Opera

Declaring an early victory on the strategic plan that led it safely away from the brink of collapse, the Opera Company of Philadelphia is setting its sights on new and more ambitious artistic and financial goals. In a recently approved plan covering 2012 to 2015, the company aims for more performances in varied sites, bigger names on stage, international coproductions with other companies, and a deeper reach into the city and its neighborhoods - but all tempered by certain conditions.

The houselights dim, the conductor brings down the baton and the curtain goes up on the 11 o'clock news. That's the way it is when Channel 12 airs John Adams' opera Nixon in China (3 p.m. tomorrow). The opera, obviously, is based on the momentous visit in 1972 of President Richard M. Nixon, his wife, Pat, and Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger to China. History changed in those five days, China began to open its doors and world political balances shifted radically. But is an opera a documentary?

In our town, we like to think we have it all at holiday time - the Pennsylvania Ballet's million-dollar production of The Nutcracker, the Philly Pops' jazz-lush standards, a Philadelphia Orchestra Christmas series of high orchestral-butterfat content, and any number of Messiahs. But there's an important piece missing in action, something you can't see and hear. Something you should. And something that's a lot more than a holiday chestnut - in fact, a piece that could be the answer to what ails a lot of arts groups both short- and long-term.

When it comes to opera, there's Vienna. There's Milan. New York. Now there's Pennsauken. Yes, Pennsauken - the town of 34,000 where an opera company that started in a living room is now hosting an American premiere. Mozart and Friends Festival, a Pennsauken-based community opera group, will present an American premier of The Beggar's Opera on Nov. 27 and 28 - an opera filled with colorful characters such as prostitutes, crooks and shady gentlemen. Beggar's is the fifth performance sponsored by Mozart and Friends, a nonprofit group that began in 1988, when Melinda Gaffney and 10 neighbors staged a performance of Mozart's The Magic Flute for their family and friends in her crowded Pennsauken living room.

Richard Strauss worshiped at the shrine of Mozart. Strauss, composer of gargantuan works that used orchestras of more than 100 players and incorporated wind machines, nevertheless proclaimed his admiration of Mozart's transparent instrumental pieces and the clarity of the operas that Mozart wrote with Lorenzo da Ponte. Der Rosenkavalier was, to Strauss, the counterpart of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, and when Strauss came to write the music for Die Frau ohne Schatten, he had Mozart's Die Zauberflote in mind as his model.

Arrigo Boito's great cantata on the Faust theme, Mefistofele, was staged Monday night at the Academy of Music in a way that argued for its continuing life as a cantata. The work, which will be repeated Friday, is the third in the Opera Company of Philadelphia series of operas on the Faust theme and the first with Paata Burchuladze in the pivotal role of Mefistofele. The choice of Burchuladze was significant, for the young Georgian bass is singing at the top of his form, his voice ringing through its full range.

As Ilana Davidson rehearses her role in Viktor Ullmann's The Emperor of Atlantis, she concentrates on singing the right notes, finding the right place on stage, and listening for cues. The 23-year-old opera student at the Curtis Institute of Music can take in the beautiful score and appreciate the power of its story. But it won't be until the production at Curtis has ended its four-performance run, which begins today, that she'll be able to begin to think about the opera's composer and the circumstances under which the work was written.

Lee Breuer, librettist and director of American Music Theater's newly revived hit, The Gospel at Colonnus, was back in town Friday night. Lulu was back in town, too: Lulu, the 15-year-old nymphet who preceded Nabokov's Lolita. Few remember Frank Wedekind, the turn-of-the-century German playwright who created her and inspired Georg Pabst's film noir and Alban Berg's opera. Now, Breuer and composer/trumpeter Jon Faddis have made another Lulu opera. Lulu Noire simplifies the storyline Berg used and pares it down to five singers.

Orchestra 2001, one of the area's more imaginative ensembles, concludes its season with excerpts from Andrew Rudin's brand new opera, The Three Sisters, based on the play by Chekhov. Soloists include the engaging mezzo-soprano Suzanne DuPlantis. The chamber orchestra, led by James Freeman, also will unveil a new work by Curtis student Shailen Tuli, which won the group's recent composition competition. Orchestra 2001 at Swarthmore College's Lang Concert Hall, College Avenue and Route 320, Swarthmore at 8 tonight and at the University of the Arts' Laurie Wagman Hall, 311 S. Broad St., at 8 p.m. Sunday.

In the world's most complicated art forms, simplicity is tough. But that's what is called for in Willibald Christoph Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice , an occasion for which the Opera Company of Philadelphia made pared-back production values not just a virtue but an eloquent artistic statement - even if Thursday's opening performance at the Kimmel Center's Perelman Theater occasionally crossed lines from simplicity to blandness to dramatic uncertainty....

In its East Coast premiere, Daniel Catán's operatic version of the film Il Postino is infinitely more engaging than one could ever have predicted from an opera that has little exterior action, characters that aren't especially heroic, and music that hasn't a fraction of the usual tension of the opera's 20th-century predecessors. You aren't likely to walk away from the Center City Opera Theater production, which opened Thursday at the Prince Music Theater, thinking you've seen a masterpiece.

From the outside looking in, there are so many reasons for Curtis Opera Theater not to mount Bellini's bel canto version of the Romeo and Juliet story, I Capuleti e I Montecchi , you couldn't help walking into the Thursday opening with utmost skepticism. Casting this piece is tough enough for world-class opera companies: It requires high-wire Olympic-gold-medal singing as well as a cultivated, highly specific style. Theatrically speaking, these operas can seem hopelessly static and antiquated.

Grand opera abhors a vacuum — it's too big and expensive not to — which is why the last-minute loss of a leading soprano didn't spell disaster for the Opera Company of Philadelphia's production of Puccini's Manon Lescaut. The Friday-night opening at the Academy of Music had its glitches. The handsome but complicated scenery didn't always work smoothly. The spotlight had trouble sticking with the person singing. And the opera itself is less than great. But none of that was so important because singers and orchestra rocked — and that included the young replacement soprano Michelle Johnson, who learned the title role in little more than three weeks.

Depending on the day, hour, and minute, Michelle Johnson is either living the dream or enduring a nightmare. The velvet-voiced soprano, 29, is the latest slated-for-stardom singer to come out of Philadelphia's Academy of Vocal Arts, and was anticipating a relatively light spring schedule to prepare for her first Aida at the Glimmerglass Opera this summer. Then the Opera Company of Philadelphia suddenly needed a replacement soprano for the title role of Puccini's Manon Lescaut.

Perhaps more than any of the professional sports leagues in America, the NBA is the one that most closely resembles TMZ. With very little prompting necessary, there always seems to be a story about some player wanting a trade or wanting his coach canned or something even nuttier (think former St. Joseph's player Delonte West circumnavigating the Washington Beltway with three loaded pistols on a three-wheeled motorcycle). The 76ers have been above this foolishness for the most part, but they delved into it this past week when an article appeared on Sports Illustrated's website that quoted all-star forward Andre Iguodala wondering why teammate Lou Williams, a gifted offensive player, is "one of the toughest guys to guard in the league, but he can't guard anybody.

At last, we learn the source and significance of Anna Netrebko's hot-pink evening gown. Anyone who follows opera no doubt has seen the Metropolitan Opera ads, posters, brochures of the famous Russian soprano being hauled away by police with sex and style, her figure enhanced by her arms being held behind her back. It's this season's logo, and it initially seemed like false advertising - the photo isn't from her early-season star vehicle, Anna Bolena . Instead, it's from Massenet's Manon , which recently opened in a new production by the master of French repertoire, Laurent Pelly.

Declaring an early victory on the strategic plan that led it safely away from the brink of collapse, the Opera Company of Philadelphia is setting its sights on new and more ambitious artistic and financial goals. In a recently approved plan covering 2012 to 2015, the company aims for more performances in varied sites, bigger names on stage, international coproductions with other companies, and a deeper reach into the city and its neighborhoods - but all tempered by certain conditions.

DENVER - Peyton Manning stood next to John Elway, holding up a bright-orange jersey with the No. 18 on it. Yes, that could take some getting used to. And now, if Manning's surgically repaired neck cooperates, these two quarterbacks - one in the Hall of Fame, the other headed there one day - think they might be taking a similar photo together, only next time they will be holding a Super Bowl trophy. Manning was introduced as the new quarterback of the Denver Broncos on Tuesday, the four-time MVP taking the spot once held by Elway, who as Broncos vice president engineered the deal to bring the NFL's most sought-after free agent to town.

No major composer since Giuseppe Verdi has written as many operas, and substantial ones, as Hans Werner Henze. The German-born, Italy-based composer, who is 85, has written 21, and is working on a cantata for Pentecost season titled An den Wind: Musikstueck zu Pfingsten . And, as is the case with Verdi's 28 operas, nobody agrees on which is his masterpiece. Some vote for the orchestrally lush Bassarids . Others say the tumultuous Boulevard Solitude . More votes might go for the 1961 Elegy for Young Lovers , were it heard more often.

Chicago Tribune CHICAGO - Romantic music filled the classroom at Roosevelt University as the young opera singers rehearsed Cinderella, their voices rising for the fairy tale princess's dramatic entrance to the ballroom. It was Sandra Marante's moment. She was Cinderella, and the class turned to her. But when she opened her mouth to sing, the words didn't come out. Her face froze in what looked like a smile, her skin turned blue and she lost consciousness. She was having a seizure.