Some Romantic-era opera listeners felt that their own listening practices could be just as emo­tionally true as the art itself. These listeners didn’t want to be stuffed shirts snarking over the music reviews: they wanted to fall in love with the music, be the music, be the characters, be the singers, and be enflamed by opera to the depths of their souls - Lit Hub writes introducing Dr. Anna Fishzon’s eye-opening book 'Fandom, Authenticity, and Opera: Mad Acts and Letter Scenes in Fin-de-Siècle Russia' which concen­trates on 19th-century Russian opera soci­ety but illuminates trends in opera and art all over Europe. "Fishzon tells amazing stories of 19th-century fans who wrote scary fan letters to opera stars and stood in ticket lines for days, till they fainted... Critics said that the new fans were vulgar, hysterical, immature, and ignorant".

An important article in the Van Music Magazine about body-shaming in the opera world. “Diversity applies to pretty much everybody except fat people,” opera critic Uwe Friedrich tells the magazine. "The pressure to conform to a societal ideal of beauty has 'increased enormously' in recent years".

On Tuesday evening, for six hours, more than 250 artists from around the world will gather for an epic online performance of late composer Pauline Oliveros' 'The Lunar Opera: Deep Listening For _Tunes', an open-form opera in which the enlisted performers create their own characters, movements and sound based on sonic cues known only to themselves, LA Times reports. For this occasion the production is called Full Pink Moon: Opera Povera in Quarantine, it's free, but the viewers can also choose to donate to help cover production costs. It's on here, starting at 5 p.m. Los Angeles time, 1 a.m. (Wednesday) London time, 8 a.m. Beijing time.

The Metropolitan Opera has announced that it will stream operas for free on their website in the wake of coronavirus. The stream will occur nightly at 7:30 p.m. ET via the homepage of metopera.org and will be available to stream for 20 hours, reports Vulture. The schedule for this upcoming week includes classics like 'Carmen', 'La Bohème', and 'La Traviata', as well as 'La Fille du Régiment', 'Lucia di Lammermoor', and 'Eugene Onegin'.

Kanye West staged his sophomore opera, 'Mary', at the Miami Marine Stadium as part of the final day of Art Basel on Sunday, with him covered fully in silver, Pitchfork reports. The opera tells the Christmas nativity story through Gospel arrangements of Kanye’s own songs, including 'Devil in a New Dress', 'Love Lockdown', and 'Power', as well […]

Kanye West has announced a new opera titled 'Mary', scheduled to take place at Miami Marine Stadium on Sunday, December 8, the last day of this year’s Art Basel, Complex reports. Once again tapping his Sunday Service choir, 'Mary' will be directed by frequent collaborator Vanessa Beecroft, who recently directed 'Nebuchadnezzar' last month in Los […]

LA Times sent classical music critic and pop music critic to see Kanye West's opera 'Nebuchadnezzar'. Judging by their words it was something, but not much - "if this thing had a story, it was pretty hard to tell", "You can call just about anything an opera", "this didn’t allow much of his gift to come […]