Giacomo Puccini and Susan Danis have something in common – La bohème – the first Florida Grand Opera offering of the 2012-13 season, and the first opera to be produced under Danis’ watch.

Susan Danis is FGO’s new general director and CEO, replacing Robert Heuer, who retired after 27 years in that seat. She took the corner office last month.

A bi-product of arts education, Danis’ passion for opera dates back to third grade where the singers from the Connecticut Opera came to the classroom and then the students were given the opportunity to attend a full performance. Her first opera was Carmen and she has been looking forward ever since.

A card-carrying “opera...

George Harrison leveraged rock ‘n’ roll in the Concert for Bangladesh, Jon Stewart serves up comedy to benefit autism, and Stephen Mills uses ballet to fight bigotry and intolerance.

When Ballet Austin, founded in 1956, decided on a leadership change 12 years ago, they conducted an international search and wound up with a pool of 70 candidates qualified for the artistic director’s chair. After vetting the prospects, they chose a company male dancer from within who didn’t expect the nod. Stephen Mills still isn’t sure why he was chosen to helm the company, but his vision and energy speaks for itself.

After dropping his theatre scholarship to major in dance, Mills then moved to New York to hone his craft. On his professional journey, he has created over 40 original...

Cantor Steven Haas        What happens when a Heldentenor sings from the bema for the Jewish High Holidays? You get one kickin’ Kol Nidre. This is where opera collides with religion. Let’s unpack this  one; a Heldentenor applies to the few voices that can sing persuasively the great heroic tenor roles in German. Cantor Steven Haas from Temple Beth Sholom is one such voice.

With songs like Kol Nidre, it is no wonder what draws a person with the biology to sing the repertoire of opera to Jewish musical liturgy. Kol Nidre, meaning “all our vows,” has been haunting Jews for over 1000 years. First an oral recitation (author unknown), later a chant with a melody composed by a German cantor...

Professional classical musicians tend to be gypsies, moving from orchestra to orchestra, quartet to quartet, chair to chair. This is no reflection on their level of talent, but more to do with the business of classical music. Unless one of these fine musicians has a full time gig with a major world class symphony, they move around the globe with their instrument in tow and string their engagements together to make a living. Thus from this bubbling pot of talent hail the excellent musicians making up The Miami Chamber Players. They were the music makers for the first concert of The World Music Festival that kicked off last weekend at the Wertheim Concert Hall on the campus of FIU South. 

First on tap were two of the six...

Maria, Lucia, Angella        When you discover the gifted Juilliard grads behind the cello, the violin and the piano are three beautiful women dressed in white, red and yellow dresses with sparkling high heels, you have chanced upon an unusual evening of music. And when these three women turn out to be sisters you know you are also in the presence of an unusual gene pool. And when you hear their work – legitimately classical, but wait it’s jazz, and is that blue grass I hear? – delivered with precision, power and nuance, you realize at the end of the...

Maestro James Brooks-Bruzzese          What does a multilingual ambassador of classical music eat for breakfast? The question really is: where does the busy ambassador eat breakfast? When you take an artistic director of a symphony who helms a Guest Artist Series with full orchestra during the regular season, hosts a Summerfest Concert program trekking with an internationally acclaimed chamber orchestra across Florida and the Americas every summer to expose adults and children to our universal language (music), while...

La Traviata props“The two most costly endeavors that mankind undertakes are war and the production of opera.”

Justin Moss, Director of Broward Operations for the Florida Grand Opera, quoting George Bernard Shaw, kicked off an edifying evening on June 20 for a group of 150 early to mid career business people from the Harvard Business School Club

Eric Halfvarson       He didn’t have a big blue beard but he did have a big bass voice. Basso Eric Halfvarson and mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung joined voices for a menacing night at the opera. Maestro Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony with London-based video artist Nick Hillel served up a new media version of Bartók’s 1918 one act opera, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. 

Before we descended into the demented nobleman’s disquieting chamber, four members of the NWS performed Bartók’s String Quartet No. 6, the violins in the hands of Jeannette Jang and Vivek Jayaraman, the viola held by Anthony Parce and the ample cellist was David...

Maria Alejandres as Juliette and Sebastien Gueze as Romeo      A couple of classic farewells charmed the Arsht last Saturday night. Bob Heuer, General Manager of Florida Grand Opera, bid his farewell after serving 33 years in that august seat; hundreds of hands and arms embraced him. Following came the most famous farewell in all of theatre—a pair of star-crossed lovers seal their deaths with a kiss.

Ok, she just turned 14, she and her immediate love agree to marry a couple of hours after meeting each other and they are...

In 1485, Henry Tudor defeated Richard III and claimed the English throne, declaring himself, King Henry VII. Pop the cork! This begins the reign of the Tudors, symbolized by the "Tudor Rose", a fusion of the White Rose symbol of the House of York, and the Red Rose of the House of Lancaster, thus ending the Wars of the Roses and bringing the beginning of my analogy.

England’s most memorable first family lasted for more than a century with five Tudor monarchs occupying the top seat—Henry VII, his son Henry VIII, followed by VIII’s kids, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I, who died in 1603 without bearing any children, bringing the Tudor Dynasty to an end. During this time, the Tudors controlled a lot of real estate--the Kingdom of...