Spotlight on: Cairan Ryan

Interview

"I sing because it is a holistic musical experience. It's the only thing I can think of that comes close to complete participation of your brain, body, and what some people may call a soul. At its peak, it unites all three into a living, breathing instrument, that's always completely unique and arrestingly different. I sing to always find that unity."

via Wolf Trap Opera, Audition Season 2015: the conversation

Editorial

This is a cross-post from Wolf Trap Opera's great blog, where Kim Pensinger Witman, Wolf Trap's Senior Director of Opera & Classical Programming, talks all things auditions. The season is nigh, singers! You're working away on the great singing, but how do you tell your auditioners who you are? Read and learn.

Public practicing & pet peeves

Humour

Singers, I love you all. You're brave folks, putting in literally endless hours of practice, taking all the criticism with a smile, getting up in front of bored-faced crowds to bare your souls. I always admire you guys, and never envy your jobs. But singers, let's chat about singing in undesignated areas.

So, can we hear hologram Callas soon?

Humour

Whitney Houston's hologram will sing a concert next year at "a major U.S. venue" next year. Pat Houston, president of the Whitney Houston Estate and Greek billionaire Alki David, CEO of Hologram USA, are working together on this latest hologram concert venture; Whitney's image will be shown onstage "the same way that Tupac and Snoop Dogg interacted onstage at Coachella," according to David.

Talking with singers: Ambur Braid

Interview

Dramatic coloratura soprano Ambur Braid has been on our interview wish-list since Schmopera's day one. Her choice repertoire consists largely of "evil, crazy royalty," where she can show off her staggering high notes and coloratura so fast you can blink and miss it.

Gems: Beauty Pageant Opera

Humour

It's rare, but I just love it when it happens: beauty pageant opera. It usually happens one of two ways for me: predictably not great, or surprisingly good. When I'm listening to the former, I'm wondering how they picked their aria, trying to hear their singing background in their sound, all very judgy things that I scold myself over almost immediately.

Michael Park: on opera & disease

Interview

Vancouver-based Composer and pianist Michael Park has spent considerable time thinking about how to talk about disease through music. He performed his Alzheimer's Variations (absolutely worth a listen) as part of his TEDxSFU talk in 2013, entitled "Experience disease through music."

Story webs & the original Romeo & Juliet

Op-ed

No piece of art is created in a vacuum. Any time I've worked on an opera, I've always loved learning of the connections between the story, and its ancestry in literature and history. Greek mythology, Shakespeare, the Bible, Egyptian history, the atomic bomb...

The 5 best & worst states for finding an opera house

Editorial

The other day, this Canadian blogger was thinking about the United States. Specifically, I was wondering just how many opera houses there are in a country of over 300 million people. So, I gathered some quick stats on the number of opera houses (or organizations producing professional opera) versus millions of people, in each state.

Browse Suzanne Vinnik's Opera Diva Dress Collection

Interview

I sometimes wonder what the average number of evening gowns in the closets of opera singers. Probably at least 5 - maybe closer to 10? Having a closet that won't stay shut from all the tulle doesn't actually sound like a bad problem, but it's certainly not practical.