Journey backstage with Harry T. Wilks Artistic Director Evans Mirageas and other special guests to discuss everything opera. In this podcast, you'll learn about the life and work of everyone from seasoned stage directors to rising contemporary composers and more!
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Birgit Nillson was a 20th-century Swedish dramatic soprano famous for her renditions of the works of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss.
Rudolph Bing was an Austrian opera impresario (producer) who worked around the world. He notably served as the General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
The first (old) Metropolitan Opera House in New York was located on Broadway but was demolished in 1967. The current (new) Metropolitan Opera House is located in Lincoln Center in the Upper West Side.
In July 1980, a 30-year-old violinist named Helen Mintiks was murdered during the intermission of a performance at the Metropolitan Opera. Read more here.
Guarino refers to “Jimmy,” or James Levine, a Cincinnati-born opera conductor who became the Music Director of the Metropolitan Opera. He was notably terminated from this position in 2018 over sexual assault allegations that he denies.
Franco Zeffirelli was an Italian director and producer of opera, films, and television. Many of his opera productions are still in use today around the world.
Margarete Wallmann was a German ballerina, choreographer, set designer, and opera director.
Rhoda Levine is an American opera director, choreographer, and professor.
In 2011, Doubt by composer Douglas J Cuomo and librettist John Patrick Shirley became the first project workshopped by OF:NW. The opera premiered at Minnesota Opera in 2013.
Joni Mitchell is a critically acclaimed Canadian singer-songwriter.
Bob Dylan is a Nobel Prize-winning American singer-songwriter.
Gregory Spears: Modern Masterpieces
Season 4 · Episode 7
Monday, August 24, 2020 • Duration 01:07:39
The American Opera Project is an opera company in Brooklyn, New York dedicated to developing new operatic and musical theatre works.
Fugues are a musical composition technique in which a melody is blended with other melodies, usually in complex ways. German Baroque composer J.S. Bach is notable for having written many collections of fugues.
Early in his life, Spears studied music theory and composition with prolific American composer and educator Adolphus Hailstork.
Elisabeth Schwartzkopf was a German-born soprano and is considered one of the top singers of the 20th century. In her performing career, she specialized in German-language art song (lieder) and Viennese operetta; later in life, she became an international renowned voice teacher.
Nana Mouskouri is a popular Greek singer whose extensive discography includes over 200 albums in at least twelve different languages.
English-Italian conductor Annuzio Mantovani led his own orchestra (the Mantovani Orchestra) in the mid-20th century and became famous in the “light music” style.
Dale Bartlett was a Canadian pianist, educator, and collaborative pianist.
Vladimir Horowitz was a renowned Russian-born classical pianist who spent most of his life in the U.S.
Talise Trevigne: Baseball Mom and Opera Star
Season 4 · Episode 4
Monday, August 3, 2020 • Duration 01:06:52
Marie Kondo, an organizing consultant and author most famous for her Netflix series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, uses a methodical approach to help people clean and organize their spaces. She is most known for asking people if an item “sparks joy” in their life.
Martha Graham was a choreographer and American modern dancer whose technique is still taught around the world.
Choral conductor Robert Shaw is notable for bringing black vocalists, like soprano Adele Addison and tenor Seth McCoy, to the spotlight from the 1940s through the 1970s.
During her senior year of high school, Trevigne sang the soprano solo in one of Gabriel Fauré’s most notable works .
David Effron: Cincinnati's Own Conducting Legend
Season 4 · Episode 3
Monday, July 27, 2020 • Duration 01:11:36
Cincinnati Opera, at the time known as Cincinnati Summer Opera, performed at the Cincinnati Zoo for its first 51 seasons (1920-1972).
Italian-born American conductor Fausto Cleva was the Musical Director of the Cincinnati Summer Opera from 1934 until 1963. He was also Effron’s “first hero.”
Sigmund Effron, David Effron’s father, was the concertmaster of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra from 1946 to 1973.
After a performance of Charles Gonoud’s Faust at Cincinnati Summer Opera, American tenor Eugene Conley honored Sigmund Effron by allowing him to bow by himself (a “solo bow”) due to the skill with which he played the work’s notable violin solo.
Sigmund Effron studied with Robert Perutz, a renowned Polish violinist who was based in Cincinnati.
Vita Tzykun: On Design
Season 4 · Episode 2
Monday, July 6, 2020 • Duration 01:02:29
Tzykun designed the set for Cincinnati Opera’s world premiere of Fellow Travelersby Gregory Spearsin 2016. That production was directed by Kevin Newberry.
Dramaturgy is the research involved to better understand a theatrical work before it is produced. While dramaturgy may be practiced by a professional dramaturg, often directors, designers, and performers participate in their own research to better inform their artistic decisions.
Tzykun designed a production of Franz Schubert’s Winterreise (Winter Journey, 1828), a set of German art songs for voice and piano. The singer in this production was baritone David Adam Moore, Tzykun’s partner. The two are set to record a film version of this production at Austin Opera in the coming weeks.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Tzykun had designed the world premiere production of Edward Tulaneat Minnesota Opera. Moore was performing in Jake Heggie’sDead Man Walkingat the Hungarian State Opera at this time. However, like many live performing arts, these productions were cancelled in order to promote social distancing and reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
Tzykun and Moore founded an New York City-based art collective called GLMMR.
Tzykun will design the set for Cincinnati Opera’s 2021 premiere of Castor and Patience.
Tzykun often reads Israeli author and “macro-historian” Yuval Noah Harari who wrote , and .
Candillari’s grandmother performed the titular role in Georges Bizet’s Carmen at the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad, former Yugoslavia. Candillari was also born in this city, which is the second-largest city in present-day Serbia.
Robert Schumann a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic.
The Spoleto Festival (Festival dei Due Mondi) is an annual summer music and opera festival held each June to early July in Spoleto, Italy, since its founding by composer in 1958.
Plainchant (sometimes called “Gregorian chant”) is a liturgical musical style used historically in the Western Church (and now mainly in the Catholic Church) for singing texts to a congregation. In this style, the text is sung on one unaccompanied melody.
Hot yoga is a modern yoga-inspired exercise where typical yoga sequences are performed under hot and humid conditions.
Joan Panetti is a pianist, composer, and Professor of Music at the Yale School of Music.
Ta-Nehesi Coates is an American author and essayist who generally focuses on the subject of race relations in the United States. One of his best-known essays is The Case for Reparations.
Revolutions is a podcast which explores political revolutions throughout history.
The Criterion Collection is an American video distribution company focusing on “important classic and contemporary films.”
Stevie Wonder is a 25 Grammy Award-winning American singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer known for tracks such as his 1970 “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours” and his 1972 “Superstition.”
Brian Eno is an English musician and visual artist known for his ambient musical style and collaborations to rock, pop, and electronic music as well.
Arthur Russell was an American avant-garde cellist and composer.
Marnie is an opera by contemporary American composer Nico Muhly based on Winston Graham’s 1961 novel by the same name. Notably, Alfred Hitchcock directed a film adaptation of the same novel. Leonard performed the title role in the U.S. premiere of the operatic adaptation at the Metropolitan Opera in 2018.
The Fach system is a method of categorizing singers’ voices into specific “types.” Not all musicians agree with every aspect of the system, however it is a commonly used tool for understanding the range, weight, and color of a singer’s voice.
Rosina is a principle soprano role in Gioachino Rossini’s comic opera The Barber of Seville. Leonard will perform this role in Cincinnati Opera’s 2021 Summer Festival.
Edith Bers was a member of the voice faculty at The Julliard School.
Renée Fleming is an actively performing American operatic soprano and the current Creative Consultant at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Franco Zeffirelli was an Italian director and producer of opera, films, and television. Many of his opera productions are still in use today around the world.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin is a Canadian conductor and pianist. Currently, he is the Music Director of the Metropolitan Opera, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Orchestre Métropolitain in Montréal.
Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt set three sonnets by Italian Renaissance poet Petrarch to music in the collection “Tre sonetti di Petrarch” (“Three Petrarch Sonnets”).
Françoise Frenkel’s memoir A Bookshop in Berlin follows her escape from the rise of fascism in Germany and, later, her evasion from Nazi occupation in war-torn France.
Grey’s Anatomy is an American medical drama television series.
Kanopy is an online film streaming service specializing in classic, independent, and foreign films.
Duolingo is a Google-owned mobile application and website for studying foreign languages.
WhatsApp is a Facebook-owned mobile application for messaging and calling over the Internet.
Early in her career, Trevigne sang under notable American conductor Julius Rudel.
Adele Addison gave Trevigne original manuscripts of the French composer, conductor, and pedagogue Nadia Boulanger.
George Szell, the former Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra once famously noted: “The Cleveland Orchestra plays seven concerts a week, and admits the public to the final two. We do some of our best playing in rehearsals.”
A sitzprobe (German for “seated rehearsal”) is an opera or musical theatre rehearsal in which the vocalists sing with the orchestra—usually for the first time.
concert:nova is a contemporary music ensemble based in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Trevigne will perform the role of Patience in Cincinnati Opera’s world premiere production of Castor and Patience in the summer of 2021.
Trevigne finds the following mobile applications useful: Gamechanger (for keeping tabs on her son’s baseball games), Beachbody (for exercising), and Stash (for investing).
Trevigne enjoys eating at Conscious Kitchen in Cincinnati because they accommodate her alkaline vegan diet—a diet which does not allow any animal products, processed foods, coffee, and most grains.
Outside of classical music, Trevigne listens to hip-hop (she mentions the artist Drake) and country music.
James Levine is a conductor and accompanist from Cincinnati. He served as the Music Director of the Metropolitan Opera until he was notably terminated in 2018 over sexual assault allegations that he denies.
Hugh Thompson and Tito Capobianco were both notable opera directors, though Thompson was better known as a lyric baritone with 238 performances at the Metropolitan Opera.
Hamilton: An American Musicalis a Pulitzer Prize-winning musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda about the life, career, and death of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. Musically, it pulls from genres as varied as hip hop, R&B, pop, soul, and traditional show tunes.
Benita Valente is a renowned American soprano from California.
WhatsApp is a mobile application popularly used for text messaging and calling in countries outside of the US.
Recently, Tzykun has watched the television miniseries Unorthodox on Netflix which revolves around a Hasidic Jewish community in New York City. She listens to the podcast Artificial Intelligence by Lex Fridman about the connections between technology and humanity.
Franz Lehár’s operetta The Merry Widowtakes place in the fictional state of Pontevedro, a thinly veiled reference to the real-life principality of Montenegro.
David Baker was the Director of Jazz Studies at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music
Rusalka is an opera by Antonín Dvořák and was programmed as part of Cincinnati Opera’s 2020 season. Evans also references his Symphony No. 7which was inspired by composer Johannes Brahms.
Abell continued his postgraduate training from 1983 to 1985 at the Juilliard School, under Jorge Mester and Sixten Ehrling.
Eroica Symphony, byname of Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, is a symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven, known as the Eroica Symphony for its supposed heroic nature.
Natalia Makarova is a Soviet-Russian-born prima ballerina and choreographer.
Abell deputized at short notice for John Mauceri conducting Britten's The Turn of the Screw at Washington National Opera.
Gian Carlo Menotti gave David the advice to “never conduct Broadway. Never do it you will regret it.”
Les Misérables, colloquially known in English-speaking countries as Les Mis is a musical adapted from French poet and novelist Victor Hugo's 1862 novel of the same name by Claude Schönberg.
Harold Prince was an American theatrical producer and director associated with many of the best-known Broadway musical productions of the 20th century.
The Library of Congress is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the de facto national library of the United States.
Gioachino Rossini was an Italian composer who gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces, and some sacred music.
Phillip Gossett was an American musicologist and historian, and Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor of Music at the University of Chicago.
Tancredi is a melodramma eroico in two acts by composer Gioachino Rossini and librettist Gaetano Rossi
Powel Crosley Jr.was an American inventor, industrialist, and entrepreneur. He was also a pioneer in radio broadcasting, and a former owner of the Cincinnati Reds major league baseball team.
Robert Russell Bennett was an American composer and arranger, best known for his orchestration of many well-known Broadway and Hollywood musicals by other composers such as Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers.
Don Walker is an Australian musician, songwriter and author.
Felix Mendelssohn was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period.
Martín y Soler was a Spanish composer of opera and ballet. Although relatively obscure now, in his own day he was compared favorably with his contemporary, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as a composer of opera buffa.
Luigi Boccherini was an Italian composer and cellist of the Classical era whose music retained a courtly and galante style even while he matured somewhat apart from the major European musical centers.
Farinelli was the stage name of Carlo Maria Michelangelo Nicola Broschi, a celebrated Italiancastrato singer of the 18th century and one of the greatest singers in the history of opera.
The Vienna State Opera is an Austrian opera house and opera company based in Vienna, Austria.
Otto Klemperer was a Jewish German-born conductor and composer, described as "the last of the few really great conductors of his generation."
Bruno Walter was a German-born conductor, pianist and composer.
Sir Georg Solti was a Hungarian-born orchestral and operatic conductor, best known for his appearances with opera companies in Munich, Frankfurt and London, and as a long-serving music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
The Symphony No. 5 is Beethoven’s 5th symphony and is one of the best-known compositions in classical music and one of the most frequently played symphonies.
Giacomo Puccini was an Italian opera composer who has been called "the greatest composer of Italian opera after Verdi."(Ravenni & Girardi n.d., Introduction.)
Johannes Brahms was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the Romantic period.
Nikolaus Harnoncourt was an Austrian conductor, particularly known for his historically informed performances of music from the Classical era and earlier.
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