Sean Panikkar News

New West Symphony, with Grammy-winning conductor Michael Christie as Artistic and Music Director, continues its 2020-21 groundbreaking and reimagined season of 'Global Sounds, Local Cultures' on Sunday, November 15 at 3pm PT / 6pm ET with A Tour of India.

Following three sell-out performances, Michigan Opera Theatre has added an Oct. 21 production of its novel Twilight: Gods opera at the Detroit Opera House Parking Center. Tickets are $79 per car and go on sale at noon, Monday, Oct. 12th!

Pittsburgh Opera has announced its 2020-21 Resident Artists. This season, given the companya??s COVID-related programming changes, the Resident Artist singers will be the primary cast for all four of Pittsburgh Operaa??s productions.

The Las Vegas Philharmonic has partnered with Nevada Public Radio for the fifth consecutive year to broadcast a collection of memorable performances from the past five seasons plus two special broadcasts of music from the current 2019-20 season on Classical 89.7 FM Saturdays at 2pm, starting May 16.

Washington National Opera's (WNO) 2020-2021 season offers an ambitious mix of sweeping political epics and intimate stories of interpersonal relationships, centered on human pursuits of justice, power, and love. Led by General Director Timothy O'Leary and Artistic Director Francesca Zambello, WNO announces the six mainstage titles in the 2020-2021 season: Fidelio, Nixon in China, Boris Godunov, Rigoletto, Così fan tutte, and La bohème.

Calixto Bieito's critically praised production of Carmen returns to the London Coliseum this January.

The 2004 San Diego Opera production of Bizet's 'Pearl Fishers' marks a visually striking end to the season.

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. 

Lyric Opera of Kansas City concludes the 2018-2019 season with Bizet's sensuous and exotic The Pearl Fishers, April 27, May 1, 3 and 5 at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. The opera will be sung in French with English subtitles.  High res photos of artists, past production photos and more can be found here.

Pittsburgh Opera returns to the Benedum Center with Puccini's La boheme, opera's biggest tear-jerker, March 30-April 7.

Pittsburgh Opera returns to the Benedum Center with Puccini's La boheme, opera's biggest tear-jerker, March 30-April 7.

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO) features prolific composer/conductor Matthias Pintscher leading his own work, Transir for Flute & Orchestra, with noted flutist Henrik Heide, on Saturday, March 2, 8 pm, at the Alex Theatre, and Sunday, March 3, 2019, 7 pm, at Royce Hall.

Prolific composer/conductor Matthias Pintscher curates Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra's (LACO) SESSION, an innovative performance experience, in collaboration with Four Larks, on Thursday February 28, 8 pm, at Mack Sennett Studios in Silverlake. Designed to explore classical music's cutting-edge sounds and challenge traditional concert-going expectations, the evening features two works by Pintscher, Study II for Treatise on the Veil, a string trio inspired by painter Cy Twombly's art works, and Uriel, for cello and piano, the third part of his 'Profiles of Light' cycle. Also on the program are three-time Grammy Award-winning soprano Michelle DeYoung and LACO artists performing Ravel's Three Poemes de Stephane Mallarme; Berg's Four pieces for clarinet and piano; Grisey's surreal Stele for two percussionists and Xenakis's Rebonds A, a tour-de-force for solo percussion. SESSION includes a 'hang' with the artists, and premium tickets include parking and one drink as well. Mack Sennett Studios, where artists like Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Lady Gaga, John Legend, Donna Summer and Jay-Z have performed, is a historic facility that serves as a soundstage, event space and a hub for a variety of cultural producers.

In the first major installment of the 2018-19 Opera Unlimited Series, Opera Grand Rapids is bringing an exclusive recital to West Michigan on Thursday, February 7th, with contemporary opera star, Sean Panikkar, along with award winning pianist, Rohan De Silva to perform a collection of opera, art songs, lieder, and song cycles in the intimate setting of the Betty Van Andel Opera Center. 

Music for Life International continues its decade-long tradition of global humanitarian concerts with Beethoven for The Rohingya, a benefit concert featuring Beethoven's monumental Ninth Symphony, presented in the Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall on Monday, January 28, 2019. Beethoven for The Rohingya is an urgent call to the global community to raise awareness for the nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees fleeing what the United Nations have defined as genocide in Rakhine State in Myanmar.  Refugees, who are seeking safety in Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and other nearby locations, are grossly lacking access to healthcare when it is needed most; net proceeds from this performance will benefit Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which provides medical aid to those who are among the world's most vulnerable.

San Francisco Opera Center Director Sheri Greenawald today announced the 12 recipients of the 2019 Adler Fellowship. Selected from participants of the Merola Opera Program, the ten singers and two pianist/apprentice coaches begin their fellowships in January 2019. The multi-year performance-oriented residency offers advanced young artists intensive individual training, coaching and professional seminars, as well as a wide range of performance opportunities. Since its inception in 1977, the prestigious fellowship has nurtured the development of more than 180 young artists, introducing many budding stars to the international opera stage and launching active careers throughout the world as performers, production artists, arts professionals and educators.

On October 20, 2018, Los Angeles Opera presented Philip Glass's SATYAGRAHA which tells of Mahatma Gandhi's early years in South Africa. SATYAGRAHA means truth, the real, the good combined with force or insistence. It is most often associated with Gandhi's nonviolent protests and resistance to racist laws. What he achieved by passive means was amazing at the time and remains a wonder today when racism is once again knocking on our doors.

Sean Panikkar is a tenor who appears in leading opera roles around the world. He is also a member of the crossover tenor trio, Forte, as a result of his foray into the world of America's Got Talent. This month he sings the role of Mohandas K. Gandhi in Philip Glass's SATYAGRAHA at Los Angeles Opera.

Placido Domingo, LA Opera's Eli and Edythe Broad General Director, has announced final details about the company premiere of Satyagraha by Philip Glass.

The George London Foundation for Singers has been honoring, supporting, and presenting the finest young opera singers in the U.S. and Canada since 1971. The foundation and the George London Awards (the prize of the foundation's annual competition) are named for the legendary Canadian-American bass-baritone, one of the greatest opera singers of 20th century, who devoted much of his time and energy in his later years to the support and nurturing of young opera singers.