On November 19, Susan Graham and Thomas Hampson will cohost the fifth annual OPERA NEWS Awards at Gotham Hall in Manhattan. The former Greenwich Savings Bank headquarters and now a magnificent event space, Gotham Hall will be a new venue for OPERA NEWS — and for our two lively hosts. I feel confident that Graham and Hampson will "play the room" at Gotham Hall with the same wit and grace that made our 2008 awards presentation memorable. Everyone at OPERA NEWS is profoundly grateful that these two very busy artists have made time in their schedules to take on our hosting duties once again. We all look forward to sharing the 2009 awards presentation with them, and with this year's brilliant group of honorees — Martina Arroyo, Joyce DiDonato, Gerald Finley, Philip Glass and Shirley Verrett. Our written tributes to these five wonderful artists begin on page 13 of this issue. Once again, my colleagues Louise T. Guinther, Brian Kellow, Adam Wasserman and Oussama Zahr have joined me in the highly pleasurable task of paying homage to some of the extraordinary men and women who have made us all opera fans.


This year, the OPERA NEWS Awards will take place during the first-ever National Opera Week, a celebration of the art form organized by OPERA America, the national service organization for opera, with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts. From Friday, November 13, through Sunday, November 22, in thirty-two states, plus the District of Columbia, more than ninety participating organizations — including the Metropolitan Opera Guild, publisher of OPERA NEWS — will offer free programs and events ranging from open houses, lectures and community performances to special, free access to select Metropolitan Opera performances available on Met Player (the Met's new online streaming service).

Declaration of National Opera Week will take place at Houston Grand Opera's November 13 performance of Lohengrin, when HGO will announce a week's worth of initiatives, among them national radio broadcasts, pre-performance talks and talk-backs. National Opera Week will be launched officially on November 14, at the Harman Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., when the 2009 NEA Opera Honors will be presented to Marilyn Horne, John Adams, Frank Corsaro, Lotfi Mansouri and Julius Rudel. Corsaro and Rudel, both distinguished veterans of New York City Opera, will be given special tributes by that company, which is dedicating all performances from November 14–22 to National Opera Week. On November 22, the last night of the celebration, the annual Richard Tucker Music Foundation Gala will showcase some of the most promising young singers on the current scene. Other events will include "Opera in All 8 Wards" from Washington National Opera; "flash" performances of opera favorites throughout the city of Chicago by the Young Artists of Chicago Opera Theater and a YouTube contest sponsored by New Orleans Opera. It seems opera will be just about everywhere that week — and that's ample cause for celebration.

F. PAUL DRISCOLL

The opinions expressed in OPERA NEWS do not necessarily represent the views of
The Metropolitan Opera Guild or The Metropolitan Opera.

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