Pittsburgh Opera has chosen for its 79th season an interesting combination of works – a 50/50 split between the old, tried and true, and the new, including a second world premiere in as many seasons. The festivities begin with a “Diamond Horseshoe” fund raising ball at the Omni William Penn Hotel, Friday evening, September 22. Opera, as presented on the scale our city’s company achieves, is a very expensive proposition, and ticket sales alone come not even close to covering the tab.
The two autumn offerings at the Benedum are time honored classics – Puccini’s Tosca and Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro (“The Marriage of Figaro”). Tosca is a perennial favorite with lovers of the art form, and an excellent choice for the novice’s first operatic experience. The initial performance, the evening of Saturday, October 7, will officially open the 2017-’18 season, and will be given the usual three repetitions. The action takes place in the course of a single day in the life of Floria Tosca (an opera singer), Mario Cavaradossi, her artist lover, and the evil Baron Scarpia, a ruthless police chief who holds Rome under his thumb in 1800. There are tragic consequences for all concerned in the web of political intrigue and deception, and the opera is certainly one of Puccini’s best, in terms of famous arias – and perhaps his most effective orchestration – bringing the action vividly to life. The opera contains one of the most dramatic scenes ever penned for the lyric stage, and in addition to providing ample opportunity for the soprano, tenor and baritone leads, will display the company’s first class chorus and orchestra to full advantage.
Conductor Antony Walker and Chorus Master Mark Trawka may be counted on to bring out the best in those departments, and an impressive cast will provide the vocal thrills in this production owned by Seattle Opera. Soprano Leah Crocetto returns to Pittsburgh Opera in the title role, singing the part for the first time in her career. Her impressive resume includes appearances at the Metropolitan Opera and with many of the leading opera companies across the country, as well as performances in Canada and abroad. Tenor Thiago Arancam, whose accomplished international career brought him to Pittsburgh last in the spring production of Turandot, returns as Cavaradossi, Tosca’s ill-fated lover and political prisoner of the sinister Scarpia. That coveted baritone role will be sung by Mark Delavan, another fine artist with a large repertory who has won critical acclaim in this country and Europe, last heard here in the title role of Verdi’s Nabucco a couple of years ago. The opera’s minor roles will be the hands of the company’s Resident Artists, both past and present, and promises to be a thrilling inauguration of this season’s offerings.
Next up is the Mozart masterpiece, Le Nozze di Figaro, sung in the original Italian (as will be Tosca), but on the bill as “The Marriage of Figaro.” The tuneful comic opera has been entertaining audiences for over 230 years, and its story of romance and mistaken identity provides for a large array of colorful characters. The first performance will take place Saturday evening, November 4, and the production, owned by Washington National Opera, will be given by a strong cast under the baton of Anthony Walker. A sequel of sorts to The Barber of Seville, Mozart’s work premiered several decades before Rossini set the first “Figaro” story to music.
Bass-baritone Tyler Simpson (Figaro) and baritone Christian Bowers (Count Almaviva), both Americans with critically acclaimed careers, will make their Pittsburgh Opera debuts. In fact, the cast is an impressive array of American-born talent, with soprano Danielle Pastin, well known locally, taking the role of the Countess Almaviva; soprano Joélle Harvey will be Susanna, and mezzo-soprano Corrie Stallings will be Cherubino, the Count’s love-sick page. Resident Artists Leah de Gruyl (Marcellina), Eric Ferring (Don Basilio and Curzio) and Andy Berry (Antonio) will be familiar faces and voices, and Brian Kontes will appear in the role of Dr. Bartolo.
Winter, as usual, will bring the Resident Artist productions, and here, too, Americans will be strongly to the fore, both as composers and performers. First up is The Long Walk, a Pittsburgh premiere, with music by Jeremy Howard Beck and a libretto by Stephanie Fleischmann. The opera, which tells the dramatically gripping tale of an Iraqi War veteran’s return to civilian life, will receive its first performance at the CAPA Theater, January 20. First staged in 2012, The Long Walk has been described by reviewers as “a daring operatic depiction of war’s aftermath” that “hits on all that makes us human.” Conducted by Glenn Lewis, the cast will feature Benjamin Taylor, Leah de Gruyl, Eric Ferring, Shannon Jennings, Ashley Fabian and Martin Bakari.
Pittsburgh Opera’s second world premiere, Ashes & Snow, will be performed for the first time on February 17, at the company’s George R. White Opera Studio in its Strip District headquarters. With music by Douglas J. Cuomo, and text based on Wilhelm Müller’s poems which Franz Schubert set to music in his well known “Winterreise” (“Winter Journey”) song cycle, the work will showcase tenor Eric Ferring in the tale of a man staring his life in the face in a second-rate motel room in the American west. The composer will conduct an ensemble of electric guitar, trumpet, keyboards and electronic sound effects, performing music described as “21st century art song, infused with acid jazz and punk energy.”
Spring, back at the Benedum, will bring Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick, another Pittsburgh premiere, and, much like the composer’s Dead Man Walking, a contemporary opera which has defied the odds and received a number of revivals in this country and abroad since its 2010 premiere in Dallas. Based on Herman Melville’s famous novel, the opera will be conducted by Antony Walker, and will be sung by a cast including Roger Honeywell (Captain Ahab), Sean Panikkar (Greenhorn), Musa Ngqungwana (Queequeg), Michael Mayes (Stabuck) and others, with the first performance taking place the evening of March 17.
Donizetti’s comic opera L’elisir d’Amore (“The Elixir of Love”), will bring the season to a close, beginning April 21. Conductor Christian Capocaccia, so impressive in last season’s La Traviata, returns to the podium, with a cast including Dimitri Pittas (Nemorino), Ekaterina Siurina (Adina), Paolo Pecchioli (Dr. Dulcamara) and Zachary Nelson (Belcore) singing and acting the tale of a traveling “medicine man” claiming to have a love potion.
The season promises a mixed bag of musical delights, some or all of which will appeal to a wide range of musical tastes. For tickets, full production information, complete cast information, links to many of the singers’ websites and much more, visit Pittsburgh Opera.
Categories: Feature