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March 17, 2025

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Coming opera seasons in Colorado

CU Eklund Opera and Opera Colorado announce 2025–’26 seasons

By Peter Alexander March 17 at 5:43 p.m.

Leigh Holman stepped before the rich, ruby-red curtains at Macky Auditorium yesterday (March 16) afternoon and spoke to the audience.

The occasion was the final performance of CU’s production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance. Holman is the director of the Eklund Opera Program at CU-Boulder, and in addition to welcoming the full house in Macky, she made an announcement of interest to opera lovers in the area. She named the works in Eklund Opera’s 2025–26 season—or most of them.

Leigh Holman

The fall production, she said, will be one of the most successful operas of the past 25 years, Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking. Premiered in 2000 by the San Francisco Opera it has since been performed in dozens of productions, at CU in in 2007, Central City Opera in 2014, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Houston Grand opera, in university and regional productions around the country, and major houses around the world. 

Based on the memoir of the same name by Sister Helen Prejean, Dead Man Walking features a  libretto by playwright Terrence McNally. The plot revolves around Prejean’s death-row ministry with a convict who was executed for murder in Louisiana in 1984.

Homan then announced that in April, 2026, the Eklund program will present Leoš Janáček’s folk-ish Cunning Little Vixen, a charming and harsh tale of life in the animal world. Finally, she said that the third production, appearing in the March time slot, would be a musical comedy presented in conjunction with the CU program in musical theatre. Contractual obligations, common with the performance of musicals, prevent the release of the show’s title at this time.

Opera Colorado in Denver also has announced the operas that will be their main stage productions in the 2025–’26 season. November will see performances of Verdi’s La Traviata, and in May Opera Colorado will present Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. In the meantime, there will be semi-staged concert performances of Verdi’s Il Trovatore featuring a full cast with the Opera Colorado orchestra and chorus, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 26, and 2 p.m. Sunday, May 4, in the Ellie Caulkins  Opera House at the Denver Performing Arts Complex. 

Ellie Caulkins Opera House, Denver

The company’s Calendar of Events lists the dates for all performances and access to the box office for the purchase of individual tickets for the remainder of this season, as well as subscriptions for the ’25–’26 season. 

Central City Opera House

Central City Opera’s summer 2025 season has already been announced, but if you missed it, this year’s summer festival at the Opera House in Central City will feature Rossini’s Barber of Seville, Aleksandra Verbelov’s contemporary The Knock, inspired by events during the 2003–’11 Iraq War, and the 1959 Broadway hit Once Upon a Mattress, recently revived in New York and Los Angeles to great acclaim.

The full summer calendar, and access to the purchase of subscriptions and group bookings can be found HERE. Individual tickets will go on sale April 1.

Not in Colorado but within a reasonable day’s drive for people in the Boulder area, the Santa Fe Opera presents productions in a unique and stunning outdoor theater in the New Mexico mountains. Productions for the summer of 2025 will be Puccini’s La Bohème, Mozart’s Nozze di Figaro (Marriage of Figaro), Verdi’s Rigoletto, Benjamin Britten’s Turn of the Screw and Wagner’s Die Walküre. 

Santa Fe Opera. (c)Bob Godwin/rgbphotography@mac.com

The full calendar for the Santa Fe Opera is located HERE. Tickets can be purchased through the company’s 2025 Season page. 

NOTE: At the request of the Eklund Opera Program, a quote that that could potentially identify the musical to be presented in March, 2026, was removed from the fifth paragraph of this story as of March 13, 2025.

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May 6, 2024

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Effective, powerful Samson et Delilah at Opera Colorado

Production opened Saturday, continues next week May 7, 10, 12

By Peter Alexander May 6 at 12:10 p.m.

Opera Colorado opened an effective and at  times powerful production of Saint-Saens’s Samson et Delilah Saturday (May 4) at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House in Denver.

The final production of 2023–24 season, Samson et Delilah will run for a total of four performances, with additional shows scheduled for 7:30 p.m. May 7 and 10, and 2 pm Sunday, May 12.

The production is a traditional take on the story, meaning there are no attempted updatings or imposed psychological meanings. Sets and costumes represent Biblical times—“as much as you can set something in Biblical times and be accurate,” in the words of stage director Keturah Stickann.

Act III of Opera Colorado’s production of Samson et Delilah. Photo by Matthew Staver for Opera Colorado.

The sets by Peter Dean Beck are evocative of the locations without devolving into middle-eastern kitsch. The first act opens on a nicely lit scene of the suffering Hebrews, in a public square under captivity by the Philistines. Here the set leaves plenty of space for the limited action that takes place, which is useful with so much of that act being otherwise static choral singing. Most impressive is the final scene, with the requisite pillars of the temple looming over the stage. The final collapse of the Philistine’s temple is simply accomplished but effective.

Stickann’s staging is never less than serviceable, which is what is needed for an opera with no hidden motives or deep psychological drama: everything that happens is out in the open. In the first act, the limited movements helped vary the stand-and-sing choral material. Repeated raised-arm gestures by the chorus are overdone but expressive of the repeated pleas of the Hebrews. Otherwise, the action moves smoothly. 

The second act confrontations  of Delilah with the High Priest and with Samson are well dramatized. However, the end of the act does not follow the libretto. In this production, Delilah gives Samson a magic potion, he passes out, and she takes a knife given to her by the High Priest and cuts Samson’s hair. But the libretto is clear: the hair cutting does not take place on stage for the simple reason that she never hears Samson’s secret onstage. 

What Saint-Saëns and the libretto indicate is that Delilah and Samson go into her house, where she seduces him and learns his secret during an orchestral interlude. Delilah calls for the Philistine soldiers who take Samson away. It’s  not clear if she has cut off his hair in her house, or the Philistines do so later, but it does not happen onstage. That is awkward, but a magic potion is too easy a way out. The composer’s version is better.

Rafael Davila as Samson. Photo by Matthew Staver for Opera Colorado

The final act is the best part of the evening. The first sene, of Samson pushing a mill wheel, is uncomplicated but moving. The destruction of the temple in the final scene works well on stage. Again, there’s not anything complicated to direct: there is a dance (the famous Bacchanale), Samson is brought in and mocked by the Philistines, then he moves between the pillars and brings down the temple. I was happy to see that the child who guides the blinded Samson was not forgotten: Samson sends him out of the temple before it collapses.

A fine cast gave top-flight performances. As Samson, tenor Rafael Davila made the strongest impression, singing with a solid, heroic-tenor quality. He consistently sang the words expressively, but did not always convey Samson’s internal struggle between his feelings for Delilah and his religious convictions. He was at his best in the final scene, creating great pathos while pushing the mill wheel and ringing out his denunciations of the Philistines at the end.

Katherine Goeldner as Delilah (center) with Philistine maidens and dancers in Act I of Samson et Delilah. Photo by Matthew Staver for Opera Colorado.

As Delilah, Katherine Goeldner brought extensive experience to her performance, including a prior appearance as Delilah at Virginia Opera. She no longer has the bright, focused tone of a young singer, but she had all the strength Saturday night to carry off the climactic moments. She sang with firmness of tone and great expression. And her Delilah is multilayered: aristocratic, calculating in her seduction of Samson, and vicious in her mockery in the final scene.

Nmon Ford was a tall, imposing High Priest, capturing both the authority and the evil implicit in the Biblical narrative. He brought a powerful and orotund, if occasionally rough-hewn sound to his portrayal. In the small part of Abimelech, the Philistine ruler who is killed by Samson in the first act, Christian Zaremba provided a dark, sometimes tight bass. Turner Staton was a solid Old Hebrew in his Act I dialog with Samson.

I am not dance critic, but I thought the dancers were smoothly integrated in the first act, more disconnected in the Bacchanale. The singers of the Opera Colorado chorus gave their lengthy, critical numbers a rich sound and secure ensemble.

The orchestra under conductor Ari Pelto propelled the action effectively, especially in Act II where the woodwinds shone in their prominent roulades. The full orchestral sound and expression supported the story throughout. The only reservation would be the Bacchanale, which was too fast. It is a frenzied dance, but taken too fast it looses clarity and precision, and the sudden tempo change near the end, which should be an explosion of sound and fury, looses its impact. Nevertheless, audience granted the expected spontaneous applause.

Tickets to additional performances may be purchased HERE.

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May 2, 2024

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Opera Colorado presents Saint-Saëns’ “Samson et Delilah”

The opera is based on, and different from, the familiar Biblical story

By Peter Alexander May 2 at 4:30 p.m.

The Biblical story of Samson’s betrayal by Delilah, and his violent revenge, is one of the best known dramatic tales from the Old Testament. It has been dramatized many times in film and music.

One of the most successful of those dramatizations will be presented by Opera Colorado over the next two weeks: Camille Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Delilah. The production opens Saturday, May 4, with additional performances May 7, 10 and 12 (details below).

Opera Colorado’s production of Samson and Delilah. Photo by Matthew Staver for Opera Colorado.

Performances will be conducted by Ari Pelto, Opera Colorado’s music director. Stage direction is by Keturah Stickann, with sets by Peter Dean Beck. The role of Samson will be sung by tenor Rafael Davila, Delilah by mezzo-soprano Katherine Goeldner.

The production will be a traditional one, Stickann said. “We are not updating in any conscious way,” she says. “We are set in Biblical times, as much as you can set something in Biblical times and be accurate.”

Most of the opera’s story will be familiar to anyone who knows the Biblical narrative. Samson has superhuman strength. The Philistines want to know the source of his strength so they can defeat him. Eventually Delilah learns that his strength comes from his hair. His hair is cut, he is captured by the Philistines, then blinded and enslaved. In the final act he destroys the Philistine temple. 

That much is familiar, but there are some significant differences, particularly in the character of Delilah. In the Bible (Judges 16), she betrays Samson for money—1100 pieces of silver from each of several Philistine officials. In the opera, however, she acts more out of loyalty to the Philistine people and priests and declines gold offered by the high priest.

“If you look at what is written on the page, in the opera, she is very much an agent of the Philistines,” Stickann says. “That is not the way that she comes across in the Biblical story. Ultimately you have to tell the story that’s on the page.”

Rafael Davila (l.) and Katherine Goeldner (r.) as Samson and Delilah in Opera Colorado’s production of “Samson and Delilah.” Photo by Matthew Staver for Opera Colorado.

Stickann said that she and Goeldner, who will sing the role of Delilah, talked at length about the character. “She’s a mata-hari creature in this opera,” Stickann says. “She’s a spy for her people (and) is trying desperately to help her people.”

Goeldner agrees, but also sees many layers to Delilah. “She can be seen as just an evil vamp, but that’s too simple and uninteresting,” she says. “She’s not just sultry, she’s complicated. She’s mostly manipulating Samson. This is the fourth time she has tried to get his secret, and he’s lied to her three times. And yet he keeps coming back for more!

“She does love Samson in a way, but I think it’s the way Carmen loves Don Jose (in Bizet’s opera Carmen)—he’s useful and as soon as he stops being useful she’s done with him.”

Along with Carmen and Amneris in Aida, Delilah is one of the major starring roles for mezzo-sopranos. She dominates the second act and her actions drive the plot. As a result, it is one of the most coveted roles for mezzos.

“Getting to do Delilah once in a mezzo’s career is a huge thing,” Goeldner says. “The second act, you’ve got aria, gigantic duet, another gigantic duet, one of the most famous arias in the operatic repertoire—she’s on the entire time. It is one of the most demanding roles in the mezzo repertoire. It’s far more demanding than Carmen for example, which I’ve done a bunch.”

Her second act aria, “Mon cour s’ouvre à to voix” (My heart opens at the sound of your voice) is one of two frequently performed selections from Samson et Delilah. The other is the frenetic Danse Bacchanale in the third act, usually performed as a ballet as was expected in French opera of the 19th century, and a source of many standard musical gestures associated with the Middle East.

Dancers in Opera Colorado’s production of Samson and Delilah. Photo by Matthew Staver for Opera Colorado.

One of the challenges of presenting Samson et Delilah, and one that is visible to the audience, is that it was originally conceived as an oratorio rather than an opera. That idea survives in the large choral numbers in the first and third acts, which are great music but dramatically static.

“It is the problem of the piece,” Stickann says. “Sometimes the drama comes directly from the music. We do a little movement at the beginning of the long choral pieces, and then we sink into it a little bit. It gets more active, but this is the way that Saint-Saëns designed it. My challenge as a director is to make it work, that it is a seamless piece of theater.”

Stickann is excited about the Opera Colorado production of the opera. “It’s a terrific cast, the chorus is working at peak, and we have some spectacular dancers in this production. (And) The audience in Denver enjoys grand opera.”

Her perspective comes form having worked in 30 states and several countries overseas, and having lived in Missouri, San Diego, New York, and now Knoxville, Tenn. “It’s not just my upbringing in the Midwest,” she says. “It’s my experience in the South, my experience on the West Coat, my experience on the East Coast. These different places have definitely colored the way that I work.

“Every one of them has given me something, every one has a different way of being, [and] I grow a little bit more every time I move.”

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Samson et Delilah by Camille Saint-Saëns
Libretto by Ferdinande Lemaire
Opera Colorado
Ari Pelto, conductor; Keturah Stickann, director

7:30 p.m.Saturday, May 4, Tuesday, May 7 and Friday, May 10
2 p.m. Sunday, May 12

Ellie Caulkins Opera House, Denver Performing Arts  Complex

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February 20, 2024

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Opera Colorado to present Wagner’s ‘Flying Dutchman’

Legendary ghost ship will sail into Denver Feb. 24, for four performances

By Peter Alexander Feb. 20 at 5:30 p.m.

Never mind the forecast; there will be stormy seas in Denver the end of February and early March.

At least there will be on the stage of the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, where Opera Colorado will present Richard Wagner’s Fliegende Holländer (Flying Dutchman) for a total of four performances opening Feb. 24 (7:30 pm. Saturday; subsequent performances Feb. 27, March 1 and 3 are listed below). Performances under the musical direction of Ari Pelto will feature Norwegian baritone Olafur Sigurdarson in the title role and American soprano Marcy Stonikas as Senta.

Color sketch of Opera Colorado production of Fliegende Holländer. Courtesy of Opera Colorado.

Wagner wrote The Flying Dutchman in 1840 and ’41 while he was living in Paris. He wrote the text, based on a story by Heinrich Heine, and the music, setting a pattern that he would follow in his subsequent music dramas. Afterwards he wrote to his friends, “From here begins my career as poet, and my farewell to the mere concoctor of opera-texts.”

The 1843 premiere in Dresden was conducted by Wagner himself. Modestly successful at the first performance, The Flying Dutchman is generally regarded as Wagner’s first mature work. It is considered an opera, while his later works are classified as music dramas, a more thorough synthesis of music, text, setting and other dramatic elements.

Fliegende Holländer set under construction. Courtesy of Opera Colorado.

The opera enacts the tale of a ship’s captain who is condemned to sail the seas for eternity, until he is redeemed by the love of a woman. Allowed to land only once every seven years, the Dutchman encounters an avaricious Norwegian sea captain, Daland, and his dreamy daughter Senta, who has long been fascinated by a portrait of the Dutchman hanging in her home. For different reasons, both are eager to make the wealthy Dutchman part of the family through marriage, and in the end Senta makes the ultimate sacrifice, freeing the Dutchman from his curse.

The music that opens the opera was inspired by a stormy voyage Wagner had taken from Riga to London. This powerful opening has made the Overture to The Flying Dutchman a popular staple of the orchestral repertoire.

Opera Colorado has assembled an appealing cast for their production. Sigudarson has sung Wagner roles at Bayreuth and the Metropolitan Opera, among other houses, and other major roles throughout Europe. Stonikas has won several vocal competitions and sung leading roles at Seattle Opera. Cast as Daland, bass Harold Wilson has extensive Metropolitan Opera roles to his credit, and sang at Deutsche Opera Berlin for five seasons. Another Met veteran, Chad Shelton takes the leading tenor role of Erik.

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Opera Colorado, Ari Pelto, conductor
Kathleen Smith Belcher, stage director; Alan E. Muraoka, set designer

  • Richard Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman)

7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 24, Tuesday, Feb, 27, and Friday, March 1
2 p.m. Sunday, March 3
Ellie Caulkins Opera House, Denver Performing Arts Complex

Sung in German with English and Spanish subtitles at each seat.

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November 2, 2023

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GRACE NOTES: Opera Colorado, Takács Quartet

Don Giovanni in Denver, Haydn and Bartók in Grusin

By Peter Alexander Nov. 2 at 12:15 a.m.

Opera Colorado opens their 2023-24 season of three operas Saturday night with Mozart’s dark comedy Don Giovanni. The performance will be the first of four in the Ellie Caulkins Opera House in downtown Denver (dates and ticket information below).

The second of three operas Mozart created together with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, Don Giovanni was premiered in Prague in 1787. Together with his other two Da Ponte operas—Marriage of Figaro (1786) and Così fan tutte (1790)—it is considered one of Mozart’s greatest works.

Subtitled “The Rake Punished,” Don Giovanni is based on the Spanish legend of the libertine Don Juan. In the course of the opera, Don Giovanni attempts a number of largely unsuccessful seductions of a noble woman (Donna Anna), a peasant girl (Zerlina)  and a maid, while rejecting the one woman who is pursuing him out of a hopeless infatuation (Donna Elvira), while his servant (Leporello) is forced to act as an accomplice. 

The opera follows the misadventures of Giovanni and Leporello in, and in the countryside outside of, Seville. Musical highlights include Leporello’s aria listing all of Giovanni’s conquests (“Catalogue” aria) and Giovanni’s “Champagne” aria. At the end, an older man that Giovanni had killed at the outset of the opera (the Commendatore, father of Donna Anna), enters in the form of his graveyard statue and demands that Giovanni repent his sins. Giovanni refuses, and the Commendatore drags Giovanni down to Hell. All of the characters join together in relief to sing the opera’s moral, “Such is the end of the evildoer.”

Ellie Caulkins Opera House in the Denver Performing Arts Complex

During his lifetime Mozart was extremely popular in Prague, and the opera was a massive success. In fact, Mozart parodies his own popularity by having an onstage band that is entertaining Giovanni at dinner play the aria “Non più andrai” from The Marriage of Figaro. As soon as the tune begins, Leporello comments, “I know that all too well!”

One fascinating footnote to the opera’s story is that Da Ponte knew well the only person who rivals Don Juan in the popular imagination as a womanizer, either in real life or legend: Giacomo Casanova. A manuscript in Casanova’s handwriting was found several years ago that includes part of the text of Don Giovanni, leading to the suggestion that Casanova might have written a few verses of the libretto.

In addition to Don Giovanni, the Opera Colorado season offers productions of The Flying Dutchman by Richard Wagner (Feb 24 and 27, March 1 and 3, 2024) and Samson and Delilah by Camille Saint-Saëns (May 4, 7, 10 and 12). Details are available on the Opera Colorado Web page.

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Opera Colorado
Ari Pelto, conductor, and David Lefkowich, stage director

  • W.A. Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte: Don Giovanni

7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4, Tuesday, Nov. 7, and Friday, Nov. 10
2:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 12
Ellie Caulkins Opera House, 14th St. at Curtis St., Denver

TICKETS

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CU’s Takács Quartet will play music of Bartók and and Haydn on their second campus concert of the season. Performances will be in Grusin Hall at 4 p.m. Sunday and 7:30 p.m. Monday (Nov. 5 and 6).

The current season will see the Takács playing five of the six quartets by Bartók. They played the Fifth Quartet earlier this fall, and will play quartets nos. 2 and 3 in early 2024. Bartók is a composer closely associated with the Takács Quartet, as the quartet was originally an all-Hungarian group, founded in 1975 by students at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest.

Only one of the original four members remains in the group—cellist András Fejér—but they have maintained a strong connection to the group’s Hungarian origin. Their 1998 recording of the Bartók quartets has earned strong critical praise. Blair Sanderson described it as “one of the truly great sets of Bartók’s monumental String Quartets,” while Gramophone magazine wrote that the set “communicates Bartok’s all-embracing humanity.”

Takács Quartet. Photo by Ian Malkin.

Quartets 1 and 4 were composed 19 years apart and so come from different times in the composer’s life. The First Quartet was written in 1909, when the composer was still in his twenties, and was partly inspired by an unrequited love affair. In style it looks back to the Romantic era more than forward, and lacks the aggressive new playing techniques prominently featured in the later quartets.

The Fourth Quartet from 1928 comes from the period between the world wars, and is more clearly influenced by Bartók’s study of Hungarian folk music. Its five movements are laid out in a symmetrical, or “arch,” arrangement, a formal pattern that Bartók employed in several works.  The central, slow movement is an example of the composer’s spooky “night music” style. The second and fourth movements are fast scherzo-like movements, the second with mutes the fourth pizzicato. The first and fifth, both marked allegro, are joined by a theme that occurs in both.

Haydn’s C-major String Quartet Op. 20 No. 2, is part of a set of six that Haydn wrote to entertain his patron, Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy, in 1772. The second quartet of the set is one of three from Op. 20 that end with a fugue, which may be interpreted as a return to Baroque-era techniques and seriousness, in contrast to the buoyant, cheerful manner of the fashionable mid-century Rococo style. Op. 20 is considered one of the milestones in the development of the string quartet, raising it to the level of serious concert music.

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Takács Quartet

  • Bartók: String Quartet No. 1
  • Joseph Haydn: String Quartet in C major, op. 20 no. 2
  • Bartók: String Quartet No. 4

4 p.m. Sunday. Nov. 5
7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 6
Grusin Hall, Immig Music Building

In-person and streaming tickets HERE.  

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Grace Notes: DeVotchKa in Boulder, ‘Turandot’ in Denver, choruses everywhere

Season-ending performances provide broad choices for audiences

By Peter Alexander May 2 at 10:40 p.m.

The Longs Peak Chorus, the Longmont chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society (BHS), will end their 2022–23 season of performances with a concert titled “Celebration.”

“Barbershop Harmony,” or “Barbershop Quartet” singing, is four-part a-capella singing for male voices. The most common format is to have individual quartets of four singers, although the music is also performed by larger groups of male voices, such as the full Longs Peak Chorus. Barbershop quartets have been featured in popular entertainment, such as The Music Man by Meredith Willson. 

Artistic License Barbershop Quartet

The occasion for the celebration is the 75th anniversary of the group, which was chartered with the BHS in 1948. Their concerts Friday at Saturday at Niwot High School (7 p.m. and 2 p.m.; details below) will also feature the quartet Artistic License and mixed choirs from local high schools.

Barbershop quartets are often associated with the “Gay Nineties,” or the 1890s, as was the case in The Music Man. Quartets usually wear coordinated outfits, often in a Gay Nineties style with straw hats and vests.

The visit by Artistic License and the inclusion of high school choirs are part of Long Peaks Chorus’s outreach to local music educators and students. Artistic License will visit local schools and spend time with choirs and their directors for clinics and coachings.

The program for the performances will feature classic four-part harmony as well as larger a-capella arrangements. 

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“Celebration”
Longs Peak Chorus,  Ron Black, director
With Artistic License quartet and local high school choirs

7 p.m. Friday, May 5
2 p.m. Saturday May 6

Niwot High School Theater

TICKETS   

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Boulder’s Cantabile Singers and artistic director Brian Stone will end the concert season this weekend (May 5 and 7; details below) with a tribute to the culture of the Chickasaw Nation.

The main work on their concert program will be Ilhoba”by the Chickasaw composer and pianist Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate. Subtitled “The Vision,” Ilholba’ is based on a Chickasaw garfish dance song and will be performed in the Chickasaw language to a text by the composer.

Tate is an American Indian composer and pianist who has written symphonic music, ballet and opera. His works have been commissioned by major orchestras and performed around the world. He has gained a reputation as a composer who can successfully express American Indian culture through classical orchestral music.

Three other works complete the program. “Stomp on the Fire” by Andrea Ramsey uses the voice and percussive sounds of the body together. Chante Waste Hoksila (My kind-hearted boy) is a traditional Lakota lullaby that has been arranged by Lakota spiritual leader and composer Linthicum-Blackhorse in honor of the children of Uvalde, Texas. Finally, the “Wichita Baptist Hymn” uses two melodies from the Southern Plains Wichita tribe as transcribed by tribal member Tracey Gregg-Boothby.

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“Ilhloba’: The Vision”
Cantabile Singers, Brian Stone, artistic director

  • Jerod Tate: Ilholba’
  • Andrea Ramsey: “Stomp on the Fire”
  • Lakota trad., arr. Linthicum-Blackhorse: Chante Waste Hoksila (My kind-hearted boy)
  • Andrew Marshall, arr.: “Wichita Baptist Hymn”

7:30 p.m. Friday, May 5
3 p.m. Sunday, May 7

First Congregational Church, Boulder

TICKETS   

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The Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra will enter new territory Saturday when they team up with Colorado Indie rock band DeVotchKa (Russian for “girl”).

The four members of DeVotchKa

For one thing ,it will be their first appearance with the unique group that combines four acoustic performers with a wide variety of instrumental possibilities, including theremin, bouzouki, guitar, accordion, sousaphone, double bass, flute and percussion—among others. For another, the orchestra’s executive director, Sara Parkinson, will take a step beyond her usual administrative duties to conduct the performance—at the request of DeVotchKa member Tom Hagerman with whom she has collaborated in the tango quartet Grande Orquestra Navarre.

While this is a new role for Parkinson with the Phil, it is not really new for her. She has conducted opera, choirs, and orchestras in Boulder and with the Dallas Opera’s Linda and Mitch Hart Institute for Women Conductors.

DeVotchKa has a distinctive sound that derives largely from the inclusion of the sousaphone, accordion and the electronic theremin, along with more traditional instruments including guitar, flute and trumpet, along with a solid rhythm section. They have a passionate following in Colorado, and gained wider recognition after their music was featured in the Academy Award-winning film Little Miss Sunshine in 2006.

DeVotchKa describes their sound as a “blend of various musical genres, including Romani music, punk rock, and Eastern European folk music.” Their four key members are Hagerman, Nick Utra, Jeanie Schroder and Shawn King. The band was formed in 1997.

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Devotchka with the Boulder Philharmonic
Sara Parkinson, conductor

7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 6

Macky Auditorium

TICKETS  

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Opera Colorado’s upcoming production of Puccini’s popular Turandot is selling rapidly. 

The two-thousand-plus capacity Ellie Caulkins Opera House is already sold out for two performances (May 6 and 24) and two other performances are currently listed as “limited availability” (details below).

Based on a play by Carlo Gozzi, Turandot is the tale of a cruel princess who seeks revenge on all men for the death of an ancestor. Besieged by suitors, she poses three riddles to the men who attempt to woo her; if they fail to answer correctly, they will be killed. After seeing the Prince of Persia fail and go to his execution, Calaf, Prince of Tartary, impulsively declares his suit.

Calaf successfully answers the three riddles, but offers to face execution anyway if Turandot can guess his name before dawn. Liú, a servant girl in love with Calaf, kills herself rather than reveal his name. Calaf himself reveals his name, but Turandot, rather than have him killed, declares that his true name is love.

Puccini died before completing Turandot. The score was completed by the composer Franco Alfano in time for the opera’s premiere, April 25, 1926, but the conductor of the premiere, Arturo Toscanini, chose to end the performance where Puccini had stopped writing. Subsequent performances generally use the Alfano completion, although it has never been highly regarded. Other completions have been attempted, but none have caught on.

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Giacomo Puccini and Franco Alfano: Turandot
Opera Colorado
Ari Pelto, conductor; Aria Umezawa, stage director

7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 6 SOLD OUT
7:30 Tuesday, May 9 (limited availability)
7:30 p.m. Friday, May 12 (limited availability) 
2 p.m. Sunday, May 24 SOLD OUT

Ellie Caulkins Opera House, Denver

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February 26, 2023

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Opera Colorado presents beautifully conceived production

Korngold’s rarely performed Die tote Stadt soars

By Peter Alexander February 26 at 11 p.m.

Opera Colorado opened their new production of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Die tote Stadt under difficult circumstances Saturday (Feb. 26): last- minute vocal paralysis of the star soprano, Sara Gartland.

Her indisposition was capably overcome with the help of dramatic soprano Kara Shay Thomson and some artful directorial sleight-of-hand. Thomson, who didn’t have time to learn the staging but knew the music, sang from the pit while Gartland acted the role onstage.

Die tote Stadt: Act II scene rendering by Robert Perdziola

Korngold wrote Die tote Stadt in 1920, when he was only 23, and later went on to write hugely successful Hollywood film scores, winning two Academy Awards. Unsurprisingly, the score of Tote Stadt has an expressive immediacy that connects with audiences.

The opera, too long neglected, soared in a beautifully designed and conceived production that featured a generally strong cast. Conductor Ari Pelto kept things well under control. He and the orchestra seemed comfortable with Korngold’s cinematic and emotionally descriptive style.

Robert Perdziola’s beautiful and evocative designs colorfully combined the interior of protagonist Paul’s apartment and a replica the O.L.V.-Kerk (Church of Our Lady) church tower in Bruges, Belgium, the symbolically “dead city” of the opera’s title. A large scrim at the back allowed for spectral appearances from his fantasies, including his beloved late wife Marie and a procession of nuns that appear during his fevered dreams.

Jonathan Burton (Paul) and Sara Gartland (Marietta/Marie). Photo courtesy of Opera Colorado

This unit set served all three acts effectively, with plenty of room for the scene to shift from Paul’s artist’s studio to the canals of Bruges. A boat with dancers and commedia dell’arte characters and the procession of nuns parade in and out of the scene, as they do through Paul’s nightmares.

With a ringing sound and a secure top, tenor Jonathan Burton was effective in the long and difficult role of Jonathan, a young artist who suffers delusions that Marie has returned to life. His belief that the dancer Marietta is Marie reincarnated is the dramatic crux of the opera and places Paul at the emotional center. The Heldentenor demands of the part stressed his voice by the end, although the resigned reflection of his final scene came through affectingly.

He was a better singer than actor; the intensity of his role, as Paul spins into madness, came through more potently in his singing than his movements or posture. That may be why a moment that should be chilling—when a maddened Paul dreams that he has strangled Marietta and, imagining the corpse at his feet, sings “now she is exactly like Marie”—elicited out-of-place laughter from the audience.

Kara Shay Thomson. Photo by Devon Cass

Singing as Maria/Marietta, Kara Shay Thomson was at a disadvantage standing in a corner of the pit. Neither elevated above the orchestra nor singing out toward the audience, she was not always clearly audible. If the words were sometimes muffled, she sang the role with confidence and solid sound, ascending comfortably to the highest reaches of the part.

The vocally indisposed Sara Gartland was the very image of the dancer Marietta. She moved comfortably about the stage, and her emotions were often visible in her posture. It is difficult to maintain the intensity of a role when only mouthing the words, and she did not always succeed, but her dance scene in Act II was effective.

Baritone Daniel Belcher has a bright, steely voice well suited to his part as Frank, Paul’s friend. He ably conveyed Frank’s stability and groundedness in dealing with Paul’s delusions. As Brigitte, Paul’s housekeeper, Elizabeth Bishop’s warm, plush voice helped shape her role as a caretaker. She had the best diction of the cast; otherwise you would have had difficulty relying on the German text to follow the story. Young tenor Jonathan Johnson made a solid impression as Viktorin, director of Marietta’s dance company.

Stage direction by Chas Rader-Shieber served the story. The large stage area never looked too wide as the singers interacted. Only when the singing Marietta was in the pit on one side of the stage while the acting Marietta was on the other was there any (unavoidable) awkwardness. 

NOTE: In the second act, Marietta dances a scene with shrouded nuns that might not make sense to modern viewers. This scene comes from a French grand opera, Robert le diable (Robert the devil) by Giacomo Meyerbeer. In that original scene—a third-act ballet that would have been familiar to Korngold’s 1920s audiences—dead nuns rise from their graves to perform a scandalous dance celebrating drinking, gambling and lust. The choice of this scene to fuel Paul’s imagination of Marietta and her company is deliberately provocative and suggests Marietta’s debased character, Paul’s derangement, or both.

Before the curtain, Opera Colorado artistic director Greg Carpenter came onstage to thank the opera company’s board for agreeing to present his “favorite opera.” I join in his appreciation, for being able to see an opera that I had never before seen live, produced on a high professional level.

If you love opera, you should not miss the opportunity to see this engaging, late-Romantic work that is rarely performed in the United States. Three performances remain at Opera Colorado (Feb. 28, Match 3 and March 5; details and tickets HERE).

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Opera Colorado
Die tote Stadt by Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Libretto by Paul Schott (Erich and Julius Korngold)
Ari Pelto, conductor; Chas Rader-Shieber, director

REMAINING PERFORMANCES:
7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 28, and Friday, March 3
2 p.m. Sunday, March 5

Ellie Caulkins Opera House, Denver Performing Arts Complex

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July 2, 2014

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Is the Metropolitan Opera in danger?

Opinions vary, but some details emerge.

By Peter Alexander

Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, New York

Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, New York

Anyone who follows the world of opera has noticed the news.

First, the San Diego Opera was going to close. Then it was saved by a public groundswell, and the longtime artistic director, Ian Campbell, was gone (and his massive salary as well). The company has announced a three-opera season for 2014–15.

Here in Colorado, Denver’s Opera Colorado had to cancel the anticipated premiere of Lori Laitman’s Scarlet Letter. The company was left with a two-opera “season,” including a bare-bones presentation of Carmen with the orchestra on stage and tickets prices up to $167.60. In case you have missed this saga, the various missteps by the company have been dissected by the Denver Post music critic, Ray Mark Rinaldi.

The troubles these two companies find themselves in are clearly financial. Unlike Broadway, where only most investments fail, opera has never been a money-making proposition; it has always depended upon financial support way beyond the cost of tickets, either from the court (early opera in Italy, 18th-century Versailles or Mozart’s Vienna, for example), or wealthy aristocrats (18th-century London), or the government (all across Europe today), or private donors (in the United States). To music historians, the financial ups and downs of opera in London are famously convoluted, with one scheme appearing after another, and all of them failing eventually. Handel, after all, turned to oratorios like Messiah because they were essentially opera on the cheap—all the singing, fewer singers and none of the sets and costumes. Similar histories crop up over and over again, wherever opera is produced. The culprits are usually the salaries of super-star singers, or the cost of fantastic productions, or sometimes the ineptitude of the management. Or all three. But the result is always, and always will be, the same: Opera costs way more to put on than any business can sustain without massive subsidies.

Here in the U.S., we like to imagine that our leading cultural institutions are rock solid. They have a dependable donor base and they are well run within a reasonable budget.

Dream on.

Peter Gelb, general manager of the Met

Peter Gelb, general manager of the Met

There is no larger or more established or more revered cultural institution in the country than the Metropolitan Opera, but its history is not one of outstanding management. (If you want details, read this fascinating, and disheartening, account by Johanna Fiedler.) And now Peter Gelb, the current general manager, says the company stands “on the edge of a precipice.” This comes after several massively expensive new productions mounted by the company, including one that required a $1.4 million investment just to reinforce the Met stage so it could support the set (Robert LePage’s Ring cycle; the cost of the reinforcement has been variously reported, up to $5 million), and another that included a $169,000 poppy field (Prince Igor). But amid criticism of his spending on those productions, Gelb says it is the labor costs that are out of control. They may or may not be, depending on your perspective, but it seems that is not the only problem.

It is no accident that Gelb is raising the alarm just when the Met is in negotiations with unions whose members make the company go, most notably the musicians’ union. This being New York, it is hard to separate facts from negotiating tactics, but a new analysis of the Met’s finances by the Wall St. Journal brings a few facts and some clarity to the issue. For one thing, we can learn that some of Gelb’s expensive and highly promoted new productions have not done well after their first year. But read the whole article to get the full meaning.

Another analysis can be found in The Guardian.

And just to put all of this in an even more interesting light, two of the world’s other major opera companies—the Chicago Lyric and Vienna State Opera—have recently announced that they have completed very successful, even record-breaking, seasons. The timing is at least inconvenient for Gelb and the Met management.

CCOperaLogoPreferredI will have more to say about the current condition of opera in a future article on the announcement of Central City Opera‘s 2015 season, which is going in an interesting new direction. In the meantime, for some perspective on the San Diego Opera and the Metropolitan’s various concerns, I recommend this article written by Los Angeles Times critic Mark Swed. Google searches on the principals and the organizations involved will turn up many more.