An Exclusive from INSIDE magazine Opera Tampa turns 30 this year and it’s definitely making the most of it. Its expanded season features four works instead of the usual three. Plus, there was a preseason production of Tom Sivak’s very darkly humorous Love v. Death, a two-part chamber opera about, well, love and death. Part One of... Continue Reading →
The Turn of the Screw is one of the most enduring ghost stories and one of the least obvious. Its fright quotient comes from a sense of dread that builds to fear. The fear is brought on not by what’s seen but what isn’t. Or might have been. The 1898 novella by Henry James is... Continue Reading →
Late one cold Thursday afternoon, a seamstress boarded a Montgomery, Ala., city bus for the ride home from work. As the bus filled up with more passengers, African-American riders, including the seamstress, were ordered by the driver to move to the back to allow white riders to be seated. Nearly every aspect of life in... Continue Reading →
AN EXCLUSIVE FROM INSIDE MAGAZINE Set designer Tom Hansen knows artistic liberties can be essential in telling a story. When the story is set about a five-minute drive from the theater, though, he leans more toward the true-to-life. Tom Hansen, set designer of Opera Tampa's Candide and Don Pasquale. Opera Tampa’s production of Gaetano Donizetti’s... Continue Reading →
We all know Leonard Bernstein’s celebrated musical, West Side Story, but what about Candide, the seldom-staged opera eclipsed by its exuberant overture? Opera Tampa opens its new season on Jan.31 with a rare production of Candide, which begins with Bernstein’s single-most performed work, a rollicking hodgepodge of themes and break-neck tempos that hint of what... Continue Reading →
It might seem odd, doing all the things one does to have a night out – buying tickets, hiring a babysitter, finding parking – when it’s preordained that the evening will end in tears. In some cases, though, tears are part of the package. When the curtain falls on Opera Tampa’s production of La Traviata,... Continue Reading →
When Noam Aviel began her quest for a career in music, the conductor’s podium wasn’t an end point she’d considered. Noam was a singer and jazz was her music. Classical music didn’t enter her picture until her late teens when she studied with classical singers to bolster her jazz singing skills. The teenage jazz hopeful... Continue Reading →
His uncommon voice is at home on the Broadway stage and in the opera house. He was the most respected composer and lyricist in musical theater. And the most challenging. Stephen Sondheim was a rarity in the theatrical world, a composer who was also a lyricist. He approached both tasks with intellectual honesty and a... Continue Reading →
Wigs used to give Dawn Rivard fits. Working as a window display artist, Rivard said she “loved everything about my it except the wigs, so I went on a hunt for someone to show me how to make the wigs look better because nobody in that fashion end had much knowledge.” What she found was... Continue Reading →
Opera Tampa favorite Rochelle Bard made her company debut as Magda in Puccini’s La Rondine in 2009 under the baton of Maestro Anton Coppola. She has since graced the Straz Center stages in productions of The Merry Widow and Die Fledermaus and in Coppola’s 2011 Fond Farewells Concert. She has performed leading roles with companies... Continue Reading →
As the year 2020 began, anticipation for Rufus Wainwright’s upcoming album was running high. Unfollow the Rules would be Wainwright’s first album of new pop material in eight years. Fans had been clamoring for it since news of Wainwright recording with producer Mitchell Froom (Los Lobos, Elvis Costello) first surfaced in 2018. The album cover... Continue Reading →
Jean Carlos Rodriguez “Let’s play two!” was the catchphrase of Chicago Cubs shortstop Ernie Banks. Opera occasionally schedules double-headers as well. Opera Tampa is closing its season with two one-act operas: Puccini’s comedy Gianni Schicchi and Mascagni’s tragedy Cavalleria Rusticana. Jean Carlos Rodriguez performs in both operas and he’s wondering how much time he’ll have... Continue Reading →
Although known as a composer of operettas – he wrote nearly 100 of them – Jacques Offenbach’s best known work is a full-scale opera, The Tales of Hoffmann. Built around the writings of German author E.T.A. Hoffmann, the opera has become one of opera’s premiere works. Composer Jacques Offenbach photographed by Nadar in the 1860s... Continue Reading →
Tampa has a long history tied to Latin cultures, dating back to 1539 and the arrival of Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto to the Tampa Bay region. That historical tie continues more than 470 years later when the Straz Center for the Performing Arts participates in National Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs from Sept. 15... Continue Reading →
When you least expect it, great moments happen. This is one of those tales made that much greater because “the moment” involves Aretha Franklin. The year is 1998, the 40th Grammy® Awards at New York City’s majestic Radio City Music Hall. The evening was chockful of great performances, unexpected wins and unforeseen surprises, such as:... Continue Reading →
It will come to no surprise that Broadway and opera are represented on the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry, which preserves recordings that are “culturally, historically or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States.” The original cast albums of Oklahoma!, Guys and Dolls, West Side Story, Sweeney Todd, The Wiz... Continue Reading →
Currently the Artistic/Managing Director and Chorus Master for Opera Tampa, Robin Andrew Stamper continues a versatile career as a coach-accompanist, chorus master and opera conductor. Credits include director of music for the Kentucky Opera where he made his conducting debut for The Mikado. Subsequently, he became Artistic Director for the Nevada Opera where he conducted... Continue Reading →
One of the greatest partnerships in musical theater was gravely wounded by a fight about carpet. What a shaggy predicament. Sir William Schwenck Gilbert and Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan. The duo of librettist W.S. Gilbert and composer Sir Arthur Sullivan was a collaboration that lasted a quarter century, creating a body of work, according to... Continue Reading →
Stage combat choreographer Teresa E. Gallar discusses how to safely create fight scenes. Caught In the Act: How did you get started in this line of work? Teresa Gallar: Like any other physical endeavor, there is a thrill from a well-executed fight. Similar to a home run or field goal. It is even more satisfying to have a fight you choreographed... Continue Reading →
Ahoy, me hearties! As you might have come to recognize, we love celebrating national days here at The Straz, and September 19 is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. And being in Tampa, this is one holiday we cannot pass up, since no one knows and loves pirates quite like those from the home of the legendary Jose Gaspar. Oh, and those Buccaneers. The... Continue Reading →