Kyle Ketelsen

Salome - Jochanaan - Staatsoper Hamburg
2023-11-01 19:30 - 21:30, 2023-11-04 19:30 - 21:30, 2023-11-08 19:30 - 21:30, 2023-11-12 17:00 - 19:00, 2023-11-15 19:30 - 21:30 (Europe/Berlin) | Staatsoper Hamburg, Dammtorstraße 28, Hamburg, 20354, Germany
Under the face of the wandering moon, spirit and body quarrel in all their greatness and wretchedness until the blood of two bodies flows. Strauss remains close to Wild’s re-creation of the biblical material, which leads Salome from her mother’s tool to autonomy. It is she who, in her unfulfilled desire for the liberatingly different, the body of the prophet Jochanaan, seeks revenge and demands his head – a price the male-dominated society around Herod is willing to pay for their dance. Now that Salome holds his severed head in her hands, she can kiss Jochanaan, possess him if not alive, then dead. As if under a burning glass, Strauss pours Oscar Wilde’s demonic dramaturgy into sound like an eruption of the psyche, accompanying his protagonist from her failed escape from the decadence of her existence to her death.
Production: Dmitri Tcherniakov
Costumes: Elena Zaytseva
Lighting: Gleb Filshtinsky
Dramaturgy: Tatiana Verestchagina

Carmen - Escamillo - Metropolitan Opera
2023-12-31 18:30 - 22:00, 2024-01-03 19:30 - 23:00, 2024-01-05 19:30 - 23:00, 2024-01-09 19:00 - 22:30, 2024-01-12 19:00 - 22:30, 2024-01-16 19:30 - 23:00, 2024-01-19 19:30 - 23:00, 2024-01-23 19:30 - 23:00 (America/New_York) | Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts: Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY, NY 10023, United States
The Met celebrates the New Year with a vital new production of one of opera’s most enduringly popular and powerful works. Acclaimed English director Carrie Cracknell makes her Met debut, reinvigorating the classic story of deadly passion with a staging that moves the action to the modern day. Dazzling young mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina leads a powerhouse quartet of stars in the touchstone role of the irresistible femme fatale, alongside tenor Piotr Beczała as Carmen’s overmatched lover Don José, soprano Angel Blue as the devoted Micaëla, and bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen as the swaggering Escamillo. Daniele Rustioni conducts Bizet’s heart-pounding score.

Carmen - Escamillo - LIVE IN HD - Metropolitan Opera
2024-01-27 13:00 - 16:30 (America/New_York) | Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts: Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY, NY 10023, United States
On January 27, acclaimed English director Carrie Cracknell brings in a vital new production of one of opera’s most enduringly popular and powerful works to cinemas, reinvigorating the classic story of deadly passion with a staging that moves the action to the modern day, amid a band of human traffickers. Dazzling young mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina leads a powerhouse quartet of stars in the touchstone role of the irresistible femme fatale, alongside tenor Piotr Beczała as Carmen’s overmatched lover Don José and soprano Angel Blue as the devoted Micaëla. Bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen is the swaggering Escamillo, and Daniele Rustioni conducts Bizet’s heart-pounding score. This live cinema transmission is part of the Met’s award-winning Live in HD series, bringing opera to movie theaters across the globe.
English StreamText captioning is available for the Met’s transmission of Carmen here. A transcript of the transmission will also be available to view after the live performance.
Buy tickets for Carmen live in the opera house here.

Beethoven Ninth Symphony - Handel and Haydn Society
2024-03-15 19:30 - 20:30, 2024-03-16 14:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Boston Symphony Hall, 301 Massachusetts Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, United States
“Be embraced, you millions!” Let the “divine spark” of joy catch fire in this iconic celebration of life. Guest conductor Raphaël Pichon, the maestro behind last season’s blockbuster Marriage of Figaro, delivers a fervently fresh take on this magnum opus in honor of its bicentennial. And it’s no surprise that our beloved chorus and orchestra tackle this uplifting music with both compassion and conviction.

necmusic · Beethoven: Symphony no 9 in D minor- Scherzo Molto vivace – Presto

Mozart Requiem - Lyric Opera of Chicago
2024-03-22 19:00 - 21:30, 2024-03-24 14:00 - 16:30 (America/Chicago) | Civic Opera House, 20 N Upper Wacker Dr STE 400, Chicago, IL, IL 60606, United States
Mozart Requiem – Chicago Lyric Opera

Lyric Opera of Chicago invites you to experience Mozart’s Requiem. Legend has it that Mozart believed he was writing the Requiem for his own funeral. Other composers completed it after his death, but — miraculously — this is not only a totally unified work musically, but one of the greatest choral pieces ever written. It offers a sublime beauty and dignity that leaves audiences profoundly moved and memorably uplifted. Under Music Director Enrique Mazzola, these concerts present a unique opportunity to celebrate the extraordinary Lyric Opera Orchestra and Chorus, and will also feature additional Mozart repertoire.
Language: Latin
Running Time: 2 hours and 15 minutes, including 1 intermission
Location: Lyric Opera House

Mozart · Requiem – III. Sequentia – c. Rex tremendae – Mozart – Binaural 3D Sound – Music Therapy

Verdi Requiem - Madison Symphony
2024-04-12 19:30 - 21:30, 2024-04-13 20:00 - 22:00, 2024-04-14 14:30 - 16:30 (America/Chicago) | Overture Center for the Arts, 201 State Street, Madison, WI, 53703, United States
The Verdi Requiem is one of those works that moves you to the very core of your being, combining spine-tingling power with moments of sublime beauty. The Madison Symphony Chorus joins us under the direction of Beverly Taylor, who has a very special love for this piece and will inspire the chorus to great heights. Two very special people who have graced us with their talents over the years, soprano Alexandra LoBianco and bass Kyle Ketelsen join debuting artists tenor Jonathan Burton and mezzo-soprano Margaret Gawrysiak (also of last summer’s Opera in the Park) as our soloists. Their glorious voices are alone worth the price of admission. I so love this piece and am so grateful to be able to perform it during my anniversary year. – John DeMain, Music Director

Orchestre de Paris · Giuseppe Verdi – Requiem – Dies Irae

The Hours - Richard - Metropolitan Opera
2024-05-05 15:00 - 18:00, 2024-05-10 19:30 - 22:30, 2024-05-15 19:30 - 22:30, 2024-05-18 13:00 - 16:00, 2024-05-21 19:00 - 22:00, 2024-05-24 20:00 - 23:00, 2024-05-28 19:00 - 22:00, 2024-05-31 19:00 - 22:00 (America/New_York) | Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts: Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY, NY 10023, United States
Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Kevin Puts’s hit new opera, which played to sold-out audiences during its world-premiere production last season, triumphantly returns. The original trio of legendary divas—sopranos Renée Fleming and Kelli O’Hara and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato—reprise their celebrated portrayals of three women from different eras whose lives are connected through Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway. Bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen also returns as the dying author Richard, and Kensho Watanabe conducts Phelim McDermott’s gripping staging of this heart-wrenching drama, adapted from Michael Cunningham’s acclaimed novel and the Oscar-winning film it inspired.

Don Giovanni - Leporello - Salzburg Festival
2024-07-28 18:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Grosse Festspielhaus – Salzburg Festival, Hofstallgasse 1, Salzburg, 5020, Austria
For Romeo Castellucci, approaching Don Giovanni means facing up to the ambiguity and complexity as well as the inner disequilibrium with which Mozart imbues his opera’s protagonist. Vitality and destruction: in this ambivalence Castellucci sees one of the fascinations of this figure. Don Giovanni doesn’t think – he acts precipitately, without drawing breath. He hurls himself about, bringing destruction in his wake while constantly evading the individuals who are hunting him down. But at the same time, during his ceaseless race he creates space and time, generates life. One could say that his fatal destiny is the result of an excess of vitality.
The old myth of Don Juan, which incorporated legends as well as religious didactic fables, underwent countless new interpretations from the beginning of the 18th century. Da Ponte and Mozart took it further, developing it into a highly nuanced work in which tragedy and comedy co-exist. Woven into the fabric of the music from the very first bar is a palpable death drive foreshadowing the final catastrophe. And when the piece is playful – ‘giocoso’ – the game that is being played is very serious indeed. Even when Mozart’s music ostensibly breathes lightness, it contains caverns that open up to expose the deepest human needs.
Don Giovanni knows neither remorse nor guilt:
in order to satisfy his desires he attacks the law, discrediting and abrogating it. It is no coincidence that his first act in the opera is the killing of a father – the Father. The Commendatore embodies the Law of the Father. Like all murdered fathers in the dramas of Western literature, he returns as a ghost – he is omnipresent.
In Castellucci’s staging, a stripped and emptied – deconsecrated – church becomes Don Giovanni’s headquarters. A neutral architecture is intermittently charged with meaning through a precise dramaturgy of appropriate and inappropriate objects falling from above, or appearing and disintegrating, or seeking a point of equilibrium. It is as if we are witnessing a child at play who is intent on destroying his toys. In this sense Don Giovanni is a pantoclastic figure, i. e. one that wants to destroy everything, a child venting his frustration at not being able to obtain the object of his desire.
The three female protagonists in the opera stand for three different emotional universes. Donna Anna is of noble lineage and embodies the hard-to-reach highest object of desire. Her language and her pain are palpable in her gestures – which are those of a tragic heroine. Donna Elvira is a figure whose voice betrays confusion and inner turbulence. She represents the family, the fabric of society. Don Giovanni is horrified when he encounters her for a second time. The thought that he might find out he is a father appals him. In his case love is something that separates, divides, cuts off, kills – not something that brings forth. And then we have the peasant girl Zerlina, the body as object of desire par excellence, an object that for Don Giovanni is there only to be possessed. He assumes that he is entitled to her, even on the day of her wedding.
Blinded by his narcissism, Don Giovanni is incapable of perceiving women as unique individuals. For Act II, Castellucci has invited a large number of women who live in Salzburg to occupy the stage of the Grosses Festspielhaus. The women are coming to reclaim their own body, a presence, a biography. The horrific list from Leporello’s catalogue manifests as an element of flesh and blood that is touching and affecting. Together with the women, the choreographer Cindy Van Acker has designed trajectories across the space, dynamics of interaction, forms of reciprocity and connectivity. The presence of these women renders visible how the field of desire gradually develops an all-absorbing, devouring power. The polarizing schema of Don Giovanni as hunter and the women as the hunted is reversed.
From a conversation between Romeo Castellucci and Piersandra Di Matteo
Translation from the Italian: Sophie Kidd

Philharmonia Orchestra · Don Giovanni: Overture
