Mint Condition, the Okee Dokee Brothers and Prince all came up short as Grammy Award nominees this year, but there was one Minnesotan who did take home a trophy from the Staples Center on Sunday. Lucas Meachem has been a Twin Cities resident for only a few months, though. "He has yet to suffer through a real winter," said Irina Meachem, whose husband shared the Grammy for best opera recording. A North Carolina native, he sang the lead role of Figaro in the Los Angeles Opera production of John Corigliano's "The Ghosts of Versailles." Lucas Meachem just moved to town in December with his new wife, a Plymouth native who's also an opera coach and pianist. They met in 2013 when he starred in Mill City Summer Opera's "The Barber of Seville." His next local gig will be Minnesota Opera's "Thaïs" in spring 2018 (see story below). The couple attended the Grammy telecast, too. "It was very impressive to see how well-executed it is in person," Irina said, not hesitating to name her favorite performance: "The Prince tribute, of course."
CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER
Grammy fallout
How can you measure the value of Grammy Awards exposure? Well, for Morris Day and the reunited Time, their three minutes of airtime during Sunday's Prince tribute translated into a 1,871 percent increase in song sales compared with the previous six days, according to BuzzAngle Music. "Jungle Love" sold 1,008 copies while "The Bird" was gobbled up 526 times. As for Grammy nominees Mint Condition, the band is taking a hiatus of sorts while lead singer Stokley Williams focuses on a solo project. The voice behind Mint hits " Breakin' My Heart (Pretty Brown Eyes)" and "What Kind of Man Would I Be" just dropped his debut single, "Level," with an album to follow for the Concord Music Group. Word is that Williams is putting together a band to tour.
JON BREAM
Boyz to women
It's probably safe to say Orchestra Hall has never seen the kind of rabid squealing that happened Saturday when Boyz II Men played a Valentine's concert with the Minnesota Orchestra. The 1990s R&B hitmakers unleashed something in their female fans — many of them middle-aged and at least one on crutches — who charged the stage, some with their hands up as if they'd just escaped kidnappers (or husbands, who remained in their seats). After intermission, security around the stage was beefed up. Through it all, the orchestra and conductor Sarah Hicks gamely played along. Tweeted violinist Sam Bergman: "Not gonna lie — this was real fun but it was a wild one for sure."
ROHAN PRESTON
'Dead Man' singing
Unlike recent years, the Minnesota Opera's 55th season will not offer a world premiere. But it does include one contemporary work: "Dead Man Walking" by Jake Heggie, an opera from 2000 — sung in English, with a libretto by playwright Terrence McNally — based on the memoir that led to an Oscar-winning movie starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon. Called "the most performed new opera of the 21st century," it will be staged Jan. 27-Feb. 3, 2018. The season does not include a Wagner opera, as some speculated in light of the company's 2016 production of "Das Rheingold," the prelude to Wagner's vast "Ring" cycle. However, three of the season's five operas are beloved classics: Donizetti's farcical "Don Pasquale" (coming in October), Mozart's infectious "The Marriage of Figaro" (November) and Verdi's tragic "Rigoletto" (March 2018). And for the first time the opera will present "Thaïs," an 1894 French work by Jules Massenet (May 2018). It will star Minnesota-born soprano Kelly Kaduce, who played Wendy Torrance in last year's "The Shining."
CHRISTY DeSMITH
