OperaWatch
Cincinnati celebrants (from left) artistic director Evans Mirageas, Seacrest, Brown and Leech
© Cincinnati Opera/Philip Groshong 2010
1. On June 24, OPERA ORCHESTRA OF NEW YORK announced its fortieth-anniversary season, which opens on October 25 at Carnegie Hall with a double bill of Massenet's La Navarraise, starring ELINA GARANČA and ROBERTO ALAGNA, and Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana, starring Alagna and Maria Guleghina, conducted by music director designate Alberto Veronesi. The company's 2010–11 concert season also includes Meyerbeer's L'Africaine at Avery Fisher Hall (Mar. 2). For tickets, call (212) 906-9137, or e-mail oony@tiac.net.
2. Television and radio personality RYAN SEACREST hosted Cincinnati Opera'sninetieth-anniversary gala on June 19 at Music Hall. The American Idol host, who shared his duties as emcee with Carol Neblett and Sherrill Milnes, presided over an evening of performances by Angela Brown, Richard Leech, Christine Brewer, Denyce Graves, Antonello Palombi, Maria Luigia Borsi and Russell Thomas.
3. The Curtain Call Awards, a partnership between the Metropolitan Opera Guild and Montclair State University to encourage young singers in their junior and senior years of high school, held its inaugural vocal competition on June 5 at Jed Leshowitz Recital Hall on the Montclair State campus. The winner was mezzo-soprano SARAH MERTEN, who graduated in June from Bernards High School in New Jersey.
4. On June 28, the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative announced that director PETER SELLARS has selected Lebanese actress, writer and aspiring director Maya Zbib as his protégée for the 2010–11 program, which gives exceptional young talents in dance, music, visual arts, theater, literature and film the opportunity to work with a master in their field for a year of creative collaboration.
5. On July 7, Lyric Opera of Chicago announced that the company's general director, WILLIAM MASON, intends to retire when his contract expires at the conclusion of the company's 2011–12 season. Mason, who is sixty-eight,
has served as Lyric Opera's general director since 1997 and has been a member of the opera's staff for more than
four decades. By the time he retires, Mason will have
superintended more than 120 productions, including
more than forty new productions.
6. Fashion designer AUSTIN SCARLETT, best known for his participation in the competition reality-show Project Runway, contributed his costume sketches for Greenwich Music Festival's 2010 production of Henze's The Runaway Slave to a silent auction held during the June run of the show to benefit the six-year-old company.
NEW ARRIVALS: YANNICK NÉZET-SÉGUIN was named music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, starting with the 2012–13 season…. DAVID ANGUS becomes Boston Lyric Opera's new music director this month…. The newly formed North Carolina Opera appointed ERIC MITCHKO as its general director in June. 
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