After years of retrenchment and cutbacks, the area’s opera companies are moving ahead in positive directions in the coming season.
Although both South Florida companies haven’t added back the productions they once cut, there are signs of a return to artistic daring, and the Sarasota company is offering a world premiere of an American opera. And the popular high-definition simulcasts from the Metropolitan Opera, which have been a success locally since their launch, will again be a regular feature of programs at the Society of the Four Arts as well as in area cinemas.
Here is a look at the three companies:
Palm Beach Opera: Still much reduced from its fat budget years of the mid-1990s, the Palm Beach Opera enters its 51st season with a different paradigm in mind that general director Daniel Biaggi hopes will give the company a higher profile during the season. He’s decided to present the opera’s offerings as part of a 12-week opera festival that will include three mainstage productions, a full secondary production featuring the company’s Young Artists, and two of its abridged Opera in One Hour shows, one of which will be an American opera still in workshop.
Not returning is artistic director Bruno Aprea, who left the company in late September after rejecting his contract, and the troupe’s Vocal Competition, still being retooled after being canceled last year.
The season opens in January with a reprise of the opera that the company debuted with in 1962: Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata. The company still rotates casts, with the so-called A cast on Friday night and Sunday afternoon, and the B cast on Saturday night. Starring as Violetta is the Canadian soprano Joyce El-Khoury, with Georgy Vasiliev as her Alfredo; Sarah Joy Miller sings the lead role for the second cast opposite David Miller. Michael Chioldi is the Germont for all three performances, with Flora sung by mezzo Shirin Eskandani, returning for her second season as a Young Artist. The stage director is the great Italian soprano Renata Scotto, who’s been directing since her retirement 10 years ago; she directed PBO’s La Boheme in the 2009 season. Aprea was to have conducted; his replacement has not been named. (Jan. 18-20, Kravis Center)
Next up is one of the great buffa operas, Giaochino Rossini’s La Cenerentola, or Cinderella. It’s a broadly comic take on the story, with scheming, ridiculous stepsisters and their venal father, and a sly prince who easily tricks them. The marvelous American mezzo Vivica Genaux, a Baroque specialist who won the company’s vocal competition nearly 20 years ago, guests in all three performances as Angelina (one of Genaux’s teachers was Virginia Zeani, who lives on the Treasure Coast). Rene Barbera is Prince Ramiro, Don Magnifico is sung by Bruno Pratico, and Dandini, the prince’s manservant, is Bruno Taddio. Eskandani and Alexandra Batsios are the sisters, with Will Crutchfield conducting and Mario Corradi directing. (Feb. 15-17, Kravis)
The third and final production of the season is a real departure for Palm Beach Opera: Richard
Strauss’ Salome, the story of the daughter of Herod who asks her father to bring her the head of John the Baptist. It’s an extraordinary piece, one intense hour-and-a-half act, with Strauss writing at the peak of his refulgent younger style. The Dance of the Seven Veils has been done in the nude in various recent productions, though that’s not likely to happen here. The Salome is the Swedish-born Erika Sunnegårdh, who had her Met debut at age 40, after nearly 20 years of waiting tables in New York. She’s since found a busy niche in performances of this opera; her Jokanaan is Ryan McKinny. Herod is Thomas Moser, and Herodias is another star: Denyce Graves-Montgomery. The stage direction is by the quirky Frenchman Renaud Doucet, and the Austrian conductor Roberto Paternostro, who worked for years under Herbert von Karajan, conducts. (March 15-17, Kravis)
While those operas will be at the Kravis Center, the company travels in April to Lynn University in Boca Raton for two full productions of The Turn of the Screw, Benjamin Britten’s 1954 mounting of a ghost story by Henry James. The two performances will star the Young Artists troupe, which has been expanded this year to eight young singers, four men and four women. The work is scored for a small chamber orchestra, which will be handled here by members of the Lynn Philharmonia. (April 12 and 14, Wold Performing Arts Center, Lynn University)
Adventurous operagoers have also made it a habit of checking out the company’s One Opera in One Hour productions at the Harriet Himmel Theater in CityPlace. These piano-only productions featuring the Young Artists have often been quite diverting, and exciting to think about on the mainstage (last year’s selections included Handel’s Semele, Copland’s The Tender Land and Daniel Catan’s Florencia en el Amazonas). This year, it will do only two. On Jan. 25, it’s Christoph Willibald von Gluck’s Iphigenie en Tauride, one of the German master’s final operas, written in French for the Paris Opera in 1779. On Feb. 22, the company presents Enemies: A Love Story, an opera by the American composer Ben Moore, based on the novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer (made into a film with Ron Silver, Anjelica Huston and Lena Olin in 1989).
Contact: 561-833-7888 or visit www.pbopera.org.
Florida Grand Opera: Robert Heuer retired this past May as general director of the 72-year-old Miami company, a post he’d held for more than 30 years. For his replacement, FGO turned to Sarasota, where they found Susan T. Danis, that company’s executive director of a decade.
Danis will be getting accustomed to her new role beginning this month, and the four-opera season FGO is presenting this season was chosen before she was hired. Still, insiders are expecting a different approach to the business of opera from Danis, who has been leading one of the most innovative, highly regarded opera companies in the country.
FGO opens its season with a can’t-miss selection, Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème, one of the most popular ever written, and which will be the most-produced opera in the coming season nationwide, with no fewer than 65 separate productions, according to Opera America. It’s beloved for many good reasons, not least of which is its relative brevity, its easy-to-love melodrama, its moments of high comedy and deep pathos, and of course, Puccini’s exceptional melodic gift. Starring as the doomed Mimi is Ailyn Perez, opposite Arturo Chacon-Cruz; the Musetta is Brittany Anne Renee Robinson, one of the company’s former young artists, and baritone Mark Walters is Marcello, fresh off expert performances as Rigoletto for FGO and Orlando Opera. Artistic director Ramon Tebar conducts; the stage director is David Gately. (Nov. 17, 21, 24, 27, 30, and Dec. 2, Ziff Ballet Opera House, Miami; Dec. 6 and 8, Broward Center, Fort Lauderdale)
The most popular opera worldwide last season was Mozart’s 1791 singspiel The Magic Flute, and it returns to FGO this season as its second production. One of its notable casting choices is Jeannette Vecchione as the Queen of the Night; Vecchione is a standout New York woman’s basketball player and had gone to college on a sports scholarship only to discover her vocal talent in the choir. Familiar FGO faces such as Andrew Bidlack as Tamino, Jonathan G. Michie as Papageno and Jordan Bisch as Sarastro are joined by Lisette Oropesa as Pamina (after that, she sings Gilda in Rigoletto for the Metropolitan Opera). Andrew Bisantz conducts, with stage direction by Jeffrey Marc Buchman. (Jan. 26, Feb. 1, 5, 10 and 16, Ziff Ballet Opera House; Feb. 21 and 23, Broward Center)
Rachele Gilmore, an American soprano who’s sung Tales of Hoffmann at the Met in one of those last-minute understudy stories, takes the starring role next in Vincenzo Bellini’s La Sonnambula, the story of a poor village girl who is believed to be unfaithful until it’s discovered that she’s been sleepwalking into some compromising situations. Renata Scotto directs this production, which stars Michele Angelini in his company debut as Elvino and Tom Corbeil as Count Rodolfo; Tebar conducts. (Feb. 9, 12, 15 and 17, Ziff Ballet Opera House).
The season closes with La Traviata, marking the third year in a row Palm Beach and Florida Grand have offered the same opera in the same season. This version of Verdi’s 1853 masterpiece stars the excellent young Mexican soprano Maria Alejandres as Violetta opposite Paolo Fanale; Germont is Giorgio Caoduro. This production has a second cast featuring Suzanne Vinnik and Ivan Magri, with Joo Won Kang as Germont. The veteran Bliss Hebert is the stage director, and Tebar does the honors in the pit (April 20, 21, 23, 24, 26, 27, Ziff Ballet Opera House; May 2, 4 and 5, Broward Center).
Contact: 800-741-1010 or visit www.fgo.org.
Sarasota Opera: Now in its 54th season, this Southwest Florida company offers six productions for the season, including the world premiere of a children’s opera by the American composer Daron Aric Hagen.
It also continues its Verdi Cycle, which will wrap in 2016, when the company will have performed all of Verdi’s operas, including alternate versions and revisions (both iterations of Simon Boccanegra, for instance, and the French and Italian versions of Don Carlo).
The season opens with Verdi’s Rigoletto, with Marco Nistico as the bitter jester who has it in
for his licentious employer the Duke of Mantua. His daughter Gilda will be sung by them young Greek soprano Eleni Calanos and the duke will be the South Korean-born Hak Sook Kim. Company artistic director Victor DeRenzi conducts, and the stage direction is by Stephanie Sundine. (Oct. 26 and 28, Nov. 1, 3, 7 and 12, Sarasota Opera House)
Winsor McCay’s 1905 comic Little Nemo in Slumberland dates from the days when the Sunday newspaper panels of comics were large and complicated works of art. It’s still considered a classic of graphic American art, and for this opera, which was written for the Sarasota Youth Opera, the American composer Daron Hagen has collaborated with the playwright and librettist J.D. McClatchy. The story involves the young boy Nemo’s efforts to save the daughter of King Morpheus, monarch of Slumberland, and to stop Emperor Sol, ruler of Daylight, from destroying the dream city forever. Hagen, who studied with David Diamond, has written numerous operas, including Amelia, about the famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart, for Seattle Opera. He writes in a tuneful, post-Romantic style that also does not shy away from challenging harmonic language. Members of the youth company will take the chief roles; the mother will be sung by Chelsea Basler, the father by Jeffrey Beruan. Steven Osgood conducts the two performances, with stage direction by Martha Collins. (Nov. 10 and 11, Sarasota Opera House)
Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot comes next, his last and most ambitious opera, unfinished but almost complete at his death in 1924. Its third-act aria for Prince Calaf, Nessun dorma, has become in recent years one of the most familiar operatic compositions in the canon for the general public. This opera marks also the beginning of the company’s four-opera season proper, with a gala opening night on Feb. 2. The young American tenor Jonathan Burton sings Calaf, and Brenda Harris is Turandot, the icy Chinese princess. The role of the slave girl Liu, the most sympathetic character, had not been announced at presstime. Stephanie Sundine does the stage direction, and Victor DeRenzi conducts. (Feb. 9, 12, 17, 20, 23, 28, and March 3, 10, 15, 19 and 23, Sarasota Opera House)
Although Georges Bizet’s best-known opera is Carmen, he worked on many other operatic projects during his short life, and in recent years many more productions of The Pearl Fishers, which premiered in 1863, have been done. Its exotic setting in what is now Sri Lanka reflects the contemporary vogue for theater pieces set in the mysterious East, and its male duet, Au fond du temple saint, is well-known. Tenor Heath Huberg is Nadir and baritone Lee Poulis is Zarga, and Asako Tamura is Leila, the object of both their affections. Keturah Stickann is the stage director, and Robert Tweten conducts. (Feb. 16, 19, 21, 24 and 27, March 1, 8, 16 and 22, Sarasota Opera House)
The Verdi Cycle opera is without any doubt the rarest, least-known of all Verdi’s operas, Un Giorno di Regno (King for a Day), his second opera and a massive failure at its premiere in 1840 (it had one performance at La Scala, and that house did not stage it again until 2001). Much of that had to do with Verdi’s personal tragedy during its composition: his wife and both his young children died before the premiere, and the combination of personal and artistic disaster led him to give up his operatic career. He was persuaded a year later to try his hand at Nabucco, which launched him on his path of fame and fortune, but the failure of Un Giorno di Regno bothered him the rest of his life, and his last opera, Falstaff, was the only other comedy he ever wrote.
This production is also a world premiere of the critical edition of this opera, and Sarasota has drawn on Verdi’s original manuscript to create it. This is a major musicological event, in any case, and it offers audiences and exceedingly rare chance to hear this early work, a bubbly tale of Belfiore, a dissolute soldier who has been hired by King Stanislaus of Poland to impersonate him while he avoids his enemies. Corey Crider is Belfiore, Stefano de Peppo is the Baron di Kelbar and Jennifer Feinstein sings the Marchesa of Poggio. DiRenzi conducts, and Collins is the stage director. (March 2, 5, 7, 10, 13, 16 and 24)
The season closes with another in Sarasota’s American Classics series, which has presented Samuel Barber’s Vanessa and Robert Ward’s The Crucible over the past two seasons. This year, it’s Carlisle Floyd’s Of Mice and Men, premiered in 1970 and based on the popular John Steinbeck story of two would-be farmers in the Great Depression. Floyd, now 86, taught at Florida State for 30 years, and his best-known work is probably Susannah, from 1955. Corey Bix sings Lennie, and Sean Anderson is George; Chelsea Basler takes the role of Curley’s wife. The same team that has done the first two American Classics, conductor David Neely and stage director Michael Unger, handle the duties for Of Mice and Men as well. (March 9, 12, 14, 17, 20 and 23).
Contact: 941-366-8450 or visit www.sarasotaopera.org.
Touring companies: Jenny Kelly’s Teatro Lirico d’Europa comes to the Sunrise Theatre in Fort Pierce with a production of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville (Jan. 26), Puccini’s Tosca (Feb. 23) and an evening called A Tribute to Pavarotti (March 10), an hommage to the late Italian tenor.
Opera on screen: In addition to the commercial outlets where the Metropolitan Opera shows its Saturday matinee simulcasts, the Society of the Four Arts features the shows for $25 apiece. Up this year: Thomas Adès’ The Tempest (Nov. 10); Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito (Dec. 1); Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera (Dec. 8) and the same composer’s Aida (Dec. 15); Berlioz’s Les Troyens (Jan. 5); Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda (Jan. 19), and the same composer’s L’Elisir d’Amore (Feb. 2); Verdi’s Rigoletto (Feb. 16), Wagner’s Parsifal (March 2), Zandonai’s rarely heard Francesca da Rimini (March 16), and Verdi’s Otello (March 30).