Dallas Opera Perspectives at the Meadows Museum
Count me in! Coming to the Meadows Museum, a conversation not to be missed between Dallas Opera General Director and CEO Keith Cerny and the company’s esteemed new music director, Emmanuel Villaume. Details to follow:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Friday, September 6, 2013
Contact: Suzanne Calvin 214.443.1014 Or Megan Meister 214.443.1071
suzanne.calvin@dallasopera.org megan.meister@dallasopera.org
THE DALLAS OPERA PRESENTS
“DALLAS OPERA PERSPECTIVES”
With Dallas Opera General Director and CEO Keith Cerny
And Dallas Opera Music Director Emmanuel Villaume
In Partnership with the Meadows Museum of Art
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Discussion of Spanish Art and Bizet’s Carmen
Followed by Special Free Gallery Tour
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Tuesday, October 8, 2013 at 6:30 p.m.
The Meadows Museum at SMU
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Free Covered Parking Available On-Site
DALLAS, SEPTEMBER 6, 2013 – The Dallas Opera, in partnership with the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University, is delighted to introduce the first in a series of new programs hosted by Dallas Opera General Director and CEO Keith Cerny and designed to present informed personal perspectives on the arts.
Our first edition of “Dallas Opera Perspectives” taking place on Tuesday, October 8, 2013 at 6:30 p.m. in the Meadows Museum, will introduce Dallas to TDO’s acclaimed new music director, Maestro Emmanuel Villaume, who will apply his keen interest in the visual arts to works in the Spanish collection that “speak to him” in a special way as he prepares to conduct our season-opening production of Georges Bizet’s CARMEN.
“I look forward to October 25th with a sense of anticipation and excitement tempered by a comfortable sense of the familiar,” explains Maestro Villaume.
“The pressure will be on in my first podium appearance as Music Director of the Dallas Opera. However, Carmen, as a mainstay of the French repertoire, is a work I have conducted throughout my career. Over the years, familiarity with Bizet’s masterpiece has generated within me an even greater respect for his musical vision, and I always seek something fresh and revelatory in my approach to the score to bring to every performance.
“One of the great privileges of this career is the ability to travel and discover new cities—in particular, their museums. Dallas, fortunately, is endowed with several world class collections and I am eager to explore them all.
“Studying visual arts is a stimulating activity for me, as it touches on some of the same fundamental artistic and spiritual issues as music, although from a totally different angle. It’s a pastime I find to be as refreshing as it is enlightening.” Read more →
October at TDO: “Just the facts, ma’am.”
Coming back from a wind-swept, sea salt, sun-addled holiday weekend, we thought many of you could use a little help in sorting through the upcoming events in October. Get out your Day Planner (digital or otherwise) and have at it!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Contact: Suzanne Calvin 214.443.1014
Or Megan Meister 214.443.1071
suzanne.calvin@dallasopera.org
megan.meister@dallasopera.org
A FASHION-FORWARD AND STYLISH OCTOBER
AT THE DALLAS OPERA!
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FIRST SIGHT Fashion Show and Luncheon:
Thursday, October 24 at 10:00 a.m.
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FIRST NIGHT Festivities Begin
Friday, October 25 at 5:30 p.m.
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Season Opening Opera: Bizet’s CARMEN
Friday, October 25, 2013 / Curtain Time: 8:00 p.m.!
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2013-14 Season to Launch with FIRST SIGHT Fashion Show and Luncheon, a Free Simulcast at Klyde Warren Park, The Linda and Mitch Hart Season Opening Night Performance, and FIRST NIGHT Dinner, celebrations, and After Party at the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House in the AT&T Performing Arts Center!
DALLAS, SEPTEMBER 3, 2013 – Get out your dancing shoes, try on the tux, and select your most stylish ensemble or your most outlandish Carmen costume, as Dallas gets ready for a fabulous new season of opera during a particularly fashion-forward month of October!
The Dallas Opera will present an extraordinarily diverse 57th International Season, “By Love Transformed,” sponsored by Texas Instruments Foundation, which will officially kick off when the curtain rises on Friday, October 25, 2013 at 8:00 p.m. (please note the unusual curtain time). The Dallas Opera’s 2013-2014 Season will open with Georges Bizet’s 1875 masterpiece CARMEN in the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House at the AT&T Performing Arts Center. Single tickets for the Linda and Mitch Hart Season Opening Night Performance and subsequent Sunday matinees and evening performances begin at the low price of just $19 and are on sale now.
Full season subscriptions are now available for as little as $76 for all four outstanding mainstage productions. The Dallas Opera also has two-performance and three-performance subscriptions available as well.
FIRST NIGHT festivities, presented by NGP Energy Capital, get underway at 5:30 p.m. on the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House Red Carpet at the AT&T Performing Arts Center located in the Dallas Arts District. The lavish dinner is 6:00 – 7:30 p.m. followed by Carmen at 8:00 p.m. The emcees will be faces—and voices—you already know and love, and celebrity guests that evening will include a contingent of top-tier fashion designers accompanying their head-turning models. Together, they will elevate people-watching to the status of art with their “opera-inspired” couture gowns!
Special pre-performance activities will take place in front of a giant outdoor screen in Klyde Warren Park in the Dallas Arts District, including a “Carmen Costume Contest” for men, women and pets—and a “Toreador Song Sing-a-long.” The public is invited to bring a blanket and a picnic basket, and enjoy the evening’s events as they unfold at our free simulcast of CARMEN. Read more →
Unbridled Enthusiasm
There are a number of things I love in this world: kind-hearted children, pets that purr, well-designed furniture, glorious music enjoyed with the windows rolled down, walking anywhere, hundred-year-old linens, and the Meadows Museum–to name a few. But one of the things I’ve come to appreciate more and more is the man or woman who looks at the world with absolute, unsmooshable-unquenchable, enthusiasm.
Like Crewmantle at COMMANDOpera, discussing our upcoming production of Verdi’s “La traviata.”
(La traviata image by Richard Krall for the Dallas Opera)
Suzanne Calvin, Manager/Director Media and PR
Frances Bagley Honored
It couldn’t happen to a nicer and more talented lady. No, you won’t find her in this photograph but you will find her in the concept behind this photograph.
The Meadows Museum, according to D magazine Arts Editor Peter Simek, has awarded its annual Moss/Chumley Artist Award to the deserving Frances Bagley (who with her husband, artist Tom Orr, designed the Dallas Opera’s incredible 2006 production of Verdi’s NABUCCO, from sets to costumes). This award is given to established North Texas artists for their commitment to bringing the visual arts to the community, which Frances has done from DART stations to the Music Hall stage. Read more here.
One of the works cited was Frances’ video installation “Witness,” with many pairs of peering eyes and a single mouth that just won’t stop talking.
Guess who she cast in the role of the motor-mouth?
Suzanne Calvin, Manager/Director Media & PR
The Kimbell: Year One
The fact is, we are incredibly lucky, here in North Texas, to have proximity and access to an amazing number of extraordinary art museums and collections. This ain’t booster talk; when you stop to think of the DMA, the Meadows Museum, the Crow Collection, the Nasher Sculpture Center, the Amon Carter Museum, the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art and, of course, the Kimbell Museum (to name only the most prominent), it’s clear that the arts–whether two-dimensional or three-dimensional–have a special place in our public life, as an enlightening, challenging, unifying force.
But lest I linger on my soapbox, I’ll get to the point: KERA is airing a program this evening at 7:30 PM entitled, “The Kimbell: Year One,” about the initial year of operations at Fort Worth’s Kimbell Museum, an internationally acclaimed architectural gem designed by Louis I. Kahn. It includes rare interviews with Kahn himself, the museum’s first director, Richard F. Brown, and other key figures. Best of all, it’s a 1974 documentary. That’s right…as any collector of news print knows…there’s nothing like contemporaneous journalism to give you the occasional jolt, as well as unexpected insights.
So check it out tonight on KERA, Channel 13, and then support one of our great local museums tomorrow.
Suzanne Calvin, Manager/Director Media & PR