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Nothing like doing something you’ve never done before to ramp up the energy and anxiety. Today was our first session for our new program for kids – “Instant Opera!”. Based on an interactive model developed at Cincinnati Conservatory and then used at San Francisco Opera Center, this new venture of ours will take the stage

We multi-task furiously in the middle of our season, and I feel very out of touch with Giovanni these days. We’re into our second week of stagings, but the looming NSO concert on Saturday night has consumed most of our administrative attentions. I say a little prayer of thanks that the Giovanni team is such

Finally got to see a run-through of the July 9 NSO concert. Great stuff – Carmen, Rigoletto, Lucia… Because young voices aren’t a good fit with full-length grand opera roles, we don’t often get to indulge in Verdi and Puccini. But in these concerts we include choice chunks of the meaty stuff. Conductor Emil de

… wait a few minutes? Is that the adage? With a minor adjustment, it probably applies to any small arts organization. There are two full-time and one part-time employees administering the Wolf Trap Opera Company year-round, and that means that every day brings a new challenge. The “off” season is a whirlwind of non-production related

It’s July, and time to start working on “Instant Opera!”, our first appearances at Wolf Trap’s Children’s Theatre-in-the-Woods (http://www.wolftrap.org/performances/woods.html) since the late 1980’s. The old format (in which I participated as a pianist) involved taking staged one-act operas to the “TITW”. The average attendee is probably about 7 years old, and the one-acts, while a

We’ve been anxiously awaiting this day, for it marks a turning point. The last 2 weeks have been full of the difficult work of changing our upcoming Cenerentola production into a concert staging. Ticket exchanges and refunds, donor notifications, disheartening calls to artists and staff. Today we began to rebuild. Director Garnett Bruce returned from

Full disclosure would require that I admit I know almost nothing about costumes. It’s one of those areas where I pray that I hire the best designers for the job, for it would be disastrous were I to meddle with their work. Timm Burrow did a fabulous job on Sweeney, and now Beth Clancy (new

That’s what they say about Mozart. And all of those seemingly extreme metaphors are right. A cleansing of the palate. A refreshing spring shower. As much as I love all various and wonderful kinds of music, when you’ve been away from Mozart for a while, you have to admit that the coming home is pretty

Final Sweeney. Great audience for my pre-show talk and for the show itself. Arrival of the rest of the summer’s company, chomping at the bit to start rehearsals tomorrow for Giovanni and the Murder & Mayhem NSO concert. Lots of transportation excitement; everyone finally arrived safely and delivered to local housing assignments. Lovely cast party.

Steve called it a “grown-up” concert. Tonight’s Latest Word recital. (See posts from earlier in the week for details). Complete with singers whose musical maturity exceeded our expectations and surprised even themselves, and an audience that was willing to dig deep and concentrate fully. The program presented some logistical challenges, performed as it was on