Do you live near Wolf Trap? Do you have extra space in your home? Are you curious about what goes on behind the scenes in a performing arts organization? If so, we have a great opportunity for you! Wolf Trap Opera boasts an amazing community of Housing Hosts. (Check out this link.) Each summer, these families open up
Read MorePosts Categorized: Blog
Slicing and Dicing
The scissors have been out for the entire month of March. A beautiful opera that lasts more than four hours must be trimmed. (And as so many of us know personally after a long winter of cold and sloth, trimming is hard work…) Yet, the musical scissors must be wielded, and almost an hour’s worth
Read MoreTickets. On Sale. March 29.
Yeah, I know it’s cold. And wet. And dark. But summer is right around the corner… 2014 season tickets go on sale tomorrow – Saturday, March 29 at 10am ! LINKS Wolf Trap Opera homepage Carmen… Outdoors at Wolf Trap’s beautiful amphitheatre. Just thinking about an opera picnic makes me happy right about now. Giulio Cesare… Handel
Read MoreAria Frequency: Observations
Today’s post is for those of you who are fans of the Aria Frequency Lists, my annual autumn accounting of the popularity of various audition arias. Our audition application website captures singers’ arias lists (or “packages”) in a way that allows us to churn out this data every year. (For those of you who wonder
Read MoreRecognizing Talent
I drop back into the blogosphere today after a few weeks of radio silence brought to you by the post-audition-tour casting frenzy. We’re consumed with the first step of our freakishly fast pre-production process which takes us from a blank slate to opening night in 6 months. And of course, until the smoke begins to
Read MoreAudition Tour 2014: Singing on the Left Coast
Auditions in LA got us off to a marvelous start for our west coast leg. (My own Pacific sojourn had already started with a brief personal trip to Seattle, where sadly, the lack of a Young Artist Program at Seattle Opera now means that it is no longer a must-hear stop on our audition travels.)
Read MoreSummer 2014: The Short List
We’re at the halfway point of the audition tour (10 days down, 10 to go), and certain operas in the future repertoire database are beginning to edge out others. Of course, anything can change (and does…) right up until the last day of the auditions. (Last year’s casts for our Verdi operas came together on
Read MoreAudition Tour 2014: Chicago
Three days on Wabash, in a dry orchestra rehearsal space with no coffee. Purgatory for opera administrators? Nah. Some truly lovely singing, a few nice surprises, and a couple hundred arias closer to figuring out summer 2014. Singing in the Inside of a Sock The dry acoustic we dealt with this week is worth a
Read MoreThe Studio Artist Monologue Update!
A guest post from Lee Anne Myslewski, the Director of the Wolf Trap Opera Studio The Wolf Trap Opera Studio is a program for students who are exceptionally talented but who are still trying to gather the skills and experiences that will support an operatic career. Studio Artists are typically undergraduate seniors or first-year grad
Read MoreAudition Tour 2014: NYC & Philadelphia
We’re already 252 arias into our audition tour, and I’m finally checking in with the blogosphere. I still love you, honest I do… The New York week was jam-packed, as it so often is. We sat down for 5 days at the National Opera Center, in a place that makes performers and auditors alike feel
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