San Diego Opera Podcast

Continuing our 'summer school series' on opera basics, today we explore the aria, moving very quickly from Monteverdi's L'Orfeo to Verdi's A Masked Ball (Un ballo in maschera). Nicolas Reveles, Director of Education & Outreach for San Diego Opera explains it all for you in a fun and informative way. Enjoy!

Continuing our Summer School for Opera Fans, Dr. Nicolas Reveles, the Geisel Director of Education and Outreach for San Diego Opera, gives us more information on the intimate connection between two of opera's most potent elements...the words and the music! With generous examples from our first opera for the 2014 season, Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, Dr. Nic tries to help you make the connection between what the characters are communicating through their words and what we actually hear in the music!

At the end of this week we'll be celebrating the beginning of summer, 2013, and we'll begin getting ready for our exciting 2014 International Season! What better way to do that then to have a few podcasts dedicated to a 'refresher' course in opera? Today Nicolas Reveles, our Geisel Director of Education and Outreach for San Diego Opera takes a look at the essence of the art form, how composers approach a dramatic idea and "musicalize" it. We'll explore the connection between what we see on the stage and what we hear from the wonderful music that these composers create. Enjoy!

Join the Geisel Director of Education and Outreach for San Diego Opera, Nicolas Reveles, in a brief exploration of the 2014 from Pagliacci to Don Quixote, The Elixir of Love to A Masked Ball with a dollop of Verdi's Requiem thrown in to the mix. This exciting season has something for everyone, as you'll discover. For each opera Dr. Reveles gives us some of his own personal reasons for looking forward to each of these great masterworks. Enjoy!

San Diego Opera's exciting production of Giuseppe Verdi's Aida opens this Saturday night, April 20, and one thing we can say about it: it's not your grandma's Aida! Internationally renowned fasion designer Zandra Rhodes has created this production (sets as well as costumes) and it's a visually stunning, indeed delightful version of this evergreen classic with colors and shapes inspired by ancient Egypt. Join Nicolas Reveles, Director of Education & Outreach, as we explore Zandra's inspiration for this wonderful opera. 

Meet Daniele Callegari, a San Diego Opera debut artist who hails from Milan and lives in Barcelona! He has taken the company by storm with his energy, his enthusiasm for music and opera, as well as his positive presence in rehearsals for Verdi's Aida. Nicolas Reveles, Director of Education and Outreach, has a conversation with him about this wonderful opera and what draws it to him again and again. 

We all know and love Verdi's great opera Aida. We thought it might be informative for our podcast audience to hear a different 'take' on our production of this wonderful opera to ask mezzo-soprano Jill Grove, our Amneris, about the current state of the opera business. What's it like for singers out there right now? How is the HD operas-at-the-movies effort effecting regional companies? What's it like to be involved in the opera business today? Jill offers her thoughts on these and other subjects in this interview with Nicolas Reveles, the Director of Education and Outreach for San Diego Opera. Enjoy!

We're welcoming back bass-baritone Mark S. Doss after a rather lengthy hiatus: he was last here as Friar Lawrence in Gounod's Romeo and Juliet in 1998. He has since established himself as one of the most exciting Escamillos (Carmen), Mephistopheles (Faust) and Amonasros (Aida) in the world. Watch and listen as Nicolas Reveles, Director of Education and Outreach for San Diego Opera discusses his career and the role of Amonasro with this wonderful artist. 

We have long awaited the arrival of soprano Latonia Moore (pronounced lah-TAH-nee-yah) since her dramatic debut at the Metropolitan Opera a few years back in the role of Aida. Her performance made front page news in the New York Times and was feted throughout the opera world as being one of the most auspicious debuts in recent Met history. She's delightfully open and forthcoming about that exciting moment and about all things vocal and dramatic in her conversation here with Education Director Nicolas Reveles. 

We're hearing lots of folks wondering what the music of Murder in the Cathedral is like. We suspect that they might be just a bit fearful that it may be off-putting or that it sounds like some of those "other" pieces of music from the mid-twentieth century that were so tough on audiences. Fear not! Dr. Nic is here to help you! Watch and listen as he tackles this important subject in a short eleven-minute podcast. Share with your friends!