BWW Opera Preview: If You're Dreaming of Live Opera, Here Are Some to Think About This Spring

Can we talk--about live opera in New York and elsewhere on the East Coast in the coming months?

The year started on a rather ominous note with one of New York opera's (and those elsewhere who benefit from it) major events--the annual Prototype Festival of opera/theatre/now-postponed for a year, except for a single work, the Taylor Mac/Matt Ray THE HANG, about the imagined last hours of Socrates.

Of course, the Met has managed to chug along rather nicely, uninterrupted--even when Quinn Kelsey, the name character in its new production of RIGOLETTO, came down with Covid and his standby had to go on in his place [including the matinee broadcast].

But, hurrah!, things have started looking up, though casts and dates are still subject to change due to Covid. (And you'll still have to be vaccinated and wear your masks while you're watching!)

The Met still has a few things up its sleeve for the spring. (See the Met website for details and tickets.) After a long-planned hibernation for most of February (though the season now extends to June), it comes back with a roar at the tale-end of the month with its first performance ever of DON CARLOS, the French version of Verdi's DON CARLO, headlining Polenzani, Yoncheva and Garanca. (There's also a Yoncheva recital on January 23.)

The next night follows with Strauss's ARIADNE AUF NAXOS (Davidsen, Rae, Leonard, Javonovich). Then it's on to, among others, Handel's RODELINDA (van den Heever, Barton, Costanzo, Davies), Strauss's ELEKTRA (Stemme, Davidsen), a new Donizetti LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR (Sierra, Camarena), Stravinsky's THE RAKE'S PROGRESS, Glass's AKHNATEN (Costanzo) and the Met's premiere of Brett Dean's HAMLET (with many performers from Glyndebourne's world premiere in 2017, including tenor Nicholas Carter).

The Ricky Ian Gordon-Lynn Nottage INTIMATE APPAREL premieres at Lincoln Center Theatre's (LCT) Newhouse Theatre at the end of January as part of the Met/LCT Opera/Musical Commissioning Program. It was three weeks into previews when Covid first hit two years ago. Those of us who saw the original off-Broadway play by Nottage that it's based on are curious about what they have in store as an opera. It tells of a young African American woman in the New York of 1905, who makes her living sewing beautiful corsets and undergarments, the Orthodox Jewish man who sells fabrics to her and a pen-pal laborer on the Panama Canal, whom she unfortunately marries.

Since that early postponement, from March 2020, composer Gordon has put his mark on another piece that beats APPAREL's premiere (January 31) by a few days (January 27), compliments of the National Yiddish Theatre-Folksbiene and New York City Opera. It's THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS, with librettist Michael Korie, based on Giorgio Bassani's 1962 novel, which was also the source of the Academy Award-winning Italian film from 1970. It's the story of an aristocratic Italian-Jewish family, the Finzi-Contini, who believe they are immune to change on the eve of World War II.

It will be performed at Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, Edmond J. Safra Plaza, 36 Battery Place, New York, NY 10280.

City Opera has another opera planned for the season, though there are no details on when and where: THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE, a Pulitzer Prize-winning opera by Anthony Davis and Richard Wesley.

There are a couple of other operas in the Eastern states that hold some curiosity for me.

The Boston Lyric Opera will perform CHAMPION by Terence Blanchard (composer of FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES) and Michael Cristopher beginning May 18, about welterweight champion Emile Griffith; it reflects on his life as he navigates the meaning of masculinity and complex sexuality. There's also SVADBA (Serbian for Wedding) by Ana Sokolovic, a cinematic coproduction with Opera Philadelphia. January 28. Boston: https://www.operabox.tv/; Philadelphia: https://www.operaphila.tv/.

The Washington National Opera at Kennedy Center is premiering a quartet of short operas under the collective title, WRITTEN IN STONE: CHANTAL by Jason Moran and Alicia Hall Moran, THE RIFT by Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang, RISE by Kamala Sankaram and AM Holmes and IT ALL FALLS DOWN by Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Carlos Simon. It asks about the stories that monuments tell, the legacies they embody and the memories they cement.

AWAKENINGS by Tobias Picker and Aryeh Lev Stollman, based on the book by Oliver Sacks about a sleep sickness, a cure, and a predicament, will have its world premiere at the Opera Theater of Saint Louis (OTSL) in June. OTSL will also have a production of a new performing edition of HARVEY MILK by Stewart Wallace and Michael Korie, about the "Mayor of Castro Street," how he fought for the rights of the disenfranced and the ultimate price he paid.

Are you one of those who have been waiting for the opera about Steve Jobs, his life and the iPhone to come East? THE (R)EVOLUTION OF STEVE JOBS, the Grammy-winning opera by Mason Bates and Mark Campbell, will have its Southeast premiere at the Atlanta Opera starting April 30. It's a new co-production directed by the company's General and Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun that will also be seen at the Austin Opera (starting February 3) and Lyric Opera of Kansas City (starting March 11).

If you missed the shattering premiere at the Met of Blanchard's and Kasi Lemmons's FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES, you can catch it at the Chicago Lyric Opera in March, in the same production with many of the same principals, from the Met.

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