Opera Philadelphia Celebrates 40th Anniversary Season with THE BARBER OF SEVILLE, OSCAR and More
By: BWW News Desk Feb. 18, 2014
General Director & President David B. Devan and Music Director Corrado Rovaris are pleased to announce Opera Philadelphia's 40th Anniversary Season, featuring a stellar cast of international opera stars in five new productions at the Academy of Music and the Perelman Theater.
"This 40th Anniversary Season at Opera Philadelphia looks to the future while celebrating Philadelphia's operatic heritage," said Devan. "The five outstanding new productions form a journey-a carefully sequenced collection of the classic and the daring, the sublime and the surreal. It is an opendialogue between opera's biggest stars, its greatest fans, and its grandest stage."
"I am so pleased by the wonderful variety of artistic experiences we have created for the 2014-2015 Season," said Rovaris. "We have three excellent new productions from the traditional opera repertoire alongside two new operas from our American Repertoire Program, all featuring some of the greatest singers alive today."
The season will open on Friday, September 12, with a star-studded 40th Anniversary Gala featuring a recital by opera's star couple Stephen Costello and Ailyn Pérez,Vanity Fair's "match made inverismo heaven." The duo, who met as students at Philadelphia's Academy of Vocal Arts, come home to celebrate on the stage where they've dazzled in productions like Carmen, Cyrano, and Romeo & Juliet. Information about the 40th Anniversary Gala is available at www.operaphila.org/gala.
Two weeks later, a new production of Rossini's The Barber of Seville comes to the Academy of Music stage, featuring Jennifer Holloway in her role debut as Rosina, with Jonathan Beyer as Figaro andTaylor Stayton as Almaviva. February brings the East Coast Premiere of Oscar by Theodore Morrison and John Cox, starring countertenor David Daniels in his Opera Philadelphia debut as Oscar Wilde. In its 2013 World Premiere at the Santa Fe Opera, the production was hailed for outstanding performances by Daniels, soprano Heidi Stober, tenor William Burden, and dancerReed Luplau, in a silent role as Wilde's lover Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas.
Philadelphia-born bass-baritone Eric Owens comes home in April 2015 to make his role debut as King Philip II in a new production of Verdi's Don Carlo. This Academy of Music production features the Opera Philadelphia debuts of Dimitri Pittas as Don Carlo, Leah Crocetto as Elizabeth de Valois, and Michelle DeYoung as Princess Eboli.
The popular Aurora Series for Chamber Opera at the Perelman Theater returns with two new productions: Ariadne auf Naxos, starring the gifted young voices of the Curtis Opera Theatre, under Artistic Director Mikael Eliasen; and the American Repertoire Program's World Premiere of Charlie Parker's YARDBIRD, by composer Daniel Schnyder with a libretto by Bridgette A. Wimberly. American tenor Lawrence Brownlee stars as Charlie Parker, with soprano Angela Brown as his mother, Addie Parker, and baritone Will Liverman as Dizzy Gillespie. Charlie Parker's YARDBIRDmarks Opera Philadelphia's first World Premiere in more than three decades, making the chamber opera a fitting capstone to the 40th Anniversary Season.
Comments
Videos