LuPone Opens ANNIE GET YOUR GUN at Ravinia Today, 8/13

Today, Friday, Aug. 13, the very date that wild-West legend Annie Oakley would have celebrated her 150th birthday, Ravinia opens its three-day run of Irving Berlin's hit-filled Broadway classic Annie Get Your Gun. Taking on her third Merman role, Patti LuPone stars as the sharp-shooter opposite Patrick Cassidy as Frank Butler and George Hearn as Buffalo Bill Cody. The production is directed by Lonny Price with Paul Gemignani leading the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The shows, Aug. 13 through 15, begin at 7:30 p.m.

With music and lyrics by Irving Berlin and a book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields, Annie Get Your Gun tells the fictionalized tale of the sharpshooter whose talent led her to a starring role in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in the 1880s. The score includes such classics as "There's No Business Like Show Business," "Anything You Can Do" and "You Can't Get a Man With a Gun." Directed by Joshua Logan, the original 1946 production starred Ethel Merman and Ray Middleton.

With her bigger-than-life vocalism, LuPone is the obvious heiress to the mantle of the legendary Ethel Merman, winning a Drama Desk Award and Tony nomination for Anything Goes and a Tony Award for her take on Mama Rose from Gypsy, a role she first assumed at Ravinia before taking it to Broadway.

Starring as Frank Butler in the 1999-2001 Broadway production of Annie Get Your Gun, Broadway and film star Cassidy will revive his role in Ravinia's new production. Most recently he starred in It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman, recreating the role his father, Tony Award-winner Jack Cassidy, played in 1966.

Starring in the title role of Ravinia's first Sondheim production, Sweeney Todd in 2001, Tony Award-winner Hearn has continued to appear in the festival's music Theater Productions playing Frederik Egerman in A Little Night Music, Tony in The Most Happy Fella and King Arthur in Camelot.

Price has earned great acclaim for Ravinia's Sondheim productions, several of which have been re-staged for the New York stage and for television, with Emmy Awards going to Sweeney Todd and Passion.

Longtime Sondheim collaborator and musical director of Ravinia's productions of Passion, Sunday in the Park with George, Anyone Can Whistle, Gypsy and Camelot, Gemignani returns to lead the CSO.

Ravinia presents a vocal concert featuring talented singers currently participating in the program for singers at the festival's Steans Music Institute, at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 11 in Bennett • Gordon Hall. This concert, "Voices of the Future," which celebrates art song, includes rising artists sopranos Samantha Malk, Deborah Selig and Layla Claire, mezzo-soprano Liza Forrester, tenor Steven Ebel, bass-baritone EVan Hughes and baritone Adrian Kramer. The program, which presents songs, duets and quartets of Robert Schumann and songs of Samuel Barber including Hermit Songs, also features director of the Steans Music Institute vocal program Brian Zeger, and Ravinia President and CEO Welz Kauffman on piano. The evening also features a special ticket and dining package for $35.

Prior to the Aug. 15 performance, a free preview concert in Bennett • Gordon Hall featuring vocal artists from Ravinia's Steans Music Institute begins at 1 p.m.

Ravinia Festival is located at Lake Cook and Green Bay roads in Highland Park. For concert information or to purchase tickets, please visit Ravinia.org or contact the box office at (847) 266-5100. All season long Ravinia will accept donations of non-perishable food and toiletry items for local food depositories that can be dropped off near the information booth at the main entrance of the park. Follow, connect and interact online at backstage.ravinia.org, Ravinia.org/facebook and Ravinia.org/twitter. Ravinia Festival is a not-for-profit organization.

For more information, visit www.ravinia.org.