Brush up – your opera. There will be no better time to turn off, dial down, and otherwise forego small devices and experience the “think big” of live opera than in the 2019-2020 opera season ahead. Feed you head – and your soul!
Get a jumpstart this summer by attending opera, some al fresca, at Wolf Trap, where as they say “the stars come out to play.” Indeed, bright young stars do and so can you in carefree style enjoy a sweet sound-filled summer night and accompanying picnic.
On August 9 indulge your senses in a one-night stand with what promises to be a zany production of the opera favorite The Barber of Seville. Rossini’s much beloved opera has whacky comedic turns and tunes that are sure-fire sensational. If you are a newbie to opera, let this be your introduction. Pair it with a nice bottle of chianti — and come play with the stars.
Wolf Trap also mounts productions of less well-known operatic works but magical adventures in their own right, firstly by pairing a take off on French vaudeville (Merlin’s Island by Gluck) with a daring satire written in the Nazi’s Terezin ghetto (The Emperor of Atlantis by Ullmann.) These two short operas bring madcap mayhem to four evenings at the end of June performance performed in The Barns. Also at The Barns, Wolf Trap will deliver a new production of Ariadne auf Naxos – a charming work by Richard Strauss, mixing myth with comedy and dance. Expect fireworks.
Tickets are on sale now.
You will then be ready to join the high-heeled – and the not-so-high heeled but nonetheless in-the-know – for a bigger-than-ever, fearlessly expanded season of opera at Washington National Opera (WNO.) WNO’s Artistic Director Francesca Zambello (aka “Cesca” or “Madame Z”), is, to my mind the best director of any theater working in any genre in Washington today.
Madame Z and her partner in operatic crime, General Director Timothy O’Leary, have created a line up for operatic taste of many kinds – balancing perennial operatic favorites with a new commissioned opera, Blue, and the great “American cross-over” work of music-theatre Porgy and Bess.
Otello opens the season on October 26. Verdi’s monumental opera has not been remounted by the company since Placido Domingo was at its helm. This time, tenor Russell Thomas will lead the cast and be joined by baritone George Gadnidze. Shakespeare has never proved more psychologically sound or more passionately re-realized than by Italian composer Verdi.
Should your proclivities run to whimsy, fairy tales, and children’s picture book illustrators, you must attend a performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute with designs by the changeling-at heart Maurice Sendak – and take by the hand your young best friends to introduce them to opera. It would make a lovely early holiday present. This fantastic musical journey was my first introduction to opera, and, at ten years of age, I was hooked by the brave Tamino, his loveable comedic sidekick Pamino, and of course the mysterious, if just-plain-weird, stratospheric notes of the Queen of the Night.
There are a lot of must-sees in this season’s line up, and in our city where people of color still dominate in numbers, it is as if Madame Z is making up for lost time and opportunities for American talented singers of color. I am especially excited to hear aforementioned tenor Russell Thomas as the Moor in Otello. In March, the gorgeous Mezzo-soprano (and winner of the prestigious Marian Anderson Vocal Award) J’nai Bridges will step into the role of Delilah in the Saint-Saens sensual tangle of seduction and betrayal, Samson and Delilah.
Spring will burst into the Kennedy Center’s Opera House with a veritable celebration of talented “color.” In March, WNO presents the Washington premiere of librettist Tazewell Thomson’s commissioned work, Blue, incorporating blues and jazz from the talented “cross-over” (Broadway/opera) composer Jeanine Tesori. The work, which I heard just a sliver of in preview, promises to be an opera for our time. The story, which takes place in Harlem, centers on the ache that can be found in family, race, and systemic violence dealt to young black men. This may be the most important work that comes to Washington in the season ahead, one where we will get to experience this story and engage further in conversation about one of the most critical issues of our time.
The final production of the season is what is considered by many to be America’s first great “folk opera,” Porgy and Bess, and the work will bring back Washington’s own, including the celebrated soprano Alyson Cambridge as Bess and the legendary operatic “diva” Denise Graves. Joining them will be South African bass-baritone Musa Ngqungwana in the heart-breaking role of Porgy. Janai Brugger (Marian Anderson Vocal Award Winner 2016) will share the role of Clara with Jacqueline Echols, of whom I admit unabashedly to be a long-adoring fan.
If this weren’t enough to cheer, another of my favorite singer-actors and person in the arts, WNO’s “home-grown” Soloman Howard, who won this year’s Marian Anderson Vocal Award and who proved outstanding in several WNO productions before establishing himself at top venues including The Met, will perform one-night-only in a special concert on November 25 at The Kennedy Center.
While I’m conjuring up the rock-star pizzazz of some of our singers in opera land, can I also mention Ryan McKinney? He, like Howard and several of these other aforementioned young singers, has cut his teeth on a new kind of operatic style of performance, where emotional truth and dramatic purpose and relationship are given as much value as sonorous notes. His near perfect rendition of the damned Dutchman I saw several years ago at Glimmerglass may be surpassed by what he will show us as the baddest of bad asses in the titular role of Don Giovanni. The question will be: how does a Giovanni of today stand up under exposure of #MeToo?
A new principal conductor Evan Rogister will take up the WNO baton this coming season. I loved what he did with the score of the contemporary Jake Heggie/Gene Scheer opera Moby Dick in 2014 and was impressed by his finesse with the productions of the more recent company productions of Carmen and Aida. Opera lovers are eager to see how the chemistry will continue to work between Madame Z and El Maestro.
There are many other returning friends, pleasing to loyal followers of the WNO, including singers Wei Wu, Leah Crocetto, and Kenneth Kellogg. I am also excited to see company member E. Loren Meeker’s stepping up to direct Don Giovanni as insiders tell me she is a conscientious and exciting new operatic talent.
The great thing about Washington theatre is its variety, and, perhaps because this is more than ever an international city, opera still commands audiences even among the smaller opera companies.
Tickets on sale for Members, May 28, 2019 and for the general public, June 4, 2019.
If you are someone who seeks out an intimate experience with opera, check out my favorite contemporary opera company, UrbanArias. Artistic Director Robert Wood has carved out a special niche with UrbanArias programming, bringing more than a little cheeky boldness to short, contemporary works, several of which are original commissions. His operas are held to come in under 90 minutes but there is nothing “short” (or small) about his vision or the artistic merits of the singers, designers, and orchestra ensemble he assembles.
UrbanArias even specializes, at times, in sung audience-directed skits for your enjoyment in cabaret settings. Opera then becomes that something else again in the hands of young talented singers with a fearless approach to “winging it” in true comedy improv fashion. (I heard there was a scene played out at a Busboy & Poets event where Frodo Baggins duked it out with James Comey in a Wagnerian drama set in a rush hour metro car.)
When tickets become available, you can find them here.
If your tastes run to the more rarefied serious music, check out Opera Lafayette. Artistic director and consummate conductor Ryan Brown has been excavating baroque operatic gems and breathing life into such works, which often include exquisite examples of period dance. He has rocketed into international acclaim, and his productions have been seen by elite audiences in New York City and through special invitation at Versailles, where certain performances were played in front of Marie Antoinette’s sets. Opera Lafayette blazes through its infrequent Washington performances like meteor shows. Blink and you miss them. Don’t let them pass you by in the coming season.
When tickets become available, you can find them here.
Virginia Opera continues its forty-five years of opera programming with its own rallying anthem –“The Cure for our Culture is Culture.” Artistic Director Adam Turner will assemble two symphony orchestras (Virginia and Richmond) and many talented singers to bring to the stage in October Giacomo Puccini’s sensationally dramatic opera Tosca. The story is driven by romance, jealousy, and murder with biting overtones that will speak to the followers of conversation around #MeToo. And, just as it should be, it is sung in the most beautiful and passionate singable language of all, Italian.
In November, Virginia Opera follows up with a contemporary opera, Il Postino (The Postman) by Daniel Catán, based on the 1994 Oscar-winning film. For lovers of film and all bilingual (Spanish-English) speakers, this is a must-see event, a tribute to the life of the great exiled Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda.
2020 continues the company’s season with a family post-holiday holiday offering in January and February – Gioachino Rossini’s ebullient La Cenerentola, a gorgeous confection of an opera that brings the classic Cinderella fairy tale to theatrical life. The production is followed by Aida. Aida will no doubt forego on-stage elephants, but the story of an enslaved Ethiopian princess, who gets caught up in a doomed love story triangle with her Egyptian royal mistress and an Egyptian war hero, looms large and converges with our conversations about race, class, and imperial conquest.
Season packages are now available here.
Let me end by returning to my own cry to get people freed from sticking their proverbial ostrich heads in the sand that is the ubiquitous look of people today trapped on their digital devices. Don’t take my word for it. At the Washington National Cathedral Easter morning, thousands of people heard our own Bishop Mariann Budde urge us to live a newly resurrected life and part of her exhortation was to “see more theater.” (And that includes opera.) I say amen to that.
The post The Washington area opera scene, our 2019-2020 season guide appeared first on DC Theatre Scene.