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January 5, 2025

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Music News, Performance Previews

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Central City Opera announces full summer season

Broadway show Once Upon a Mattress added to the 2025 schedule

By Peter Alexander Jan. 5 at 5:45 p.m.

Central City Opera House. Photo by Ashraf Sewailam.

Central City Opera has announced their full summer 2025 season, adding the Mary Rodgers musical comedy Once Upon a Mattress to the two operas previously announced.

The season will open June 28 with Rossini’s comic masterpiece The Barber of Seville. Always a favorite with audiences, Barber returns to the Central City stage for the first time in 12 years. 

The second opera of the summer will be the one-act opera The Knock by composer Aleksandra Vrebalov and librettist Deborah Brevoort. Named for the expression military families use for notifications of soldiers’ deaths, this patriotic opera explores feelings of hope and heartache during the Iraq war. The Knock was commissioned by the Glimmerglass Festival and Cincinnati Opera through a grant from the Mellon Foundation. 

The Cincinnati Opera production in the summer of 2023, directed by CCO’s artistic director Alison Moritz, sold out five performances and an added matinee.

Based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea,” Once Upon a Mattress opened off Broadway in May, 1959, and moved to Broadway later the same year. The musical score is by Mary Rodgers, with lyrics by Marshall Barer and book by Barer, Jay Thompson and Dean Fuller. A novelist as well as screenwriter and composer, Mary Rodgers is the daughter of the famed Broadway composer Richard Rodgers.

That original production starred Carol Burnett in her first Broadway role, and received Tony Award nominations for Best Musical and Best Actress in a Musical (Burnett). A recent popular revival starring Sutton Foster and Michael Urie played on Broadway July 31 to Nov. 30, 2024, with additional performances at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angles in December and January. 

All three shows will be performed in repertory at the Central City Opera house between June 28 and Aug. 3 (see the full schedule below). They open with 7:30 p.m. performances on successive Saturdays, starting June 28. Most successive performances are 2 p.n. matinees, as listed in the schedule below. All performances will be in the historic Central City Opera House.

Subscription renewals are currently available for prior subscribers, and the Central City Box Office is taking requests for new subscriptions. Ticket sales to single performances will begin at a later date.

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Central City Opera
Summer 2025 Festival Schedule
All performances in the Central City Opera House

Gioachino Rossini: The Barber of Seville

7:30 p.m. Saturday, June 28, Saturday, July 19
2 p.m. Wednesday, July 2; Friday, July 4; Sunday, July 6; Saturday, July 12; Tuesday, July 15; Friday, July 25; Sunday, July 26; Wednesday, July 30; Sunday, Aug. 3

Aleksandra Vrebalov and Deborah Brevoort: The Knock

7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 5; Saturday, Aug. 2
2 p.m. Wednesday, July 9; Friday, July 11; Sunday, July 13; Saturday, July 19; Tuesday, July 22

Mary Rodgers and Marshall Barer: Once Upon a Mattress

7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 12; Saturday, July 26
2 p.m. Wednesday, July 16; Friday, July 18; Sunday, July 20; Wednesday, July 23; Saturday, July 27; Tuesday, July 29; Friday, Aug. 1; Saturday, Aug. 2

Subscription renewals are currently available HERE, and new subscribers can join a waiting list. Sales of tickets to single performances will open later.

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October 31, 2024

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Central City Opera announces 2025 season

A barber, a regional first and a Broadway show

By Peter Alexander Oct. 31 at 2:20 p.m.

The Central City Opera (CCO) has announced its 2025 summer season—or at least two thirds of it.

As in recent years, there will be two operas and a Broadway musical performed in the historic opera house in Central City. For 2025 the two operas will be Rossini’s enduring comic masterpiece The Barber of Seville, and a new work by Serbian-American composer Aleksandra Vrebalov, The Knock. 

The Broadway musical has not been announced, although a recent news release from CCO says, coyly, “We won’t be shy about announcing the title of the Golden-Age musical comedy after it ends its limited run on Broadway in January.” I won’t speculate, but you can fuel your imagination by looking up the shows currently on Broadway.

The French playwright Pierre Beaumarchais wrote three plays about the cagey character of Figaro, starting with The Barber of Seville. It was adopted several times as an opera, including a popular version by Giovanni Paisiello. When Rossini’s version premiered in Rome in 1816 it was booed on opening night but—thanks to the brilliant score—soon vanquished all previous versions. 

In the play and opera, Figaro cleverly outwits the elderly Dr. Bartolo, who has designs on his young ward, Rosina, and arranges her marriage to her lover, Count Almaviva. In addition to several comic ensemble scenes, the score includes Figaro’s famous entry aria “Largo al factotum” and Rosina’s virtuosic showpiece “Una voce poco fa.”

Aleksandra Vrebalov

Born in Serbia, Vrebalov came to the United States to study in 1995 and became a U.S. citizen in 2005. She holds a doctorate in music from the University of Michigan. Her works have been performed by the Kronos Quartet, Glimmerglass Opera with Cincinnati Opera, the English National Ballet and the Belgrade Philharmonic, among others. 

A patriotic story of military wives awaiting news of their deployed husbands, The Knock is Verbalov’s third opera. It was commissioned by the Cincinnati Opera, but due to the COVID pandemic the stage premiere was postponed. The first performance was recorded on film with the Glimmerglass Festival Orchestra. That performance was directed by Alison Moritz, now the artistic director of Central City Opera. 

The CCO production will represent a regional premiere, following sold-out onstage performances in Cincinnati.