Raymond Aceto

It’s rather surprising, really, for the audience to embrace a contemporary piece like DEAD MAN WALKING, no matter how easily it falls upon the ears, considering the subject matter. In this Ivo van Hove production, it starts with a rape and double murder in a rather graphic piece of film, the use of video being one of van Hove’s trademarks. It ends with a death by lethal injection, also graphically shown in live video.

 The Dallas Opera’s 2023/2024 Season has been announced! See how to purchase tickets!

​​​​​​​ The Dallas Opera kicks off their 65th Anniversary Season with Verdi's Rigoletto, the first of four new-to-Dallas productions to take the stage in 2022/2023. The production, directed by Tomer Zvulun and starring a cast of today's most celebrated singers, including George Gagnidze (TDO debut), Madison Leonard (TDO debut), René Barbera, Raymond Aceto, and Nadia Krasteva, opens at the Winspear Opera House on Saturday, October 8, 2022, at 8:00pm.

Programming for The Dallas Opera’s 2022/2023 Season was announced today by Ian Derrer, The Dallas Opera’s Kern Wildenthal General Director and CEO, and Emmanuel Villaume, the Mrs. Eugene McDermott Music Director, in celebration of the company’s 65th Anniversary.

The Cleveland Orchestra announces its 2022 Blossom Music Festival season presented by The J.M. Smucker Co. with a lineup of concerts. Nineteen concerts are currently part of the 2022 Blossom Music Festival, which runs from the Fourth of July through Labor Day weekend (July 2 – September 4) at the Orchestra’s scenic summer home nestled in Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Subscriptions are on sale now, with individual tickets available for purchase on Monday, April 4.

The first live post-pandemic opening for the company.

Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts has announced additional full capacity live music performances to take place this summer at the Filene Center. These performances are in addition to the previously announced celebrations surrounding Wolf Trap's 50th Anniversary Season.

Come delight in the return of live music at Seattle Opera's Welcome Back Concert: Die Walküre. Before returning to McCaw Hall this fall, the company will offer an outdoor concert featuring highlights of the Ring's most popular opera. T

Newly announced shows include Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit with Waxahatchee; Harry Connick Jr.; Indigo Girls with Ani DiFranco; Train with Vertical Horizon; Straight No Chaser; Lindsey Stirling; Pink Martini featuring China Forbes; Renée Fleming with the National Symphony Orchestra; and Yacht Rock Revue.

Des Moines Metro Opera (DMMO) today announced a $1 million leadership gift commitment from long-time patron, opera lover, and friend Frank R. Brownell III to secure the future of one of the Company’s flagship programs – the Apprentice Artist Program for young singers.

Des Moines Metro Opera today announced a $1 million leadership gift commitment from long-time patron, opera lover, and friend Frank R. Brownell III to secure the future of one of the Company's flagship programs – the Apprentice Artist Program for young singers.

On March 20, 2021, San Francisco Opera presented a free stream of Richard Wagner’s opera Siegfried as part of Francesca Zambello’s 2017-2018 American Ring. Forest projections set the mood for Runnicles and Zambello’s nature-friendly, quasi-impressionistic rendering of the opera. Lighting Designer Mark McCullough illuminated the opening scene as though it was  a dream.

On the weekend of  March 13 and 14, San Francisco Opera streamed its 2018 production of Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre to opera lovers around the world. Director Francesca Zambello moved the story to a modern time in which Wotan was a captain of industry and Hunding was a hunter with a house full of trophies, one of which was his fair-tressed wife.

On Saturday, March 6, 2021, San Francisco Opera did a wonderful thing. The company put the opening opera of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungen online, free to  the world of opera lovers and the universe of the curious. Anyone with access to the Internet can see the entire Ring on weekends in March, and I, for one, am extremely grateful. 

The Dallas Opera will make the company's gripping 2015 production of Giacomo Puccini's immortal Tosca available free of charge for home viewing. This passionate, star-studded production was originally simulcast live in high definition to a North Texas audience at Klyde Warren Park.

San Francisco Opera continues streaming performances as part of its Opera is ON initiative with Richard Strauss' Salome (June 20), Jules Massenet's Manon (June 27) and Carlisle Floyd's Susannah (July 4). The presentations, filmed live in high-definition at the War Memorial Opera House, will be viewable on demand for free at sfopera.com on the streaming date starting at 10 am PT and expiring at 11:59 pm the following day.

Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra have announced their schedule for the ensemble's 2020-21 season at Severance Hall. 

I know it takes a leap of faith for the Met to schedule something outside the ABC operas--AIDA, BOHEME, CARMEN plus a TOSCA, TURANDOT and a few others--and go for something a little more off the beaten track. Tchaikovsky's QUEEN OF SPADES certainly falls into that category, even though it isn't exactly an unknown. The current production by Elijah Moshinsky, conducted by Vasily Petrenko, which still looks like new and opened the other day for the season's run, is not just well-sung and beautiful to see but makes a very good case for doing it more often.

Concluding their celebratory 20th Anniversary Season, the Las Vegas Philharmonic will present Ode To Joy in the season finale on Saturday, May 11, at 7:30 p.m. at The Smith Center for the Performing Arts.  The program will feature one of the most celebrated and beloved works by Beethoven, his joyous Symphony No. 9, which was the first example of a major composer using voices in a symphony, making it a "choral" symphony.  The words are sung during the final movement by four vocal soloists and a chorus and were taken from 'Ode to Joy', a poem written by French poet, Friedrich Schiller in 1785 and revised in 1803, with text additions made by Beethoven.  The Philharmonic's chorus-in-residence, Las Vegas Master Singers, and acclaimed vocalists, Felicia Moore (soprano), Kelley O'Connor (mezzo), Sean Panikkar (tenor) and Raymond Aceto (bass) will lend their exquisite voices to the rousing and celebratory finale. UNLV Concert Singers and UNLV Chamber Chorale will join in the chorus.  German violin sensation, Thomas Reif, will perform with the orchestra on Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. 

Few works have inspired such a long-lasting legacy as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust. The Faustian bargain has become a common expression for metaphorically selling one's soul in order to obtain their goals. Of course, the metaphor is much less metaphorical in von Goethe's work and, subsequently, the Charles Gounod opera which stems from this German classic. Gounod's opera isn't always perfect, but the Washington National Opera's new production which opened at the Kennedy Center on Saturday evening breathes enough life into this classic that you'll likely not notice the over three hours you've spent watching the drama unfold.