- John Stoehr
Arts Editor
There's more to art than you think. It's not just theater, paintings, books and dance. It's the enterprise of human creativity and it takes vastly different shapes and forms. Here you'll find my thoughts about the arts in Charleston and beyond. Neither of us knows what to expect.
Category Archives: Opera
Access to opera makes more opera fans? Brilliant!
June 12, 2008 – 8:45 am
It’s hard to believe but the Metropolitan Opera’s efforts to expand the profile of opera seems to be working. I’m kidding about the hard to believe thing, but not the results of two years of broadcasting high-definition signals of live Met performances into movie theaters around the country.
According to a new study by Opera America […]
A last-minute Italian opera for ‘08 Spoleto? Nope. (Now with an all-new update!)
April 2, 2008 – 2:06 pm
A report in yesterday’s Post and Courier implied that the new director of the Festival of Two Worlds Foundation, the Italian sister of Charleston’s Spoleto Festival USA, was going to scour the Holy City’s theaters searching for a good place for an opera in the 2008 festival:
He [Giorgio Ferrara] said there are also plans to […]
Opera at the Terrace Theater
March 18, 2008 – 8:58 am
It looks like the Terrace Theater, Charleston’s only arthouse cinema, is making arrangements with Emerging Pictures to show broadcasts of opera from La Scala in Milan, Italy, among other kinds of innovative digital movie content. Just when I start complaining that there are no commercial options to see live opera broadcasts in Charleston, the Terrace […]
Why is there no opera broadcast in Charleston?
March 12, 2008 – 4:14 pm
Opera is evidently everywhere except Charleston.
Well, that’s not true. It’s in Charleston, too. But it’s not very comfortable.
The Charleston County Public Library offers free showings of the high-definition broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera, but you have to sit in not-too-comfy chairs and watch a small screen to experience it.
I’d rather spend $22, sit in a […]
Renee Fleming and Spoleto
March 2, 2008 – 7:51 am
Jeff Day, at the State newspaper, reminds us that Renee Fleming, at the top of her game as the Met’s leading opera diva, got her start at Spoleto. His article today also serves as a reminder that artists of Fleming’s caliber had to start somewhere. In fact, Fleming graduated from the same small New York […]
Opera in Bubbaville???
February 7, 2008 – 9:58 am
From the Jacksonville Business Journal — J.S.
An opera company that plans to have its first production in the spring of 2009 hopes to raise $3 million to get started.
Opera Jacksonville is being started by retired opera singer Sonia Lewis, who is also the president of RCAM Artist Management Co. Lewis had a 20-year career as […]
Journal: the Met’s new boss
November 20, 2007 – 4:57 pm
From the Rebecca Mead’s New Yorker profile last month on Peter Gelb, the director of the Metropolitan Opera. He’s the person behind the push to bring high-definition broadcasts of Met productions to movie theaters nationwide. The program started last year and this year expanded to triple the number of original venues. Why do this? Because […]
Opera News: The Met Comes to Chucktown
November 19, 2007 – 5:24 pm
Well, sorta.
Last year, in a bid to remain at the center of American high culture, the Metropolitan Opera in New York began broadcasting in high definition to theaters nationwide. So far, the results have been stellar. People are proving eager to see opera in this new media format, one using multiple angles, superb clarity and […]
Paul Potts: Hero of opera
November 2, 2007 – 3:17 pm
Arts organizations are always talking about how to cultivate new audiences. A tried-and-true strategy has been the Theory of Exposure: Get the art in front of people, especially youngsters, and they will acquire a taste for the art.
That kind of thinking has been around at least since The Muppet Show first aired in the late […]
Celebrity the way it used to be
July 6, 2007 – 12:00 pm
American opera legend Beverly Sills died last week at 78. Readers of a certain age don’t have the slightest clue who she is, of course — they’re fixated on the modern variety of celebrity, the Parises and Anna Nicoles who are famous for nothing more than being attractive, completely talentless, and very, very wealthy. But […]
