Joseph Colaneri And Francesca Zambello Talk 40th Anniversary

Opera Titan: Francesco Zambello leads the
Glimmerglass Festival into its 40th Season.
(Photo: Claire McAdams)

"The Glimmerglass Festival this year seems grander than ever before. The opera company, with its Alice Busch Theater and campus on the western shore of Otsego Lake north of Cooperstown, is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Artistic and general director Francesca Zambello has put together a remarkable season of events and activities, running from July 10 through August 23. Scheduled for the opening and closing performances is the familiar and beloved Mozart masterpiece, The Magic Flute. Other mainstage productions are Verdi’s dark tragedy Macbeth and an amazing unknown opera by Antonio Vivaldi, Cato in Utica. The traditional American musical theater offering is Leonard Bernstein’s witty and clever take on Voltaire’s classic short novel, Candide. Voltaire ends his philosophical reflection on the meaning of life with Candide’s words, 'we must cultivate our garden.' This year the Glimmerglass 'campus' will have a three-part modern landscape installation for sharing stories and quiet person reflection. 'A beautiful garden has both unity and variety,' Zambello says, and the golden thread running through this season is the importance and beauty of our natural surroundings....The festival will also present a lecture by Supreme Court Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg, back by popular demand; a recital by two good friends, outstanding performers on the Met roster, Eric Owens and tenor Lawrence Brownlee (widely admired for his fabulous coloratura singing); master classes by two famous divas, Deborah Voigt and Frederica von Stade; three performances of a new staging of Bernstein’s one-act Trouble in Tahiti; baseball-themed concerts at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown; a children’s opera called Odyssey; and Showtalk lectures and discussions by eminent scholars and artists. There is always much to do at the Glimmerglass Festival, and in the words of music director Colaneri, 'everyone should experience the dialogue among these four operas,' which represent four centuries of operatic history and where we have the stories from two of the world’s greatest writers of all time, and diverse links to 18th-century culture. These operas are 'talking to each other.' Come to look and to listen. For more information, consult www.glimmerglass.org." [Source] Read the full commentary of Joseph Colaneri and Francesca Zambello by clicking here.