A London-based organization called the Opera Awards Foundation announced plans last month for an annual awards gala. Operavore blogger Fred Plotkin considers potential recipients.

"This Art Deco theater is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful places in Paris to attend a performance," writes Fred Plotkin. And it is a good thing that it was not destroyed during a famous 1913 riot.

Most of the works of the great bel canto composers — Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti — are seldom performed because few singers are ever up to the task, writes Fred Plotkin. But one such rarity arrives in New York Wednesday night.

"When, about ten months ago, I began my Montsalvatge immersion, my approach was to listen to any music I could find," notes Fred Plotkin. "Then, recently, it came to my attention that an exemplary biography has just been published."

Opera fans can be woefully sloppy, writes Fred Plotkin, taking their seats with rumpled coats and multiple shopping bags in tow. Theaters make matters worse by not providing adequate coat check facilities.

Berenice is suddenly everywhere, writes Fred Plotkin. "In the past week I have encountered her in London, at Carnegie Hall and, Tuesday night she was at the Metropolitan Opera."

A visit to the Handel House Museum, the composer's former home in London, inspires blogger Fred Plotkin to consider his place in the operatic canon. 

"Michelangelo is to art what Beethoven is to music," writes Fred Plotkin. "Beethoven’s music is so life-affirming and we get a sense of the greatness of human potential in his music and in Michelangelo’s art."

"Opera in English is particular, and often challenging, because our vowels are not always beautiful and unfriendly consonants tend to intrude," writes Operavore blogger Fred Plotkin.

"The idea of optimism becomes difficult in difficult times," writes Fred Plotkin. "And yet it is a renewable tonic, one that is not based on naiveté as much as belief."

The Russian maestro speaks with Fred Plotkin about a range of topics, including concert hall construction in St. Petersburg, Russia, the stigma around Shostakovich and the benefits of constant touring.

Spells, potions, black cats, tarot cards and incantations are the stuff of great opera plots. Fred Plotkin considers some of the great scary characters in the opera canon.

Baritone Thomas Allen emphasizes how both the music of Mozart and the words of da Ponte express a duality that must be captured by singers as both musicians and actors, writes Fred Plotkin

If your father is famous or accomplished in his field of endeavor, it creates particular difficulties in forging your own path in the same profession. Blogger Fred Plotkin considers some famed singing families.

Despite the enormous economic crisis that's crippling Spain, Valencia, its third-largest city, remains a destination for opera. Blogger Fred Plotkin was just there and shares his impressions.

"There are a still some very old singers who walk among us, heads only slightly bowed, and seem like messengers from that lost world of opera in the 1920s and 1930s," writes Fred Plotkin. "They actually did know Puccini."

For almost her entire life, when Mirella Freni sang, all people could do was stop and listen. Fred Plotkin considers why.

At the time that Verdi's daughter was born, the composer was deep into the composition of Il Trovatore, his strange and compelling story about babies who are switched, abandoned, even burned in a fire.

"While there are some singers who still are engaged by opera companies and presented as stars whom audiences flock to see, there are fewer of these all the time," writes Fred Plotkin.

This hilly, leafy city above the Ohio River grew in the 19th century with waves of German immigrants who brought values of hard work, love of music and of hearty food, writes Fred Plotkin.