We here at the Dallas Opera couldn’t agree more with what Dallas Morning News reporter Michael Granberry had to say about us hiring Tony Award Winning Director Jack O’Brien to direct Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally’s 2015-2016 World Premiere of Great Scott starring mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato. “Very cool news: the Dallas Opera makes a brilliant move in hiring the great Jack O’Brien to direct a world premiere”
Inside the Mind of Jake Heggie
There are few things in the world of journalism more satisfying than a great interview and there’s a great interview with composer Jake Heggie in “The Cornell Daily Sun” conducted over the phone by Danyoung Kim. Jake and librettist Gene Scheer are going to be on campus for a master class and panel discussion.
One of the questions prompted Jake to describe how casting tenor Ben Heppner to originate the role of Ahab in the Dallas Opera’s 2010 world premiere of “Moby-Dick” “actually defined…the sound world and the physical world of that person” for the composer.
Find out more right here.
Suzanne Calvin, Manager/Director Media and PR
From the Desk of Artistic Director Jonathan Pell – San Francisco – Part II
Tenor Stephen Costello (“Greenhorn” in MOBY-DICK) with his voice teacher Bill Schuman in San Francisco.
It was such a thrill to see MOBY-DICK again last night, with most of the original cast intact from the world premiere in Dallas, along with the original conductor, Patrick Summers and stage director Leonard Foglia.
A large group of Dallas Opera patrons had flown out to San Francisco for the weekend to attend the performance, but they were not the only people on their feet cheering at the end when composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer came out for their bow at the end of the evening! It was a really exciting performance!
The major cast change was the assumption of the role of “Captain Ahab” by Jay Hunter Morris, and he was intense and compelling in this challenging role. He had already done the opera in Adelaide and San Diego, but he has grown enormously in the part. He sings it magnificently, but what has been interesting to see is how his characterization of this complex character continues to grow in depth.
As many of you know, Jay’s career began as a member of The Dallas Opera chorus many years ago, and he has returned often to sing leading roles with the company, including “Steva” in JENUFA and “Bacchus” in ARIADNE AUF NAXOS. Since he became an “over night” star with his recent appearances as “Siegfried” in the Metropolitan Opera RING cycle, people seem to have forgotten how long this road has been for Jay, and his great success is well deserved.
Stephen Costello, Morgan Smith, Jonathan Lemalu, Talise Trevigne, Robert Orth and Matthew O’Neill all returned to the roles that they created in Dallas, and were simply stunning last night. Each of them were in top form and gave indelible performances that fortunately will be captured for posterity since this production has been recorded for future telecast on PBS’ Great Performances series.
Today it is back to Dallas and a return to rehearsals for AIDA which opens our 2012-2013 season on October 26th.
From the Desk of Artistic Director Jonathan Pell – San Francisco Part 1
San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House illuminated at night in the mist
I am in San Francisco to attend a performance of Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s MOBY-DICK on Saturday night with almost 40 Dallas Opera patrons who wanted the chance to see and hear it again. I flew out a day early so that I could also go to Bellini’s rarely staged opera I CAPULETI E I MONTECCHI (THE CAPULETS AND THE MONTAGUES) starring Joyce DiDonato, who will star in Jake Heggie’s next opera, GREAT SCOTT, which will open The Dallas Opera’s 2015-2016 season.
Joyce sang the role of “Romeo” opposite the “Juliet” of Nicole Cabell, and they were simply wonderful. They seemed to “feed” off of each other, and their arias and duets were simply stunning.
The opera is filled with beautiful music, but is dramatically inert (the libretto is not based on the Shakespeare play, but on the original source material) and this eccentric production, created originally for Munich, didn’t help much.
Conductor Riccardo Frizza did a lovely job accompanying the singers in the true “bel canto” tradition and the orchestra played extremely well for him.
Although Bellini’s choral writing only calls for men, there were just as many women on stage to give French fashion icon turned costume designer Christian Lacroix a chance to display his talent for bizarre haute couture gowns. I am sure these “super” women were thrilled to have the chance to clamber up and down the bleacher style steps in the final scene of the first act in their original Lacroix dresses, but it simply looked awkward.
I ran into Gene Scheer in the lobby before the performance, and he was thrilled with how MOBY-DICK had gone the night before.
I also ran into Tony Award winning playwright Terrence McNally at the intermission and we had the chance to talk a bit about GREAT SCOTT for which he is writing the libretto. He was backstage to see Joyce after the performance, of course, and we ended up sharing a cab back to our neighboring hotels. He is bursting with enthusiasm about collaborating with Jake and Joyce (and The Dallas Opera) on GREAT SCOTT, and I know it will be an amazing project of which we will all be proud.
Blackburn and Heggie – Together Again
I was delighted to see this story out of the Breckenridge Music Festival. While Brahms is certainly no “slouch,” I was particularly pleased to see that Helen Blackburn, principal flutist for the Dallas Opera Orchestra, is also performing composer Jake Heggie’s flute concerto, “Fury of Light,” based on the poem “Sunrise” by American poet Mary Oliver (see the photo above).
Catch the details of the concert right here.
Suzanne Calvin, Manager/Director Media & PR
Edifice Complex?
The glamorous French Opera House, New Orleans, after losing one of its many lives.
There’s a lot of discussion these days about the newest performing arts venues and whether that money could have been better spent somewhere else. But while reading David L. Groover and Cecil C. Conner, Jr.’s Skeletons from the Opera Closet, I was reminded that at the opposite end of the spectrum, there were worse things than bad acoustics to worry about in many of the old American opera houses. In New Orleans, for instance:
“…one of America’s first cultural centers after La Spectacle de la Rue St. Pierre was built in 1791. It was condemned as unsafe in 1804. The Theatre d’Orléans, home of such American premieres as L’elisir d’amore, La Juive, and Le Prophète, opened in 1809, burned down in 1813 and was rebuilt in 1816…the audience was amused by a loud cracking sound they thought part of the ingenious stage effects until they noticed the second and third galleries break away from the wall and slowly settle orchestra-ward.
“Thirty years later in 1885, when Adelina Patti sang Traviata in the rebuilt French Opera House, the audience was so unrestrained in their enthusiasm that their clamorous ovations caused the plaster ceiling to collapse. Not to be outdone, the re-rebuilt theater presented the American premiere of Gounod’s Reine de Saba in 1899. The opera’s third act features the sculptor Adoniram in his workshop, complete with roaring furnace and vats of molten metal. At the climax of the forging scene…the furnace exploded and engulfed the stage in flames. They never attempted Benvenuto Cellini.”
I should think not. Anyway, the next time you hear a complaint about overbuilt venues just remember this: We had a foot stomping, program shredding, eight minute standing O at the world premiere of Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s Moby-Dick and EVERYONE lived to talk about it!
Suzanne Calvin, Manager/Director Media and PR