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From an opera concert with Trondheim Symphony Orchestra & Opera in Olavshallen, Trondheim, 11 March 2021. Conductor: James Gaffigan Valkyries: Helmwige – Sigrid Vetleseter Bøe, Gerhilde – Camilla Stenhoff Vist, Schwertleite – Siv Oda Hagerupsen, Waltraute – Åse Krystad, Ortlinde – Tonje Eero Hove, Rossweisse – Maria Nohr, Grimgerde – Nina Sætherhaug.Richard Wagner: The Valkyrie - Ride of the Valkyries

Climate activists angered opera fans at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, by standing up and screaming during an opening night performance of Tannhäuser, Thursday. Radical climate group Extinction Rebellion, NYC, took credit for the protest on social media, and shared videos of the disruptions. Halfway through the second act of the performance, several protesters stood up and demanded an end to fossil fuels. One man scolded the audience to "wake up" to the "climate emergency," before unfolding a black banner that said, "No opera on a dead planet." "Wake up! The stream is polluted! The stream is tainted!...

In October 2023, an official responsible for programming at North Carolina public radio station WCPE rejected broadcasting several operas being produced this season at the New York Metropolitan Opera. An article, now scrubbed from the net, entitled “North Carolina Public Radio Station Rejects Contemporary Operas” explains that the programmer cited her Christian faith and viewpoint that the operas are vulgar and inappropriate for children as reasons for declining to broadcast them. The viewpoint intolerance and anti-Christian cultural fascism of NPR and institutions such as the N.Y. Met are fanatical. It was intolerable that a single dissident public radio station would...

My last computer question here on FR generated a lot of furor and only limited useful information (mostly positive comments regarding the Firefox browser.) But I'd like more info (feedback) from FReepers who may have used Brave or Opera, for comparison, as I got none in my prior thread. Pro's and cons from hopefully extensive use would be great to receive! In online articles, Brave seems particularly well thought of from a privacy and security standpoint, without going to the extremes (and more limited functionality) of TOR.

(SOUNDBITE OF JELLY ROLL MORTON PERFORMANCE OF GIUSEPPE VERDI'S "MISERERE") SCOTT SIMON, HOST: And that is Jelly Roll Morton, the jazz legend, playing "Miserere" from the opera "Il Trovatore" for Alan Lomax in 1938. Jazz, of course, is born of the African American experience and draws from musical influences around the world, including opera. (SOUNDBITE OF JELLY ROLL MORTON'S "JELLY ROLL CARVES SAINT LOUIS") SIMON: The New Orleans Opera has commissioned a project on the subject of opera and jazz. It's featured on its website, and there you can see videos produced by our pal and former colleague here on...

A singer's primary genre can impact the likelihood of developing vocal fold injury and may even influence the specific type of injury that occurs, a recent study suggests. The two-part study, led by Lesley Childs, M.D., involved the detailed review of more than 1,000 patient records. Phonotraumatic lesions that develop on the vocal folds include benign nodules, pseudocysts, and hemorrhagic polyps, all of which can lead to hoarseness. These injuries are typically caused by overuse or straining of the voice. The study found that while nodules were nearly equally distributed across all singing genres, opera singers presented with a significantly...

It started with soprano Anna Netrebko. In March, the superstar failed to condemn the war in Ukraine in terms explicit enough to satisfy Metropolitan Opera General Manager Peter Gelb. It did not matter that reciting the Met’s required denunciation in coercive conditions would likely be false and worthless. It did not matter that critics within Russia, where Ms. Netrebko remains a citizen, can now be punished with up to 15 years imprisonment for criticizing the government. It did not matter that her family members in Russia could be made to suffer if she complied with the Met’s diktat. It did...

African American soprano Angel Blue has said she will not perform in an opera in Italy this month because another production held at the theater earlier this year featured performers in blackface. The 38-year-old Grammy Award-winner announced she is bowing out of La Traviata at Verona Arena, in Verona, Italy, later this month. She blasted the theater as 'archaic' for mounting another Giuseppe Verdi opera, Aida, that featured performers in blackface. They include Anna Netrebko, a white Russian soprano, has been cast in the titular role of Aida in Verdi’s opera - despite the character being an Ethiopian princess. In...

Britain’s Northern School of Contemporary Dance (NSCD) because it is “built around white European ideas” and is too “gendered”. The school has dropped ballet from its auditions process because of its “potentially contentious nature”, according to The Telegraph. “It is essentially an elitist form. Young people need to pay to take ballet classes as a general rule and for a vast number of potential students, they’ve not had access to ballet,” explained the head of undergraduate studies at the dance school, Francesca McCarthy, in comments to the notionally right-leaning newspaper. “It is a very specific form that is built around...

These wax cylinders were game-changers in the later nineteenth century. People could slide a blank cylinder onto their Edison phonographs and record themselves and their surroundings. However, because they are incredibly fragile, these cylinder recordings were considered unplayable by those living in the modern age – at least until now. These recordings will not remain a mystery for much longer. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which has a collection of these wax cylinders, recently acquired an Endpoint Cylinder and Dictabelt Machine. This modern machine, invented by Nicholas Bergh, can digitize wax cylinders thanks to a laser...

The Rumble app on my Android phone is downloading slow and won't play video. Same thing when I go to their website through the Opera browser. But it works fine through Roku. Anyone else having this issue?

“It is a great artistic loss for the Met and for opera.” Those words from General the Metropolitan Opera Manager Peter Gelb makes it sound like soprano Anna Netrebko has died or lost her voice in some accident. In reality, Netrebko was cancelled for failing to denounce Vladimir Putin. As with the criminalization of support for Putin in some countries, the termination of Netrebko is an attack on free speech. It is perfectly bizarre for the Met to stand against tyranny by attacking free speech, the very right that combats tyranny in all forms. This is not just the day...

So I was standardized on Opera for several years, tried Brave, didn't really like it, and then someone on here recommended Vivaldi. I tried it and really like it, it's my main browser now. Problem is, it seems to lose the file-type association for web links and http files and so on. I clicked on a link in an email and it opened the box inviting me to tell it what program to use, and -- Vivaldi wasn't even one of the pre-registered options, only Opera. So I browsed to the location (which is oddly in %APPDATA%), and explicitly told...

Covid-19 shoved Jeff Sweat into a medical coma for three weeks last winter, face down on a ventilator, on death's trap door. ...Sweat and several other patients with serious medical complications caused by the virus attend weekly opera classes via video conference, conducted by members of the Los Angeles Opera and music educator Rondi Charleston. "When you are intubated, you forget how to drink and breathe," Sweat said. "It was like breathing was a second language. Singing helps me connect. Breathing to a purpose. It gave me reason to learn how to breathe again."

The Richard Tucker Music Foundation, which grants prestigious awards to young singers, removed David N. Tucker from its board of directors on Monday evening. Mr. Tucker, a son of the distinguished tenor for whom the foundation is named, was removed after an uproar over racially charged comments that he made on a Black singer’s Facebook page. “The Richard Tucker Music Foundation condemns the hurtful and offensive comments made by one of our board members, David Tucker,” Jeffrey Manocherian, the foundation’s chairman, and Barry Tucker, its president and another of Richard Tucker’s sons, said in a statement. On Saturday, Julia Bullock,...

When Lyric Opera was forced to cancel all its performances for the rest of the year due to the pandemic, it seemingly lost one of its greatest outreach opportunities: The annual free concert at Millennium Park, which reaches thousands of listeners. Rather than take the loss, Lyric general manager, president and CEO Anthony Freud and Ryan Opera Center music director Craig Terry came up with an alternative – one distinctly in tune with our turbulent times. At 6 p.m. July 26, the Ryan Opera Center will present “Lawrence Brownlee and Friends: The Next Chapter,” a free virtual concert spotlighting Black...

Placido Domingo and his family are isolating in self-quarantine after the opera singer tested positive for Coronavirus. On Sunday (March 22), Domingo shared that he had suffered from a fever and coughing -- two symptoms of COVID-19 -- before he receiving his test results. He encouraged his followers to keep their distance, wash their hands and observe best practices set by healthcare professionals before ending his note with a word of solidarity and encouragement. "Together we can fight this virus and stop the current worldwide crisis, so we can hopefully return to our normal daily lives very soon," he writes....

A defense attorney for the Connecticut opera singer who drew gunfire while driving through checkpoints outside President Donald Trump’s Florida home says she is mentally ill. The attorney for Hannah Roemhild told a Palm Beach County judge Monday that she had stopped taking her medication, causing Friday’s wild car chase. Roemhild will be examined by a psychologist and will remain jailed pending a future hearing.

After experiencing A Kanye West Opera: Mary at Lincoln Center during this advent season, it is safe to say that what he is doing is biblically based and theologically sound ministry. This is REAL DEAL teaching and preaching of scripture in a way that should make your momma and them church should take notes. They have combined the drama of his Hip-Hop stage show, one that has drawn crowds from the secular world, with the intentional sermonizing of the consecrated gospel of his Lord, Jesus. They have used very few words (outside of the Latin in the solos) to tell...

Lincoln Center was feeling it.