:
2005: James Conlon
, Régine Crespin
, Plácido Domingo
, Susan Graham
, Dolora Zajick
2006: Ben Heppner
, James Levine
, René Pape
, Renata Scotto
, Deborah Voigt
2007: Stephanie Blythe
, Olga Borodina
, Thomas Hampson, Leontyne Price
, Julius Rudel
2008: John Adams (composer), Natalie Dessay
, Renée Fleming
, Marilyn Horne
, Sherrill Milnes
2009: Martina Arroyo
, Joyce DiDonato
, Shirley Verrett
, Gerald Finley
, Philip Glass
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
of New York City. Opera News was initially focused primarily on the Met, particularly providing information for listeners of the Saturday afternoon live Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts
Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts
The Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts are a regular series of weekly broadcasts on network radio of full-length opera performances. They are transmitted live from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City...
. Over the years, the magazine has broadened its scope to include the larger American and international opera scenes. Currently published monthly, Opera News offers opera related feature articles; artist and production profiles; reviews of performances in the United States and Europe; reviews of recordings, videos, books and audio equipment; and listings of opera performances in the U.S.
The Editor-in-Chief is currently F. Paul Driscoll. Gregory Downer has been the magazine's Art Director for over 25 years. Regular contributors to the magazine, both past and present, include its current features editor, Brian Kellow, William Ashbrook
William Ashbrook
William Ashbrook was an American musicologist, writer, journalist, and academic.Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Ashbrook earned a BA in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania in 1946 and a MA in the same field from Harvard University in 1947...
, Jochen Breiholz
Jochen Breiholz
Jochen Breiholz is a German music critic and dramaturge. Born in Oldenburg, Germany, Breiholz studied in Berlin before interning at the Metropolitan Opera. For more than two decades he has written music criticism for Opera News magazine. From 1997-2002 he worked as a writer and editor of the Arts...
, Erika Davidson
Erika Davidson
Erika Davidson was an American photographer of German birth who specialized in photographing live theatre.Born in Frankfurt, Davidson began her career working for the Metropolitan Opera Guild's education department in the 1950s...
, Justin Davidson
Justin Davidson
Justin Davidson is a classical music and architecture critic. He began his journalism career as a local stringer for the Associated Press in Rome before moving to the United States to study music at Harvard...
, Peter G. Davis, Matthew Gurewitsch, Joel Honig
Joel Honig
Joel Honig was an American music critic, copy editor, writer, and pianist. He is best remembered for his extensive contributions to Opera News magazine....
, Tim Page
Tim Page (music critic)
Tim Page is a writer, editor, music critic, producer and professor. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic for the Washington Post and also played an essential role in the revival of American author Dawn Powell.-Career:Page grew up in Storrs, Connecticut, where his father, Ellis B...
, Judith Malafronte, Mark Thomas Ketterson
Mark Thomas Ketterson
Mark Thomas Ketterson is an American performing arts critic and writer. He is the Chicago correspondent for Opera News magazine and he has also written for Playbill,...
, Martin Bernheimer
Martin Bernheimer
Martin Bernheimer is an American music critic. He studied at Brown University and the Hochschule für Musik in Munich, along with the famous musicologist Gustave Reese at New York University....
, Ira Siff, Anne Midgette
Anne Midgette
Anne Midgette is an American journalist and classical music critic. Her father was the painter Willard Midgette.Midgette is a 1986 graduate of Yale University. After university, she lived for 11 years in Munich, Germany, reviewing opera, music and art throughout Europe for The Wall Street...
, Drew Minter, William R. Braun, Phillip Kennicott, Leslie Rubinstein
Leslie Rubinstein
Leslie Rubinstein was an American music critic and journalist. She was a regular contributor to Opera News magazine from the mid 1970s through the 1990s. Her first article with the magazine was about stand-by singers at the Metropolitan Opera in 1975...
, Alan Wagner
Alan Wagner
Alan Cyril Wagner was an American television executive, radio personality, writer, and opera historian and critic...
, Adam Wasserman, Oussama Zahr, and William Zakariasen
William Zakariasen
William Zakariasen was an American operatic tenor and music critic.-Biography:Born in Blue Earth, Minnesota, Zakariasen began his career as a classical tenor in the late 1950s, appearing in operas and in concerts. He sometimes performed under the name William Saxon...
.
The magazine is also available online, with some archival content going back to 1949. The web site was redesigned in spring 2010. Some of the online content is available only to subscribers to the print edition.
History
Opera News was founded in 1936 by the Metropolitan Opera Guild with Mrs. John DeWitt (Mary Ellis PeltzMary Ellis Peltz
Mary Ellis Peltz was an American drama and music critic, magazine editor, poet and writer on music. Born Mary Ellis Opdycke, Peltz was educated at the Spence School and Barnard College . At the age of 24 she joined the staff of The New York Sun as assistant music critic. She left the paper in 1924...
) serving as the publication's first editor. It was initially intended to be a "useful, instructive, and factual weekly newspaper of Opera in New York". Its first issue was published on 7 December 1936 and consisted of only one folded broadsheet. Its second year of publication saw its transformation into a 17 page magazine with advertising, with its first magazine issue appearing on 15 November 1937. Beginning with the December 1940 issue, the magazine began to concentrate much of its content on the weekly Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts
Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts
The Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts are a regular series of weekly broadcasts on network radio of full-length opera performances. They are transmitted live from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City...
. The magazine at this point offered bi-weekly issues of an expanded size during the Fall, Winter, and Spring, but was on hiatus during the summers. As time went on, the magazine began to take on a more international scope of coverage; but it still maintained a strong interest in the New York opera scene and the Met in particular.
In the Fall of 1957 Frank Merkling succeeded Peltz as the second chief editor of Opera News; with his first issue appearing on 14 October 1957. In 1972 the magazine became a year-round publication; adding monthly issues in the summer months while maintaining its bi-weekly schedule during the opera season. In 1974 Robert Jacobson became the magazine's third chief editor and he was in turn succeeded in 1989 by Patrick J. Smith. Under Smith's leadership the magazine switched to a monthly publication format in September 1998. Rudolph Rauch briefly served as chief editor before F. Paul Driscoll, the current chief editor, was appointed in September 2003.
Opera News Awards
Since 2005 the magazine has annually bestowed five Opera News Awards for Distinguished Achievement.Past recipients of the awards have included:
2005: James Conlon
James Conlon
James Conlon is an American conductor and the current Music Director of the Los Angeles Opera.-Early years:Conlon grew up in a family of five children on Cherry Street in Douglaston, Queens, New York. His mother, Angeline L. Conlon, was a freelance writer. His father was an assistant to the New...
, Régine Crespin
Régine Crespin
Régine Crespin was a French singer who had a major international career in opera and on the concert stage between 1950 and 1989. She started her career singing roles in the dramatic soprano and spinto soprano repertoire, drawing particular acclaim singing Wagner and Strauss heroines...
, Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo KBE , born José Plácido Domingo Embil, is a Spanish tenor and conductor known for his versatile and strong voice, possessing a ringing and dramatic tone throughout its range...
, Susan Graham
Susan Graham
Susan Graham is an American mezzo-soprano.Raised in Midland, Texas, she is a graduate of Texas Tech University and the Manhattan School of Music. She studied the piano for 13 years...
, Dolora Zajick
Dolora Zajick
Dolora Zajick is an American mezzo-soprano who specializes in the Verdian repertoire. Zajick is arguably the leading exponent in the dramatic Verdian mezzo-soprano repertoire....
2006: Ben Heppner
Ben Heppner
Ben Heppner, CC is a Canadian tenor, specializing in opera and other classical works for voice.Heppner was born in Murrayville, British Columbia, and lived in Dawson Creek...
, James Levine
James Levine
James Lawrence Levine is an American conductor and pianist. He is currently the music director of the Metropolitan Opera and former music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Levine's first performance conducting the Metropolitan Opera was on June 5, 1971, and as of May 2011 he has...
, René Pape
René Pape
René Pape is a German opera singer, a bass.-Biography:Rene Pape was born in Dresden, then part of East Germany. His mother is a hairdresser and his father a chef. His parents divorced when he was two years old and he sometimes lived with his grandmother, who opened the way for his interest in music...
, Renata Scotto
Renata Scotto
Renata Scotto is an Italian soprano and opera director.Recognized for her sense of style, musicality and as a remarkable singer-actress, Scotto is considered one of the preeminent singers of her generation, specializing in the bel canto repertoire with excursions into the verismo and Verdi...
, Deborah Voigt
Deborah Voigt
Deborah Voigt is an American operatic soprano. Voigt regularly performs in opera houses and concert halls worldwide.- Early life and education :...
2007: Stephanie Blythe
Stephanie Blythe
Stephanie Blythe is an American mezzo-soprano opera singer.-Biography:Blythe graduated from Monticello High School in 1987 and the Crane School of Music at the State University of New York at Potsdam in 1992. She was the recipient of the prestigious Richard Tucker Award in 1999...
, Olga Borodina
Olga Borodina
Olga Vladimirovna Borodina is a leading dramatic mezzo-soprano, known for her roles in Russian operas at her home company, the Mariinsky Theatre, and for her international performing and recording career in a varied repertoire.Borodina made her debut in Samson and Delilah at the Royal Opera House...
, Thomas Hampson, Leontyne Price
Leontyne Price
Mary Violet Leontyne Price is an American soprano. Born and raised in the Deep South, she rose to international acclaim in the 1950s and 1960s, and was one of the first African Americans to become a leading artist at the Metropolitan Opera.One critic characterized Price's voice as "vibrant",...
, Julius Rudel
Julius Rudel
Julius Rudel is an American opera and orchestra conductor who emigrated to the United States from Austria at the age of 17 and studied conducting at the Mannes College of Music in New York City. He then forged a 35-year career with the New York City Opera, from 1944 to 1979, and was the Music...
2008: John Adams (composer), Natalie Dessay
Natalie Dessay
Natalie Dessay is a French coloratura soprano. She dropped the silent "h" in her first name in honor of Natalie Wood when she was in grade school and subsequently simplified the spelling of her surname outside France...
, Renée Fleming
Renée Fleming
Renée Fleming is an American soprano specializing in opera and lieder. Fleming has a full lyric soprano voice.Fleming has performed coloratura, lyric, and lighter spinto soprano repertoires. She has sung roles in Italian, German, French, Czech, and Russian, aside from her native English. She also...
, Marilyn Horne
Marilyn Horne
Marilyn Horne is an American mezzo-soprano opera singer. She specialized in roles requiring a large sound, beauty of tone, excellent breath support, and the ability to execute difficult coloratura passages....
, Sherrill Milnes
Sherrill Milnes
Sherrill Milnes is an American operatic baritone most famous for his Verdi roles. From 1965 until 1997 he was associated with the Metropolitan Opera....
2009: Martina Arroyo
Martina Arroyo
Martina Arroyo is an operatic soprano of Puerto Rican and African-American descent who had a major international opera career during the 1960s through the 1980s...
, Joyce DiDonato
Joyce DiDonato
Joyce DiDonato is an award-winning American operatic mezzo-soprano particularly admired for her interpretations of the works of Handel, Mozart, and Rossini...
, Shirley Verrett
Shirley Verrett
Shirley Verrett was an African-American operatic mezzo-soprano who successfully transitioned into soprano roles i.e. soprano sfogato...
, Gerald Finley
Gerald Finley
-Career:He was born in Montreal and received his musical education in St. Matthew's Anglican Church, Ottawa, the University of Ottawa, King's College, Cambridge and the Royal College of Music in London, England...
, Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...