The big easy

Thank you for joining our community and giving me such support! Please be sure to forward this newsletter to your friends. Enjoy my spring 2015 video, shot live at Audubon Park, New Orleans. 

Le Nozze di Figaro New Orleans Opera Susanna

The Count loves the Countess, but wants Susanna. Susanna is planning on marrying Figaro, but so is Marcellina. Bartolo wants to marry Marcellina, with whom he is secretly in love ... oh well, you get the point! Throw in a plot to catch a cheating husband, a scheme to make the Count jealous, and a wife's plan to get revenge, and you have Mozart's brilliant setting of the Beaumarchais play that "launched the French Revolution." April 10th and 12th Mahalia Jackson Theatre, New Orleans, LA

More Information »

The Daughter of the Regiment Pittsburgh Opera Marie

Concluding the 2013-14 mainstage season is Donizetti’s frothy romantic comedy Daughter of the Regiment (La fille du régiment),May 2 – 10, 2015, a production that will be sung in English. It will feature star tenor Lawrence Brownlee as Tonio, singing those famous nine high Cs in the show-stopping aria “Ah, my friends (Ah, mes amis),” alongside a returning Lisette Oropesa (The Abduction from the Seraglio, 2011) as Marie. Antony Walker conducts the Pittsburgh Opera Orchestra and Chorus. May 2, 5, 8, 10 Benedum Center, Pittsburgh, PA

More Information »

Le Nozze di Figaro San Francisco Opera Susanna

Mozart's warmest, wisest opera is one of the composer’s most graceful creations—a tender comedy in which a countess and her servant join forces to punish her aristocrat husband for his philandering. In the process, two very different couples learn humbling lessons about life and love. The cast is led by Philippe Sly as Figaro, a “gifted and accomplished” singer who has “the ability to combine virility and tenderness in a single phrase” (San Francisco Chronicle). Luca Pisaroni, known for his “impressive natural gifts” and “masterful intelligence and taste” (Opera News) is the lecherous Count, with the charismatic Nadine Sierra as his Countess and Lisette Oropesa as Figaro’s saucy love Susanna. Patrick Summers, whose Figaro was celebrated for its “dramatic pace, musical discernment and unfailing good taste” (Sydney Morning Herald), conducts. June 14, 18, 21, 24, 27, 29 July 3, 5 War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, CA

More Information »

Master Singers: Advice from the stage Contributing Author

Through interviews with some of today's most accomplished and renowned concert and operatic singers, including Stephanie Blythe, David Daniels, Joyce DiDonato, Denyce Graves, Thomas Hampson, Jonas Kaufmann, Simon Keenlyside, and Ewa Podles', Master Singers provides vocalists making the transition from student to professional with indispensable advice on matters ranging from technique and its practical application for effective stage projection to the practicalities of the business of professional singing and maintaining a career to recommendations for vocal hygiene and longevity in singing. Rather than relying on a traditional one-singer-at-a-time structure, Donald George and Lucy Mauro distill answers to a range of essential, probing questions into a thematic approach, creating not a standard interview book but a true reference for emerging professional singers. An indispensable resource and reliable guide, Master Singers will find its place on the bookshelf of singers of this generation and the next.

Master Singers: Advice from the stage »

James Gaffigan conducts a full-blooded Rigoletto at the Concertgebouw • March 16, 2015 “Lisette Oropesa was a ravishing Gilda, her silvery tones and beautiful high range perfectly suited for the role of the young innocent girl. “Gualtier Malté”, that one and only traditionally-constructed aria of the opera, had unfortunately to be interrupted at first, so as to whisk away a member of the audience who was apparently unwell. When the performance resumed, Ms Oropesa sang the aria with elegant phrasing, top notes ringing to the rafters and exquisitely executed trills with which she has deservedly brought down the house.” Nicolas Nguyen • Bachtrack

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : Die Entführung aus dem Serail, K. 384 • Jan. 27, 2015 Voix légère, Lisette Oropesa n’a rien à craindre de Konstanze, qu’elle nimbe d’une fraîcheur juvénile, plus fragile mais plus raffinée ... les registres s’équilibrent, les vocalises s’égrènent prestement, les lignes se galbent, les aigus peuvent s’émettre pianissimo. Didier van Moere • Concerto Net

After coming from doing performances of RIGOLETTO, ENTFÜHRUNG, and JOHANNES PASSION this winter, all music that is wrought with emotional and vocal challenges, it's nice to take a light hearted "break" this spring.  Sometimes it's so easy to get wrapped up in the heavyness that so often is at the center of our art form, I almost forget to smile and take time to smell the roses.  Well now I have no choice!  There are flowers bursting into happy bloom everywhere I look, and a sky so blue and bright it's almost blinding.  It makes me perceive the masterful balance of forces in this world, and appreciate it.  There will never be a shortage of tragedy.  But if I look around enough and take it all in, there is also never a shortage of joy.