Opera Returns to ArtPark After 30 Years with North American Premiere of CARMINA BURANA

Celebrating its 50th season, Artpark kicks off its new opera program with the North American premiere of La Fura Dels Baus’s production of Carl Orff’s masterpiece CARMINA BURANA in the Artpark Mainstage Theater on Saturday, July 29, 2023 at 8:00PM. 
 
The renowned production by Spain’s La Fura Dels Baus & Ibercamera features stage direction and set design by Carlus Padrissa with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Gil Rose, Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus and other community groups. Featured soloists will include: Antoni Marsol Puig; Luca Espinosa Gil; Amparo Navarro Serra; and Jordi Domenech Subirans.
 
This spectacle, an explosion of all the senses that has been experienced by more than 325,000 people in Europe, Asia and South America, will make its North American premiere at Artpark.
 
This hour-long theatrical spectacle featuring over 220 artists will immerse the audience into the universe of La Fura dels Baus with striking imagery and special effects: a giant moon, waterfalls, a floral ecstasy with scents of lavender, a live grape harvest, taverns, singers flying on cranes or submerged in water, wine and fire…  “O Fortuna!”  
 
"Carmina Burana is completely furera", proclaims Carlus Padrissa, the Artistic director of the group and the production. For a total of 44 years, La Fura dels Baus has been rocking, blowing up stages, opera houses, venues, tents, bullrings, football stadiums, and now they land at Artpark to offer his theatrical vision of one of the musical works that is performed the most throughout the world.”
 
Conductor Gil Rose states “Carl Orff described his most popular work Carmina Burana as “Secular songs for soloists and choir accompanied by instruments and stage pictures. Though almost always presented as a purely concert work, imagery and narrative were clearly part of the composer’s thinking. I can’t think of a better way to launch our new initiative to bring Opera back to Artpark than with Fura’s visual feast for the eyes in tandem with the glorious sound of the Buffalo Philharmonic and Chorus giving Orff’s vision a rendition not to be missed.”

“Artpark has a substantial legacy in opera: from the North American premiere of Philip Glass’ “Satiagraha” in 1981 to the famed four-year staging of Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” in 1984-88 under then music director Christopher Keen,” adds Sonia Clark, President of Artpark & Company. “It could not have been more meaningful for us to reinstate the program in Artpark’s 50th season under the guidance of our new Opera conductor and producer, Gil Rose. This production by Fura dels Baus is also the next step in our ongoing commitment to bold world-class programming and is reflective of Artpark Board of Directors recently adapted vision for Artpark as an international destination for live and visual arts embracing the relationship of Art, Nature, and Culture to create experiences of discovery and awe.”
 
"If there is a great and sensual score, glorious and energetic, erotic and explosive, as full of life and sin as it is of irony, parody and excess, that is the provocative Carmina Burana, by Carl Orff. … Those medieval texts written between the 12th and 13th centuries, found in the monastery of Bura Sancti Benedicti (Bavaria), where the monks and students laughed at everything established and sang of excessive pleasure, wine, and permanent revelry have lasted throughout the 20th century and continue to do so in the 21st, since Orff put them to music in 1938. Pure gold for a group like La Fura dels Baus.” El Pais, 2009.

To post a comment, you must register and login.