Latest news with #Ainadamar
Forbes
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Met Opera Husband-And-Wife Stars Jack Swanson And Katherine Henly Talk Travel And Opera
Husband-and-wife Jack Swanson and Katherine Henly. It's a family affair at the Met Opera for Jack Swanson and Katherine Henly, husband and wife duo hailing from the Twin Cities in Minnesota. Both opera stars have made their Met debuts this season, with soprano Katherine as a Niña in Golijov's Grammy Award-winning 'Ainadamar,' which premiered in October, and tenor Jack Swanson as Count Almaviva in 'Il Barbiere di Siviglia,' who picked up the role on May 16 from Lawrence Brownlee. Barbiere di Siviglia will stream Live in HD to cinemas around the world on Saturday, May 31, at 1PM ET. In addition to Jack and Katherine, a third special member of the family also made their Met debut. Katherine was 8 months pregnant with their son (and first child) when she debuted, and 9 months (just 12 days away from giving birth!) when she performed in the final performance of 'Ainadamar.' The couple, who has performed around the world together (they met at LA Opera during a production of 'Candide'), spoke to me about their favorite spots in New York, where they love to travel together (for work and for pleasure), their favorite pieces of career advice, and more. Jack Swanson, Katherine Henly, and their son. favorite opera that's not my own is: Jack: My favorite opera is Puccini's 'Fanciulla del West!' Katherine: Puccini's 'La Bohème' is one of my favorites of all time. There is so much subtle beauty woven into it, down to the placement of every rest, and I love playing Musetta—she has so much fun but also has such a caring heart, and her music is a real joy to sing. My pre-performance ritual is: Jack: I start the day with the same vocal exercise, making sure I'm free, relaxed, and that my technique is lined up and in a good place. On a performance day, I like to do some mild cardio, sometimes just a long walk, and I spend most of the day resting. When singing Rossini, I always make sure to sing the most difficult, florid passages as part of my pre-show warm-up! Katherine: It's changed a bit now that my son is here! I always make sure to move my body, so that it's warmed up and feels connected and able to support making the music and storytelling happen. I eat a good meal early in the day so that by performance time I'm fueled up but not too full, and I'm big on hydrating in advance. I still do those things, but my schedule also revolves around when my son needs to eat and sleep! I get performance ready early so that the last thing I can do before I go onstage is feed him and hopefully get him to sleep. I Katherine, what was your experience like being pregnant at the Met and making your debut? Katherine: The Met was so accommodating, and it was an experience I will forever cherish. The costume department was so kind to me and made all of my costumes expandable as I grew into the final month of my pregnancy, and the cast and creative teams truly looked out for me and felt like family. So often we are led to believe that pregnancy and motherhood are limiting to women, but in fact the opposite is true; becoming a mother has been the most strengthening, heart-bursting and expansive experience, in every way. After a performance I: Jack: EAT! I tend to eat very little before a performance, as I don't love the feeling of singing or moving around on stage with a full stomach. So, I usually do my most serious and ferocious eating after the show. Katherine: I am always wide awake and fired up after a performance, it takes me a long time to wind down. I love going out for a bite with my fellow performers or family and friends and celebrating in some way. One of my favorite aspects of performing is how it brings us all together. The next day I try to work in as much rest and resetting as possible so that I am fresh and ready to do it all again! My must-have travel item is: Jack: My Bose headphones. You'd think I'd always be listening to tenors, which of course happens occasionally, but most of the time I just use them to decompress. Noise-cancel and meditate!Katherine: A comfortable travel pillow! Great for adults and babies alike! The destination I love to travel to most for work with my significant other is: Jack: This is a tough one, but last year we had the opportunity to travel all over Spain, and for the two of us, it was really a perfect fit. Luckily, we have more travel and work in Spain soon. Katherine:Tough to pick! We first met working at LA Opera together on a production of Candide, so LA will always be a special place for us! We left a lock with our names on it in Cologne, Germany on the Hohenzollern Bridge when we performed in Street Scene together for Oper Köln. We've since spent a lot of time working together in Norway, which we've loved, and last year we had the chance to travel in Spain and we absolutely fell in love with it. We are looking forward to more time there in the future! My favorite travel destination for vacation (not work) with my significant other is: Jack: When not working, we really love to camp. One of my favorite trips was our adventure to Jackson Hole, Wyoming with our rooftop tent. Katherine: Also tough to pick, but we have really loved our time in Ireland and Italy and are always looking forward to returning for work or vacation! We also love to camp and one of our first big vacations together was a road trip with our rooftop tent that took us from Utah, through Wyoming and on to Minnesota. We love any excuse to get out in nature! My favorite restaurant in New York is: Jack: I've discovered that the BEST New York pizza slice is from Upside Pizza on Broadway and 112th. Don't skip the garlic knots. Katherine: Victor's Cafe on W 52nd. The most amazing food. My father played lead trumpet on Miss Saigon at the Broadway Theatre nearby for the 10 year run until I was 12 years old and Victor's became my family's go-to place for celebrating. I have a lot of great memories there. My favorite spot near the Met opera is: Jack: Too many to count, but you'll often find me with a coffee, sitting in Richard Tucker Park, just trying to soak in the inspiration and understand how he got his high notes to sound the way he did. Katherine: There are so many, but I love to sit under the trees across from The Performing Arts Library and Lincoln Center Theater, it's so peaceful and inspiring to be near so much incredible art happening.
Los Angeles Times
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Rufus Wainwright's U.S. premiere of ‘Dream Requiem,' L.A. Opera's ‘Ainadamar': a spirtual double bill
Osvaldo Golijov's beauteously strange 'Ainadamar' has reached Los Angeles. The opera, one of this century's most gratifying, portrays the 1936 political execution of the poet Federico Garcia Lorca during the Spanish Civil War through the final minutes of actress Margarita Xirgu's life. She dies as she is about to go onstage in the Lorca play 'Mariana Pineda,' about the heroine of an earlier Spanish revolution. Margarita's final minute on Earth lasts 90 flamenco-filled minutes in Golijov's one-act opera. Lorca's life — his spirit and loves and lust — is revealed in flashbacks, which L.A. Opera makes the most of in a flamboyant, dance-drenched production. But it is Margarita's pain we feel, her death we experience and her life we mourn. Lorca's death, then, becomes a borrowed experience. He is a spirit of history. Margarita's last act is to pass on that spirit to a young actress, Nuria, and in the process, to us. The saddest of operas, 'Ainadamar' is not a tragic opera, not an opera of open-and-shut endings, but one of open-ended endings. Life goes on. But what comes next? A movie-length production without intermission can feel about right for a modern audience. 'Ainadamar' satisfies on its own but nevertheless suggests there is something more to consider. The sheer force of Margarita's being asks to remain in our consciousness longer. She did remain a little longer. Following the Sunday matinee of 'Ainadamar' at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Los Angeles Master Chorale gave the U.S. premiere of Rufus Wainwright's new 'Dream Requiem,' which proved an ideal companion to 'Ainadamar.' Although Golijov is an introspective Argentine American composer who comes out of the classical music world, his works are infused with folk song and dance from Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Wainwright is an introspective pop star with a noted folk song pedigree who also is an opera enthusiast and composer. At the pre-concert talk Sunday, Wainwright said hearing Verdi's Requiem as a 13-year-old changed his life. 'Ainadamar' and the 80-minute 'Dream Requiem' have poets at their core. Just as Lorca embodies Lorca, Wainwright threads recitations of Lord Byron's 1816 'Darkness,' throughout a score otherwise based on the traditional Latin requiem text. Each work is its own fountain of tears. Ainadamar is, in fact, the Arabic term for the Fountain of Tears, the site in Granada where Lorca was shot by a firing squad, presumably for political reasons as well as for being gay. In 'Dream Requiem,' we cry over the environment. Byron wrote 'Darkness' as a response to the 1815 Mt. Tambora volcano eruption in Indonesia, which clouded sunlight around the world for more than a year. The so-called 1816 'year without a summer' was also a time of revolt in Spain. Fifteen years later, the Spanish liberalist Mariana Pineda was executed. The three parts of 'Ainadamar' begin with the chorus singing a ballad to her. The magnificent performance of 'Dream Requiem' — conducted by Grant Gershon and featuring, along with the Master Chorale, the impressive Los Angeles Children's Chorus, an excellent large orchestra, the spectacular soprano Liv Redpath and a vehement Jane Fonda as the gripping narrator — proved a necessary complement to a more problematic performance of 'Ainadamar.' The opera has deep L.A. roots. A Los Angeles Philharmonic co-commission, the theatrically tentative first version of 'Ainadamar' survived on its instances of musical brilliance. Under the supervision of Peter Sellars, Golijov and librettist David Henry Hwang completely rewrote 'Ainadamar' for Santa Fe Opera in a sublimely moving production with gloriously grafitti-fied sets by L.A. artist Gronk. A musically promising but uncertain opera instantly turned into an essential classic for a new century. Long Beach Opera's tenuous local premiere of that version was followed by a powerful concert performance at the Ojai Music Festival with the Atlanta Symphony conducted by Robert Spano and starring Dawn Upshaw, the forces who made the work's celebrated recording. The L.A. Opera revival is a new production that has been making the rounds at Scottish Opera, Welsh National Opera, Detroit Opera and, last fall, New York's Metropolitan Opera. It's the work of Brazilian choreographer Deborah Colker, best known for creating the Cirque du Soleil touring show 'Ovo.' Colker treats 'Ainadamar' as another drama spectacle with dazzling imagery. The flamenco dancing, choreographed by Antonio Najarro, is exciting and the dancing terrific. Resplendent video projections by Tal Rosner appear on beaded curtains that surround a circular space in the middle of the stage where most of the action takes place. But all of this avoids the challenges of a magical realism where questions about the purpose of poetry, theater, political resistance, life and legacy are answerable only by dying. Golijov's score is also unanswerable, full of electronic effects, where the sound of gunshots beat out intricate dance rhythms. The three main characters are played by women: Margarita (Ana María Martínez), Nuria (Vanessa Becerra) and Lorca (Daniela Mack). All prove believable and their trio at the end is exquisite, even if with amplification and the dramatic limitations of the production they have limited presence. Alfredo Tejada makes a startling company debut as a ferociously frightening Ramón Ruiz Alonso, who arrests Lorca. The company's resident conductor, Lina González-Granados, thrives on forcefully emphasized dance rhythms. Less prominent were the opera's wondrous lyric moments or a sense of Golijov's inventive, multifaceted musical sources. Where the company makes up for that, though, is in its series of informative podcasts and program notes adding whatever context is lost in the staging. Like Golijov (and like Leonard Bernstein and Mahler), Wainwright is at heart a songwriter, and he had the advantage of Gershon conveying the luxuriant lyricism in 'Dream Requiem,' a work that at its heart also is operatic. He harks back to Verdi and the late 19th century but with his own unexpected turns of phrase. Like Golijov in 'Ainadamar,' Wainwright starts very quietly and slow-builds his musical architecture out of an array of materials and colors. He goes in for big effects, lots of percussion, huge climaxes and sweet melodies of which you can never, if so inclined, get enough. Wainwright bangs out the 'Dies Irae' (Day of Wrath) as almost all composers do in requiem masses, but he can be restrained where others tend to be loud and enthusiastic (Sanctus) and visa versa. He shows no mercy for the solo soprano part, but Redpath astounded as she scaled the heights. In the end, Wainwright has created a latter-day bardo, the spiritual journey that follows death. The interruptions from Byron's poem brought chills in Fonda's mesmerizing reading, as the text follows the breakdown of humanity in the aftermath of environmental catastrophe. She made it feel like a requiem warning for us all. Once is not enough for 'Dream Requiem.' A recording of the premiere in Paris last year has been released, but it doesn't hold a candle to the live performance by the Master Chorale in Disney. 'Dream Requiem' will be presented by several co-commissioners in Europe, as well as for the Royal Ballet in London. Who will dare to dream big and be the first to stage 'Dream Requiem' as a double bill with 'Ainadamar'?
Scotsman
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
The Great Wave: Scottish Opera's Hokusai-inspired production to 'straddle fact and fantasy'
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... The headline news for Scottish Opera earlier this month, while revealing its upcoming 2025-26 programme, is that the new season also marks music director Stuart Stratford's tenth year in the company's artistic hot seat. Given how critical the past decade has been for Scottish Opera - marking its reinvention following a funding crisis that seriously threatened its credibility and very existence - Stratford's success in the role is equally a measure of that comeback. General director Alex Reedijk doesn't hold back his own admiration. 'Stuart has brought so much to the company, exactly what we needed when the going was tough: great musical values, but most of all a style of leadership that makes everyone feel involved, whether artists on stage or specialists behind the scenes. He's created a really strong sense of ensemble within the company.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Scottish Opera general director, Alex Reedijk (left) with music director Stuart Stratford. | Kirsty Anderson As for Stratford's own highlights of the last few years, these chime with recent, recognisable successes. Main stage productions such as Puccini's Il Trittico (Sir David McVicar's production won Outstanding Achievement in Opera at the 2023 Critics' Circle Awards) rank highly on his list. Then again, so do the far-reaching partnership projects and inclusive community initiatives that are now equal drivers in defining Scottish Opera's artistic programming. 'Collaborative productions like [Osvaldo Golijov's] Ainadamar have been a huge success,' he says, 'leading to popular stagings in North America - Detroit, Houston and the Met, before going on to Los Angeles next year. We're very proud it was 'made in Scotland''. 'I'm also very passionate about the community style operas we've done - the circus tent Pagliacci in Paisley, Bernstein's Candide and, at last year's Edinburgh Festival, Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex. These are ongoing and now one of the flagship things we do.' Add to that Stratford's championing of rare operatic repertoire, much of it presented in concert format with the Scottish Opera Orchestra centre stage, other productions - such as Richard Strauss' Daphne - facilitated by the company's recent partnership with East Lothian's Lammermuir Festival. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Which is exactly where the 2025-26 Season kicks off: a comedic double bill in Haddington (4 September) of Ravel's L'heure espagnole and Walton's Chekhovian one-acter The Bear, later transferring to Glasgow and Edinburgh. 'These will work well together, with a common theme of infidelity,' Stratford explains. The Ravel also recognises the 150th anniversary of the composers birth. The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai But the biggest news of the new season is the world premiere in February of a major new opera, The Great Wave, by British-based Japanese composer Dai Fujikura and Scots librettist Harry Ross. The title refers to the iconic woodblock print by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, whose story, and that of his daughter, are freely imagined. 'The subject is an actual historical figure, but the storyline straddles fact and fantasy,' says Stratford. 'Then there's the elusive charm of Fujikara's music, a mix of avant garde with distinctive Japanese simplicity and instrumental colourings.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The Great Wave marks yet another major international collaboration by Scottish Opera, this time with Japanese promoters KAJIMOTO, who will oversee future stagings in Japan. If the remainder of the main scale season amounts to a couple of revivals - the exuberant Barbe & Doucet production of Puccini's La bohème (October/November) and Sir Thomas Allen's sprightly Marriage of Figaro - these are nonetheless rich pickings from the Scottish Opera back catalogue. 'Doing Figaro in English this time will lend Sir Tom's production a fresh curiosity,' promises Reedijk. Lest serious opera fans feel short changed, there's a hint of bigger things to come in concert performances in Glasgow and Edinburgh (March) of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde featuring Annemarie Kramer as Isolde in her Scottish Opera debut. 'It's our first Wagner since 2013 and my first Tristan,' says Stratford, with a wink to the future. 'I think we're ready again to tackle these iconic Wagner works.' 'Look out for some future Verdi too,' Reedijk pitches in. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Meanwhile the groundwork for future community productions continues with the formation of a new children's chorus under the direction of Scottish Opera Chorus director Susannah Wapshott, and a new community chorus in Edinburgh arising from the success of last year's Oedipus Rex project. 'We're in a very stable position here,' insists Stratford. 'Getting to do such exciting projects is what keeps me here. I'm very optimistic about what we're doing. And about the next ten years.'
