Houston, we have Apple

The classical app continues to hoover up live-performance suppliers.

Press release:

HOUSTON—October 30, 2023—Houston Grand Opera (HGO) is proud to announce its partnership with Apple Music Classical, Apple Music’s new app designed to provide classical music lovers with the ultimate listening experience. The partnership represents a historic opportunity for HGO to share its world-class music-making with a broader audience than ever before.

“As an international company serving an international city, one that each season hosts singers and musicians of peerless artistry, we invite you to join us from around the globe,” says HGO General Director and CEO Khori Dastoor. “Today, we are thrilled to expand our programming to a worldwide audience through our strong new partnership with Apple, whose commitment to excellence and innovation is in perfect alignment with our own long history.”

HGO is the second American opera company to join forces with the brand. As part of the new partnership, the company will be presenting new recordings of classic and contemporary operas from current and future seasons alongside special remastered releases from its rich back catalogue, which spans decades and includes history-making productions such as Treemonisha (1975) and Porgy and Bess (1976).

The company’s first new release on the platform is a Spatial Audio remastered recording of HGO’s iconic 2011 production of Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally’s Dead Man Walking, conducted by HGO Artistic and Music Director Patrick Summers and starring mezzo-sopranos Joyce DiDonato and Frederica von Stade. Released with Erato/Warner Classics, the album has been remastered in Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos for an unparalleled immersive, multidimensional listening experience. HGO’s remastered version—the only Spatial Audio recording of the work, the most performed American opera of the 21st century—became available to audiences exclusively on Apple Music Classical on October 27, 2023.