Dame Gwyneth Jones Happy 74th Birthday

A very Happy Birthday to Dame Gwyneth Jones (born November 7, 1936), one of the greatest ladies of opera and one of my all-time favorite singers. This beautiful, elegant Welsh soprano had, in the heyday of her career, one of the largest hochdramatisch voices in memory. Out of this slim and lovely woman came sounds so huge that she could capsize the world's largest aircraft carrier! Yet, in roles like the Marschallin in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, she could be tender and gentle.

Happy Advance 100th Magda Olivero March 25

This has been a big week for centennial celebrations of the birth of not just great, but the finest of world artists. Another of the creative personalities who has been among the most influential to me in my appreciation of art is the one-and-only, Magda Olivero. Remarkably, this great Italian soprano -- who defied classification as a lyric, spinto, etc. -- is not being honored in memory, she is still with us at age 100! (Her birthday will take place tomorrow, March 25.)

Alessandra Marc Returns to New York - 2/6 Carnegie Hall Weill Recital Hall

Alessandra Marc, one of the greatest singers of this generation -- and my favorite soprano -- is returning to the New York stage next week--to Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall on Saturday, February 6, 2010, at 8:30pm. If you know about and love this long-underappreciated, grand artist, please don't miss this concert event!

Best Recent Opera Singer Finds

Evelyn Herlitzius as Brünnhilde (w/Christian Franz) in Wagner's Siegfried.

Some of my favorite recent opera singer "finds." Many are not "new" singers, but all are singing very actively today, I've only found them recently, I really respect their work and love each of their voices.

Diva Hildegard Behrens Rest in Peace

Photo Copyright © Christian Steiner (photographer). All rights reserved.

I am deeply saddened to have just learned that the great German soprano, Hildegard Behrens, passed away unexpectedly today in Japan at the far-too-young age of 72. Mme. Behrens was, according to the AP report this evening, traveling to Tokyo to prepare for two recital programs, when she "felt unwell" and "died of an apparent aneurysm."

Alessandra Marc - Diva Assoluta

I have been a champion of the great American Dramatic Soprano, Alessandra Marc, for two decades. When I first heard a very young Alessandra Marc in 1987, on a scratchy "live" recording of Respighi's LA FIAMMA from a Carnegie Hall performance with Robert Bass and the Collegiate Chorale, I was blown away. In 1989, I first experienced this magnificent talent live: a thrilling Carnegie Hall concert performance of Richard Strauss's 1938 opera, FRIEDENSTAG, with the same ensemble. Half way through the opera, this voice soared through the theater in a way I had never experienced before in my life.

I've followed her complex career ever since. MET appearances in AIDA and her signature TURANDOT, countless concerts, particularly her truly grand, to-the-manor-born Strauss and Wagner.

This is a voice, still in its prime -- audiences don't realize that she is still a mid-career singer because she started her career so young and her contemporaries were more than a decade older -- which should not be missed. She will sing her TURANDOT again in July at the 2008 Puccini Festival at Torre del lago (http://www.puccinifestival.it/eng/categorie.asp?idcat=1) and has concerts in the Washington, D.C. area in the 2008-2009 festival that are must hear/sees. It is time that the arts scene in New York offers her the recognition that she deserves--honoring this remarkable artist with an appearance in one of the great theaters (the MET, Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall) with companies like the MET, the NY Philharmonic, other major international orchestras, etc.

(Alessandra and me, March 2008, NYC)

Check out an example of Alessandra in glorious voice in Maryland at a special gala 2008 concert honoring U.S.-based artists from China. She sings "Io son l'umile ancella" from Cilèa's ADRIANA LECOUVREUR. (see below)