"Zorro" at California Theatre

Opera San José will conclude its 41st season with the Northern California premiere of Héctor Armienta’s Zorro. Latino stage director David Radamés Toro will make his OSJ debut staging the production, while Argentinian conductor Jorge Parodi, who last conducted Rigoletto for OSJ, will return to the podium. Inspired by California’s own heroic masked protector of the poor and disenfranchised created by Johnston McCulley, this swashbuckling opera is filled with ravishing romance and sword-fighting suspense. Set in the early 1800s in El Pueblo de Los Ángeles, still a colony of Spain, Zorro follows the adventures of Diego de la Vega, a Spanish nobleman who hides his identity to become a mysterious masked hero, the dashing defender of the less fortunate. With a lush score influenced by mariachi, flamenco, and corrido music, the caped crusader comes to operatic life, battling tyranny and corruption, juggling romantic interests of the beguiling daughter of the Governor, Carlota de Obragón, and the brave and kind Ana Maria Soza, and taking on his nemesis, the oppressive General Moncada.