The 2012-13 Season has come to a close, but what a Season it was! Here is a list of some of our favorite moments from the Fall and early Winter. Stay tuned for next week's second installment and visit us on Facebook to tell us some of your favorite moments of the Season!
Stage director Sam Helfrich promises that the Virginia Opera Association production of A Streetcar Named Desire, composer André Previn’s treatment of Tennessee Williams’ famous and famously quoted play, will give audiences an “an incredible actress“ in the role of Blanche, and a “portrayal” of that famously lost soul that will “very [much] surprise ... audiences who know the play.”
One hundred or more years ago, when audiences saw a Puccini opera, it might have been a premiere. The Puccini and Verdi works we're so accustomed to seeing in opera houses today once were new works, and they often generated a lot of controversy. That opportunity has been presented to Virginia Opera audiences of late as the company sets a new course designed to mix recent and new American works with Puccini and Verdi favorites.
In an expansion of its usual four-opera lineup, Virginia Opera will present five operas and one operatically inclined Broadway musical in its 2013-14 Richmond season. Four of the operas — “Falstaff,” “The Magic Flute,” “Ariadne auf Naxos” and “Carmen” — will be marketed as a subscription package. Two special engagements — “The Girl of the Golden West” and “Sweeney Todd” — will be sold as subscription add-ons.
Virginia Opera continues its exploration of premieres and American works in its 2013-2014 season announcement. Subscriptions are now on sale. The company will open its 39th year in September with Verdi's "Falstaff," a work never before mounted in Hampton Roads. The rest of the lineup includes Mozart's "The Magic Flute" in November, Strauss' "Ariadne auf Naxos" in February 2014, and Bizet's "Carmen" in March 2014.
