Opera Warhorses

Note from William: I recently traveled to Pittsburgh for opening night of the 2008-09 Pittsburgh Opera season, featuring the role debut of Stephanie Blythe in Saint-Saens’ “Samson et Dalila”. This provided an opportunity to interview the newly appointed general director of the Pittsburgh Opera, Christopher Hahn.
[Below: Christopher Hahn, photograph courtesy of Pittsburgh Opera.]
 
Wm: Congratulations on [...]

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In December 2007, joining members of my family and my Opera Warhorses colleague, Tom, I attended one of the annual Christmastide Bracebridge Dinners at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park.  As it turned out,  several of the San Francisco Opera choristers were spending the latter half of December in Yosemite, as performers for the [...]

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Last October, I was impressed by the insightful conducting of Pittsburgh Opera’s musical director, Antony Walker, whose work complemented the extraordinary Moffatt Oxenbould production of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” from Opera Australia. Having returned to the Pittsburgh to review its mounting of Bellini’s “I Capuleti e i Montecchi”, also to be conducted by Walker, I had [...]

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