Well, the season announcement has been made, and I was 80% correct in my previous post.
The summer production, from July 30 to August 20, will be Porgy and Bess, with Gordon Hawkins and Lisa Daltirus in the lead roles, with John DeMain conducting.
Carmen will play from October 15 to 29, with Anita Rachvelishvili as Carmen, and Joseph Calleja, returning five years after his local debut, as Don Jose. This will not be a revival of the production from 2004, but a production borrowed from Lyric Opera of Kansas City.
From January 14 to 28 will be the Seattle debut of Verdi's Attila with John Relyea in the title role, Antonello Palombi as Foresto, Ana Lucrecia Garcia as Odabella and Marco Vratogna as Ezio. If the pictures on the Seattle Opera website are any indication, this looks to be a modernized production.
Orpheus and Eurydice by Gluck will play from February 25 - March 10, the one opera I didn't guess. It's the tenor version of the opera with William Burden as Orpheus, Davinia Rodriguez as Eurydice and Julianne Gearhart as Amore.
The season ends with Madama Butterfly from May 5 - 19. Patricia Racette and Stefano Secco make their local debuts in the lead roles.
I can't say that I'm particularly thrilled by the choice of operas--however, the high quality of singers for the season does interest me.
Showing posts with label Future Seasons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Future Seasons. Show all posts
Friday, December 31, 2010
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Seattle Opera, next season
Normally, Seattle Opera announces the next season in early January, so the 2011-12 announcement is probably only a couple of weeks away.
But usually, it's possible to figure out, from here and there, what they are planning on presenting. However, this time it's been more difficult than usual to figure out their plans in advance.
Originally, the 2011 summer opera was to have been Tannhäuser, a work not seen in Seattle since the 1984-85 season (Speight Jenkins' inaugural season with the company, as a matter of fact). And the title role was to have been played by Christopher Ventris, Seattle's 2003 Parsifal, in his role debut. However, apparently the production has been cancelled. Instead of Wagner, we will be getting Gershwin: Porgy and Bess, last seen in Seattle in 1995.
The January 2012 production will be Verdi--one of his rarer works at that: Attila, the first time it's been performed by the company. Antonello Palombi, last season's Manrico, will take the tenor role of Foresto.
And in October, March, and May? I actually don't know. I'm pretty confident that Madama Butterfly will be one of the works performed, and Carmen is a very likely pick as well. I'd expect that the remaining fifth opera will also be one of the standard canon as well: likely possibilities include Fidelio, Tales of Hoffmann, Elisir d'amore, and Don Pasquale. Rigoletto is less likely, as they are already performing a Verdi work, and the last time they did it, it bombed at the box office. It's unlikely they'll do two Puccini operas in one season, so that eliminates Turandot. It's been a long time since Seattle Opera has done Faust, but Speight Jenkins is on record as hating that opera, so I can't see him programming it in one of his last seasons as the company's director. Maybe they'll surprise us with a mainstage debut of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream (based on the interesting production Peter Kazaras did with the Young Artists Program back in 2009).
Anyway, my guesses for 2011-12's five operas are:
But usually, it's possible to figure out, from here and there, what they are planning on presenting. However, this time it's been more difficult than usual to figure out their plans in advance.
Originally, the 2011 summer opera was to have been Tannhäuser, a work not seen in Seattle since the 1984-85 season (Speight Jenkins' inaugural season with the company, as a matter of fact). And the title role was to have been played by Christopher Ventris, Seattle's 2003 Parsifal, in his role debut. However, apparently the production has been cancelled. Instead of Wagner, we will be getting Gershwin: Porgy and Bess, last seen in Seattle in 1995.
The January 2012 production will be Verdi--one of his rarer works at that: Attila, the first time it's been performed by the company. Antonello Palombi, last season's Manrico, will take the tenor role of Foresto.
And in October, March, and May? I actually don't know. I'm pretty confident that Madama Butterfly will be one of the works performed, and Carmen is a very likely pick as well. I'd expect that the remaining fifth opera will also be one of the standard canon as well: likely possibilities include Fidelio, Tales of Hoffmann, Elisir d'amore, and Don Pasquale. Rigoletto is less likely, as they are already performing a Verdi work, and the last time they did it, it bombed at the box office. It's unlikely they'll do two Puccini operas in one season, so that eliminates Turandot. It's been a long time since Seattle Opera has done Faust, but Speight Jenkins is on record as hating that opera, so I can't see him programming it in one of his last seasons as the company's director. Maybe they'll surprise us with a mainstage debut of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream (based on the interesting production Peter Kazaras did with the Young Artists Program back in 2009).
Anyway, my guesses for 2011-12's five operas are:
- Porgy and Bess
- Attila
- Madama Butterfly
- Carmen
- L'elisir d'amore
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