By Alison Moritz Opera is complicated – that’s why we love it. But it takes a lot of effort, expertise, and patience to coordinate all the elements of a given production. In the end, everything comes together in the crucial week before opening night. Here’s a behind-the-scenes breakdown of Tech Week for the Atlanta Opera’s current production of Tosca (running through October 13): Thursday, September 26: Final Room Run After weeks of finessing musical and staging choices in the rehearsal […]

Let the madness begin!  We’re calling it a creative science project where Verdi meets reality TV.  In just a few hours, composers, lyricists, singers and stage directors will gather for the kick-off of the Atlanta Opera’s fourth annual 24-Hour Opera Project® (24HOP). The participating composers and lyricists will be given a theme and props they must use in their composition, and then they’ll be randomly paired and corralled together overnight to write an opera scene.  The next morning, bright and […]

“Despite the horrors of the Holocaust, there were islands of humanity in the midst of the greatest atrocities…”  -Arthur Fagen, Atlanta Opera Music Director and son of Holocaust survivors November 9th, 1938.  It’s been 75 years since Kristallnacht, a night of terror that heralded the Holocaust and saw the incarceration of over 30,000 Jews in concentration camps.  A series of coordinated attacks across Germany and Austria, the term Kristallnacht or the “Night of Broken Glass” came about due to the […]

The 24-Hour Opera Project® (24HOP), held earlier this month as part of National Opera Week, is an opera experience like no other for both participants and audience. Imagine writing, composing, rehearsing and performing a brand new opera in just 24 hours collaborating with people you have probably never met.  You can read what Cory Lippiello, the Opera’s new director of artistic planning and community engagement has to say about the Project here.  The latest 24HOP, with the limited hours of creation […]

This year, The Atlanta Opera Studio Tour features En Mis Palabras (“In My Own Words”), a bilingual Spanish and English opera.  The Atlanta Opera Studio Tour has a long history of presenting operas for children grades K-5, but this is the first time we’re presenting an opera for tweens and teens in grades 6-12.  En Mis Palabras is enjoyable for everyone, though, so bring your friends and families to see one of the two remaining public performances. In En Mis […]

This season, The Atlanta Opera celebrates Chorus Master Walter Huff’s 25th anniversary with the company. The opera chorus for our latest production of Charles Gounod’s Faust features 46 local singers, carefully selected and rehearsed by Maestro Huff. We asked a few of them to describe their experiences onstage with TAO. Alto Laurie Tossing Alto Laurie Tossing made her Atlanta Opera debut in 2002 for our production of La rondine. She’s performed in almost thirty operas with the company and described […]

This season, The Atlanta Opera celebrates Chorus Master Walter Huff’s 25th anniversary with the company. The opera chorus for the production of Charles Gounod’s Faust features 46 local singers, carefully selected and rehearsed by Maestro Huff. For today’s post, we’ve asked four veteran members of our chorus to share their favorite Atlanta Opera memories. Josh Borden, during Il Trovatore (1996) Baritone Josh Borden made his Atlanta Opera debut in our 1994 production of Bellini’s Norma and has appeared in 43 […]

The celebration of 25 years in this Chorus Master position has brought forth so many folks asking me to write or speak on the highlights of these years. Some past events are a blur, yet some are clear as day. My debut as Chorus Master with Atlanta Opera was in the 1988 – 1989 season. As I think back to that start, I also think of how much the world around us has changed since then.  Believe it or not, […]

General & Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun Jeff Roffman    I am so excited to finally kick off the Atlanta Opera 2014-15 season, my first planned season as a General and Artistic Director. I have heard the term “Southern hospitality” before, but in the past 16 months I have seen it daily as I was offered a warm, genuine welcome to a wonderful city that I now call home.  Moving here was an adventure for me, and I believe this new season […]

How long have you been with The Atlanta Opera? Since the late 1970s. There have been several reincarnations. The stability of the last 20 years has been a great blessing to the city, as well as patrons and practitioners of this art form. At what age did you know that you wanted to be a percussionist, and how did that come about? I began playing drums in the third grade. My parents, on limited income, were visionaries in having all […]

How did you and Tomer meet? I met Tomer in 2009 when we both collaborated on Richard Eyre’s hit production of Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera. I was assisting choreographer Christopher Wheeldon and Tomer was assisting Richard. It was one of those times in creating opera when everything is magical and everyone respects and adores each other! Tomer took over the directorial reigns when Carmen was revived so we spent many years together creating and recreating the passion and desperation […]

Where did you grow up?  I was born and raised in Odessa (former USSR) which is now Ukraine. A year before the USSR fell apart, my family immigrated to Israel, where I finished school and got a B.F.A. in design for theater at Tel Aviv University. Then I moved to the U.S. to complete my M.F.A. in costume design for stage, and production design for film. It’s been a fascinating journey to live in three countries that are so extremely […]