Renato Cioni, the great Tuscan tenor, died today in his home town of Portoferraio, on the island of Elba, where he was born almost 85 years ago. His career took off in the mid 1950s when he sang in a television production of Madama Butterfly with Anna Moffo, and Pinkerton was the role with which he made his début […]
Herbert von Karajan
Opera star Regina Resnik dies at 90
Regina Resnik, who was born as Resnick (she lost the ‘c’ early on) in the Bronx in 1922, has died in New York after a stroke, at 90. Resnick had a remarkable career change in her thirties went her voice shifted from soprano to mezzo. In an interview with the New York Times in 1967, […]
Unseen photos: an emotional Maria Callas with Herbert von Karajan at La Scala in the ’50s
An (almost) unseen photo from the archives at Teatro alla Scala which shows an emotional Maria Callas moved to tears by the incredible success of her Lucia di Lammermoor as the curtain closes mid-performance. A young Herbert von Karajan looks pleased too. These historic performances of Donizetti’s opera were during the 1954/5 season.
Cecilia Bartoli is awarded the 2012 Herbert von Karajan Music Prize
The Italian opera singer and director of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival, Cecilia Bartoli, has won this year’s Herbert von Karajan Music Prize, which comes with a sum of €50,000. The Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Cultural Foundation Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Clemens Borsig, said Bartoli was honoured for her constant quest to discover forgotten treasures of […]
Pianist Alexis Weissenberg dies at 82
Bulgarian pianist Alexis Weissenberg has died aged 82. Born into a Jewish family in Sofia, Weissenberg began piano lessons at the age of three with his mother, giving his first public performance when he was eight. Bulgarian national radio reported he died on Sunday in Lugano, Switzerland after suffering a long illness. When he was […]
Kiri Te Kanawa on divas, puppies & Luther Vandross – but avoids commenting on Katherine Jenkins
Ahead of her much-anticipated Belfast Festival appearance, Matthew McCreary of the Belfast Telegraph talks to Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. In what is a rather mundane interview (the fault of the Dame, not the interviewer) here are the most interesting replies: You will be singing a duet alongside Ben McAteer, the winner of the NI Opera Festival […]
Vienna Opera and La Scala exchange goes ahead tomorrow
A much-anticipated exchange between the Vienna Opera and Milan’s Teatro alla Scala will go ahead despite earlier fears it might be cancelled because of a strike. Two unions at the Milan opera house – Cgil and Uil – had threatened to strike tomorrow, because of proposed changes to staff contracts announced earlier this year, thereby cancelling the […]
