Amid numerous layoffs, a plunge in donations and the cancellation of their 2009–2010 subscription series, it was heartening to see the Brooklyn Philharmonic—in the form of concertmaster Deborah Buck and guest pianist Molly Morkoski—take the stage at the Brooklyn Museum on Sunday (November 15). Anticipation ran high for the first of four concerts in the Phil’s Off the Walls series, which explored the phenomenon of synesthesia (when one sense stimulus excites an involuntary response in another sense) under the apt title “Hear Color, See Sound.” Unsurprisingly, many synesthetes have been musicians, including Leonard Bernstein, Tori Amos, Jean Sibelius and Stevie Wonder.

The afternoon got off to a rocky start when it was announced that the bright lighting of the museum’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium would prevent the audience from being able to fully see the projections that were set to run during the concert. However, Ms. Buck had chosen paintings within the Brooklyn Museum’s collection so that they could be viewed in all their glory postconcert. It also allowed the focus to be on the music, which is clearly what most people came to hear. Read more »

Not to be outdone by yesterday’s announcement of a free dress rehearsal at the Metropolitan Opera, today the New York Philharmonic announced its own plans for a free open rehearsal on Wednesday, September 16, at 9:45am. That evening, Alan Gilbert officially takes up the reins as the Phil’s music director, with a program that includes the world premiere of EXPO by Magnus Lindberg, the orchestra’s newly appointed composer in residence. Also on the opening-night bill are Messiaen’s Poèmes pour Mi, featuring superstar soprano Renée Fleming, and Berlioz’s hair-raising Symphonie fantastique.

You’ll have to get up pretty early to take advantage of this offer, of course; general-admission tickets will be distributed on the Lincoln Center plaza starting at 8am (limited to two per person), and the last two times the Phil did this, thousands heeded the call. But the orchestra is making it worth your while to wait in line: You can sign up to receive program notes and submit questions for Gilbert via text message, and you’ll be eligible for prizes such as free concert tickets, autographed concert programs, discounts at the Phil’s Gift Kiosk and iPods pre-loaded with recordings by Gilbert and the orchestra.

Should you be unable to attend the morning rehearsal but still want to catch the concert without paying, you’ve got two options: Turn up in the evening to watch the program broadcast live on screens above the Lincoln Center plaza, or stay home and watch the tape-delayed PBS broadcast. And if for some reason you still need further motivation to turn up for catch Gilbert’s opening bow in person, check out his blazing performance of Bohuslav Martinu’s Symphony No. 4 with the Berlin Philharmonic, recorded in April.

Anticipation is running high for the start of the Metropolitan Opera’s new season, which opens with a fresh production of Tosca, Puccini’s bloody tale of lust, revolution and revenge. Director Luc Bondy is in charge of restaging the repertoire staple that George Bernard Shaw musicologist Joseph Kerman once deemed a “shabby little shocker” (in a memorable but apparently much-misattributed quote), with fiery Finnish soprano Karita Mattila singing the title role and music director James Levine conducting.

But if you just can’t wait for opening night on September 21, you’re in luck: The Met is opening the final dress rehearsal—Thursday, September 17—to the public, free of charge. Doors will open at 10:30am for the 11am rehearsal, and you can stick around for a Q&A with the artists afterward. Free tickets, limited to two per person, will be available at the Met box office on Sunday, September 13, at noon—and they’re going to be snapped up fast, so don’t sleep in.

You’ll have two more chances to see the Met’s biggest stars for free in final dress rehearsals this season. You can catch Bartlett Sher’s new production of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, with Anna Netrebko and Joseph Calleja, on November 30, and Mary Zimmerman’s staging of Rossini’s Armida, starring Renée Fleming, on April 9. We’ll have the details for those open rehearsals as the dates draw near.

I was shocked and saddened to learn yesterday of the sudden, unexpected passing last weekend of Robert Hilferty—a keen arts journalist, astute critic, admired colleague, dazzling raconteur and gregarious bon vivant. Although he hadn’t written for TONY in some time, Robert was an important contributor to this magazine’s early success; among the other publications whose pages he enlivened were Stagebill, The Advocate, Gramophone and Opera News.

More recently, Robert served as an on-screen interviewer for Muse, Bloomberg TV’s now-defunct arts program, for which he interrogated the likes of Renée Fleming and Philip Roth. Here’s a clip of Robert in action, interviewing cyberpunk author William Gibson on Muse:

Current TONY contributor David R. Adler got to know Robert during a visit to the Fés Festival of World Sacred Music last summer, and shares his thoughts (and a few choice video clips) on his blog, Lerterland. I can relate to what David says in his post; I, too, got to know Robert better during my own trip to the Fés Festival in 2006, and I’ll never forget any part of the experience—even if I wasn’t treated to any dance episodes like those that David describes.

You can read some of Robert’s most recent writing on his blog, The Hilferty Harangue, appropriately subtitled “Rants, Raves and Revelations Across the Arts.” He was one of a kind…and he’ll be missed.

Postscript: Michael Petrelis has posted more details of Robert Hilferty’s life—including his important work as a documentary filmmaker and AIDS activist—and of his sad passing on his blog, The Petrelis Files.

When the curtain closed on the Amato Opera earlier this year, it also closed on a piece of Bowery history: After 61 seasons, the feisty company—squeezed in next to the former CBGB—succumbed to land sharks when impresario and conductor Tony Amato announced he was retiring and selling the 107-seat house. With the company’s final bow in May, though, came news of a promising coda, as several company members announced the formation of the Amore Opera Company.

Yet even as the love continues to grow with Amore, another ensemble—launched by Tony Amato’s niece, Irene Kim, and her husband, John—will bring opera back to the East Village even sooner. The newly formed Bleecker Street Opera met this week with Fourth Arts Block, a group committed to preserving the East 4th Street Cultural District. FAB will be helping the nascent company with its Internet presence and networking as it works to raise the curtain this fall. “They have found a home at the Bleecker Street Theatre,” says FAB’s special-projects coordinator, Lauren Parrish. “They’ll be rebirthing themselves this fall. It’s very exciting.”

It’s no surprise that the company will carry on in the Amato spirit: With Mr. Amato’s blessing, the Kims secured an intimate, lively venue with the same seating capacity, retained the Amato’s scenic designer, Richard Cerullo—and may even find a way to sneak in the late Sally Amato’s signature meatballs after performances. “Once you get used to one thing, it’s hard to have anything else,” Irene Kim says, laughing over the similarities between her company and that of her aunt and uncle.

Bleecker Street Opera is set to launch in October (tentatively the 18th) with Montemezzi’s L’Amor di Tre Re (”The Love of Three Kings”), and means to round out its inaugural season with two perennial Italian classics, Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Verdi’s Rigoletto. We’ll bring you more details as they are confirmed.—Olivia Giovetti

Consider it a recession one-two punch: Famous for touring the five boroughs each summer, the Metropolitan Opera announced in April that it would be offering a series of recital concerts in lieu of their traditional—and highly anticipated—complete opera performances. And at last night’s opening concert, we were told that the Central Park SummerStage sound system is in need of a $250,000 upgrade. While the latter made for some cringeworthy moments in the first act (not to mention an amplification of every breath and cough from the headset mikes), it didn’t detract from the fact that this recital by Alek Shrader, Paulo Szot and Lisette Oropesa, pictured left to right above, may have been one of the Met’s best summer performances, period.

The program was surprisingly well planned with arias and duets either mentioning or revolving around innocent love. While many (this reviewer included) could have done without the American musical-theater numbers at the end, they were certainly crowd-pleasers—and allowed headliner Szot to sing what he is currently best known for: “Some Enchanted Evening.”

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The New York Philharmonic will enter a brave new era when Alan Gilbert, a young, energetic native New Yorker, takes over as the orchestra’s music director this fall. Sadly, however, one of the organization’s most gifted executives won’t be around to take part in the coming metamorphosis. The Phil announced today that Matías Tarnopolsky (pictured left), its erudite, articulate, eminently capable vice president of artistic planning, has accepted the position of director at Cal Performances, a prestigious performing-arts presenter based at the University of California, Berkeley.

Tarnopolsky, who was included in TONY’s roundup of the top behind-the-scenes movers and shakers in the New York arts community last year, will leave the Phil in July. After the jump, an official statement from the Phil.

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With the economy in the state it’s in, it comes as no surprise that the Metropolitan Opera will not be returning to its former practice of touring complete opera performances out to the five boroughs and New Jersey this summer. But the good news is that the company is offering considerably more than last summer’s one-off schmoozefest with the “love couple” of Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu.

Moments ago, the Met announced its Summer Recital Series, a run of six concerts in five boroughs, presented in collaboration with the City Parks Foundation, as well as a Summer HD Festival of opera video screenings on the Lincoln Center Plaza, starting with Il Barbiere di Siviglia (with Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Flórez) on August 29.

The first recital, scheduled for July 13 at Central Park SummerStage, features très hot baritone Paolo Szot (pictured) with two of the company’s best young prospects, soprano Lisette Oropesa and tenor Alek Shrader, all accompanied by pianist Vlad Iftinca. Szot, as many of you already know, will be starring in the Met’s fantastical new production of Shostakovich’s The Nose next season. All six recitals will be presented free of charge, but you’ll need tickets for the SummerStage event; they’ll be available via the Met website starting June 1.

After the break, the complete schedule of recitals and screenings.

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Ending months of speculation, New York City Opera announced details of its 2009–10 season this evening. Unsurprisingly, given the turmoil and uncertainty the company has endured over the past year, the season ahead will be a short one, with just five staged productions. Still, if new general manager and artistic director George Steel wanted to prove his commitment to both tradition and innovation in one fell swoop, he could hardly have laid a stronger hand on the table than this one.

Following an opening-night gala concert in honor of David H. Koch, namesake of the rechristened New York State Theater, on November 5, the season proper will commence on November 7 with a revival of Hugo Weisgall’s critically acclaimed Esther, returning for the first time since its world-premiere run in 1993. A new production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, directed by Christopher Alden, arrives the following evening. Mark Lamos’s charming 2002 production of Chabrier’s L’Étoile returns on March 18, with the same director’s popular staging of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (pictured) opening on March 19. Rounding out Steel’s first season is Handel’s Partenope, which opens on April 3.

“This first season in our renovated home will show the many ways City Opera makes outstanding contributions to the people of New York and to the world of opera,” Steel said in a press statement. “We are excited to return to our audiences, on schedule, and are thrilled to be moving forward with our plans for a more extensive 2010–11 season.” Subscriptions will be on sale starting May 1 for renewing subscribers and June 15 for new ones; single tickets will be available starting September 8.

Not many artists can claim as broad a CV as that of Nico Muhly, a young Juilliard-trained composer who has worked with Björk, Antony, Philip Glass, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus and many, many others. If you plan to catch Grizzly Bear with the Brooklyn Philharmonic this Saturday, you’ll be hearing Muhly’s orchestrations. His work in video and film, meanwhile, has covered everything from The Reader to Wonder Showzen.

And that’s just the routine stuff. In 2005, Muhly hooked up with artist Maira Kalman to create a musical version of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style (which we previewed here). For a performance he created with Icelandic designer Shoplifter at the Kitchen last year, Muhly combed and teased the hair of three compliant models, as regular associate Nadia Sirota scrubbed away at her viola nearby.

Now, in the latest salvo of Muhly’s comprehensive assault on the realm of the senses, he’s teaming up with director Stewart Matthew, fragrance designer Christophe Laudamiel and musician-producer Valgeir Sigurdsson for Green Aria, the world’s first “ScentOpera,” at the Guggenheim Museum May 31 and June 1. According to the press release, audience members will listen to music by Muhly and Sigurdsson in a darkened room while a “scent organ,” designed by Fläkt Woods, triggers “scent microphones” attached to each seat, which will emit suggestive scents to tell the story. We’re oddly fascinated by the notion…but then, we’ve always been suckers for a pungent gimmick.

It would be foolish to imagine that any production of Il Trovatore could meet the insane demands Verdi wrote into it: The opera requires four of the world’s greatest singers, a superlative chorus, an imaginative staging that allows for improbably fast changes of scene and—last but not least—a willful suspension of disbelief in its ridiculous plot contrivances. Hold your breath for all of those stars to line up, however, and you’re in for a long, dark night with your record collection. For the rest of us, the new David McVicar production of Il Trovatore is not only better than anyone had reason to suspect, it could easily turn out to be a highlight of the spring.

First, and most importantly, this new staging finally breaks the curse of the Met’s last two Trovatore productions: one dismal, the next roundly reviled. McVicar’s solution involved a huge, gray vertical slab on a turntable, allowing for quick and easy changes between indoor and outdoor scenes, while also providing—at last!—a reasonably credible scenario to account for an otherwise inexplicable instance of mistaken identity during the first act. McVicar’s blatantly Goya-esque vision was atmospheric and effective, though the turntable could definitely use a greasing before its next go-round. Read more »

An opening night at the Metropolitan Opera is always buzzworthy, but there’s a special anticipation in the air for tonight’s maiden voyage of Verdi’s rousing warhorse Il Trovatore (”the troubadour”). This is one of Verdi’s most popular and tuneful operas—you definitely know the “Anvil Chorus,” and you’ve probably heard the high-flying tenor aria “Di Quella Pira.” But what makes tonight special in an edgy way is the memory of the Met’s last two Trovatore productions, both notorious flops. Factor in a plot so ludicrous that parody seems superfluous—which didn’t prevent the Marx Brothers and countless others from goring it—and you can see why folks at the Met might avoid mentioning the opera’s name, like theater companies insist on referring to a certain Shakespeare drama as “the Scottish play.”

Still, there’s ample cause to suspect that the old curse might be broken tonight. Read more »

The Brooklyn Philharmonic has attracted plenty of well-deserved attention during the past few years with “BP Presents,” an impressive string of high-profile collaborations with alternative-music icons like Laurie Anderson, Antony and Joanna Newsom—the last of which we included in our roundup of 2008’s top live events. The latest entry in that series, a February 28 show with Grizzly Bear and Final Fantasy, is already sold out.

Our sources tell us, however, that we should all be paying a little more attention to the orchestra’s February 26 concert, “Shuffle Mode,” which features two inventive post-rock chamber ensembles with close ties to marquee alt-rock bands: Clogs, featuring guitarist Bryce Dessner of the National, and Bell Orchestre, a Canadian consort that includes members of Arcade Fire. The concert will include classical works by Debussy, Bartók, Astor Piazzolla and John Adams, a new orchestral piece by Clogs member Padma Newsome, and performances by each band.

And now we’re hearing whispers that the guest list doesn’t end with Clogs and Bell Orchestre. With Dessner on hand, for instance, we wouldn’t be shocked to hear from a bandmate. Nor would we be surprised if an overeager performer popped in a few days early. Some folks are always looking for a place to shine, after all. And others just seem to have a thing for orchestras.

Jefferson Friedman (featured in TONY this week) is nominally a classical composer, but his gig at Miller Theatre tonight holds much interest for enthusiasts of weird underground rock. The program’s big draw is a new song cycle composed for—and sung by—Craig Wedren (left), best known for his role as frontman of the remarkable avant-pop group Shudder to Think. Frankly, though, the component of the show that excites us most is Eight Songs, Friedman’s arrangement of material by Crom-Tech, the visionary postmetal duo that introduced the world to hypershredder Mick Barr (of Ocrilim, Octis, Orthrelm and Krallice). Click here for the composer’s notes on the project, and check out this rare glimpse of Crom-Tech in action: