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

San Francisco Opera "Show Boat" Cast Garners Excellent Reviews

Morris Robinson lets loose with his booming voice for the role of Joe at the War Memorial Opera House.

"A couple of highlights: There's granite-voiced bass Morris Robinson, as the stevedore Joe, pacing himself through 'Ol' Man River,' aligning with the show's African-American chorus to build this iconic number -- part spiritual, part dirge -- into a majestic cry for justice. There's actor and comic Bill Irwin, as Cap'n Andy Hawks, who is all fluid motion and spark-plug energy: clowning, moon-walking or floating like Fred Astaire. His face is plastic. He is pure expression and heart -- an unforgettable performance. Not that Show Boat is light fare. What it is is an intensely American hybrid, celebrating vaudeville, jazz, opera, spirituals and popular song. It addresses distinctly American themes: racism against African-Americans and opposition to inter-racial marriage, especially. These themes play out aboard the Cotton Blossom, a floating theater -- a showboat with its own troupe, led by Cap'n Andy. His daughter, Magnolia Hawks (soprano Heidi Stober, perfect as the ingenue), is the story's pivot. We follow her through her ill-fated marriage to gambler Gaylord Ravenal (baritone Michael Todd Simpson) in the 1880s, and then through single motherhood and her resolute fashioning of a career in the 1920s New York theater. A subplot involves Magnolia's best friend, Julie La Verne (soprano Patricia Racette), who is bi-racial and has been 'passing' for

Francesca Zambello Ready to Remodel the American Musical

Directress Zambello (Photo: Daniel Chavkin)

"Opera companies are running out of popular operas to put on the stage. Luckily, there are plenty of popular musicals available to produce instead. Musicals are becoming a bigger part of the operatic repertoire: the Vancouver Opera produced a fully staged version of West Side Story last month, American opera diva Deborah Voigt appeared in a fully staged version of Annie Get Your Gun at the Glimmerglass Opera this past summer, and in early 2012, the Chicago Lyric Opera will present Show Boat. James Wright, general director of the Vancouver Opera, says that opera companies “need to be less rigid than we’ve been in the past.” In some cases, that means putting on a Broadway show instead of another La Bohème. Leonard Bernstein, the composer of West Side Story, was one of the first to suggest that musicals were the true American opera, and some opera houses have done musicals in previous decades. But the musical temptation has become greater for classically oriented theatres, even overseas: the Théâtre du Châtelet, a house known for operas and operettas, has recently brought material like The Sound of Music to Paris. It helps that these shows sell; West Side Story did well for Vancouver, and Chicago Lyric Opera general director Anthony Freud says that 'when we surveyed our subscribers, almost 70 per cent were very enthusiastic about Show Boat.'....One thing that still distinguishes musicals from operas is that musicals aren’t reinterpreted and updated the way operas routinely are; Francesca Zambello, the director who did the Glimmerglass Annie and the upcoming Chicago Show Boat, experiments more with operas than she does with musicals. 'As long as a work is under certain copyright restrictions,' Wright explains, directors 'won’t be able to do much. But when those run out, these works are going to be fair game.' When directors start deconstructing Les Misérables, we’ll know musicals have really arrived in the opera world." [Source] More about some of the above-mentioned productions is after the jump.

Renée Fleming Interviews Francesca Zambello About "Showboat"

Opera seasons are about to launch all across America and everyone is getting out their calendars to plan for which performances will take top priority in their ticket-purchasing budgets. If you are looking for a long romantic weekend around Valentine's Day, then the Lyric Opera of Chicago is the place to be. The company will be performing the musical Showboat on February 12 at 2:00 PM and February 13 at 7:30 PM. Music is by Jerome Kern and the book & lyrics are by Oscar Hammerstein II. Watch a video of Renée Fleming interviewing the director of the show, Francesca Zambello, by clicking here. To learn more about the cast, production and ticket information, click here.

Francesca Zambello Gears Up For Summer

"Pour sa première saison, qui aura lieu du 2 juillet au 23 août 2011, Zambello met en vedette: Carmen de Bizet, Médéa un opéra  de 1797 de Cherubini, la fameuse comédie musicale de Irving Berlin Annie Get Your Gun, avec orchestre complet et sans aucun amplification, ainsi que deux nouvelles œuvres américaines présentées dans un  même programme: A blizzard in Marblehead Neck, du compositeur Jeanine Tesori sur un livret de l’écrivain Tony Kushner, et Later the same evening de John Musto et Mark Campbell basé sur des peintures de Edward Hopper."