Opera Road Trips

A look at 2012-2013 across North America.
by Paul Pelkonen

Living in New York City, one is spoiled by the wealth of opera companies and productions that spool out in the course of a season--that nine-month marathon that starts at the end of September and runs until the beginning of May. Here's a look at some out-of-town opera companies and what they have planned for next year. Opera companies are listed in reverse distance from my Brooklyn apartment.

Seattle Opera

Home Theater: Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, Seattle, WA

Distance from Superconductor HQ: 2,864 miles.

Repertory: Turandot, Fidelio, La Bohème, La Voix Humaine/Suor Angelica

Pick: Fidelio, opening Oct. 13

Seattle Opera is one of the boldest, most innovative opera houses in North America. Next season features Beethoven's sole opera Fidelio, a new production of Puccini's Turandot and an intriguing feminist double bill of Poulenc's "telephone opera" La Voix Humaine with Puccini's Suor Angelica.

Jet City's opera company is also planning a massive Wagner tribute for 2013-14, with performances of their award-winning Ring Cycle and the return of Wagner's Die Meistersinger.

Los Angeles Opera

Home Theater: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles, CA

Distance from Superconductor HQ: 2,784 miles.

Repertory: I Due Foscari, Don Giovanni, Madama Butterfly, Der Fliegende Höllander, La Cenerentola, Tosca.

Pick: I Due Foscari.

Verdi's sixth opera is among the composer's least performed, a bleak setting of Lord Byron's political family drama set in Venice during the Renaissance. The title characters are father and son: the Doge of Venice and his rebellious son Jacopo. Company director Plácido Domingo adds another baritone Verdi role in the twilight of his career.

San Francisco Opera 

Home Theater: San Francisco War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, CA
Distance from Superconductor HQ: 2,567 miles.
Pick: Moby-Dick.

Repertory: Rigoletto, I Capuletti I Montecchi, Moby-Dick, Lohengrin, Tosca, Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Cosí fan tutte, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, The Secret Garden

Pick: San Francisco stands next to the Met in prominence among North American opera companies. There's a few things on this schedule that I really want to see. Jake Heggie's Moby-Dick has not made it to New York yet. A production of Lohengrin is always welcome. But the big one here is The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, a new work by Mark Adamo that opens in June, 2013.

Houston Grand Opera
Home Theater: Wortham Theater Center, Houston, TX
Distance from Superconductor HQ: 1,637 miles.
Repertory: La Bohème, L'Italiana in Algeri, Show Boat, Don Giovanni, Tristan und Isolde, Il Trovatore, Cruzar La Cara de la Luna.
Pick: Tristan und Isolde. 
Texas' largest opera company is offering a mix of Verdi, Rossini and Mozart next year, but it's Wagner that always draws my interest.

Lyric Opera of Chicago

Home Theater: Civic Opera House, Chicago, IL
Distance from Superconductor HQ: 798 miles.

Repertory: Elektra, Simon Boccanegra, Werther, Don Pasquale, Hansel und Gretel, La Bohème, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Rigoletto, A Streetcar Named Desire.
Pick: Die Meistersinger. 

Renée Fleming's involvement with the running of the Lyric Opera means that Andre Previn's Streetcar will finally park itself on Wacker Drive. But the show I want to see is the new David McVicar production of Wagner's  Meistersinger.

Canadian Opera Company

Home Theater: Four Seasons Opera House, Toronto, ON

Repertory: Il Trovatore, Die Fledermaus, Tristan und Isolde, La Clemenza di Tito, Lucia di Lammermoor, Salome, Les Dialogues de Carmelites.
Distance from Superconductor HQ: 499.3 miles.
Pick: Salome.

Our friends north of the border offer an exciting 2012 Season, with a Tristan that might heat up Toronto in late January. But given the dearth of Strauss performed in New York this season, my voite is for Salome. 

Pittsburgh Opera 

Home Theater: Benedum Center for the Performing Arts, Pittsburgh, PA

Distance from Superconductor HQ: 379 miles.

Repertory: Rigoletto, Don Giovanni, Il matrimonio segreto, Madama Butterfly, La cenerentola

Although Pittsburgh's opera company does not have the same reputation as some of the other companies on this list, its 2012 season is both promising and ambitious. Three new productions are planned, and the season kicks off with a Rigoletto starring Mark Delevan in the title role.

Boston Lyric Opera

Home Theater: Shubert Theater, Boston, MA
Distance from Superconductor HQ: 233 miles.

Repertory: Madama Butterfly, Clemency, Cosí fan tutte, Die Fliegende Holländer

Pick: Clemency.
James MacMillan's new opera Clemency continues this company's reputation for exploring new and unconventional repertory.  my inner Wagnerian perks up at the thought of seeing Wagner's Flying Dutchman. This is the U.S. stage premiere of the composer's original 1841 version of the score, played in one act and without the "redemption" chords that the composer added in his 1860 revision.

Washington National Opera

Home Theater: The Opera House at The Kennedy Center, Washington DC
Distance from Superconductor HQ: 223 miles.

Repertory: Anna Bolena, Manon Lescaut, Norma, Don Giovanni, Show Boat.
Pick: Norma

The WNO has survived by becoming part of the Kennedy Center. And now this company may thrive with a bold slate of bel canto. Most notably, Sondra Radnovovsky starts exploring Donizetti's "Three Queens" trilogy with the title role in Anna Bolena. And expect soprano Angela Meade to make sacrifices in the coveted title role of Norma.

Opera Company of Philadelphia

Home Theater: Academy of Music; Kimmell Center For the Performing Arts

Distance from Superconductor HQ: 94.7 miles.

Repertory: La bohéme, The Magic Flute, Powder Her Face, Silent Night,  Owen Wingrave

Pick: Owen Wingrave

Down on Broad Street, OCP has an interesting slate planned for next year, including the premiere of Silent Night and a rare American performance of Thoms Ades' first opera Powder Her Face. But the one that makes me curious is Owen Wingrave. Benjamin Britten's second opera to be based on a ghost story by Henry James has the distinction of being one of the first operas premiered for television.

DVD Review: Recovered Voices, Heard Once More

James Johnson (left) and Bonaventura Bottone in Der zerbrichne Krug.
Photo by Robert Millard © 2008 Los Angeles Opera

This DVD from the Los Angeles Opera presents a compelling double bill by two composers whose voices were silenced by the so-called cultural policies of the Third Reich. Viktor Ullmann's Der zerbrichene Krug ("The Broken Jug") leads off, a frothy 40-minute comedy about judicial corruption. It is paired here with Der Zwerg, a tragic one-act opera by Alexander von Zemlinksy.


L.A. Opera music director James Conlon staged these works as the first installemtn in Recovered Voices, an admirable initiative to explore and perform the stage works of composers whose works were declared "Entartete", or "decadent" by the Nazis. (This DVD is the first recording of the Ullmann opera.) Krug was completed in 1942, just before the composer was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. (Ullmann's most famous opera, Der Kaiser von Atlantis was written there in the year before the composer's death.)

Considering the heavy-handed satire of Der Kaiser, it is almost a relief to learn that Krug is full of warmth and life. It is the tale of a civil case brought forth in a tiny Dutch court, in order to determine who broke a large jug. This is a microcosmic small-town comedy, and the ensemble cast (led by James Johnson in the role of the jug-breaking Judge Adam) makes it spin.

This work gives listeners the chance to hear Ullmann at his most melodic and inventive, writing for a full orchestra instead of the tiny forces used for Kaiser. The orchestration is rich, the melodies memorable, and the comedy compelling. If history had been different, this work would be a repertory piece, at least earning its keep as a light curtain-raiser.

Roderick Dixon in the title role of Zemlinsky's Der Zwerg.
Photo by Robert Millard © 2008 Los Angeles Opera

Der Zwerg is based on The Infanta's Birthday by Oscar Wilde, and retells the story of a Spanish princess who is given a hunchbacked dwarf as a present for her 18th birthday. The dwarf falls in love with the princess, only to have his heart broken. The work had deep meaning for Zemlinsky, and reflects the composer's insecurities through a poetic mirror.


Part of the reason for the work's obscurity is the title role: a demanding tenor part. Playing a  hunchbacked dwarf takes the same acting  chops as the title role in Rigoletto. Add a voice designed to sing in a heroic tenor--the fach is about the same as Wagner's Lohengrin--and you'll get an idea of the demands. Roderick Dixon handles the high tessitura with skill and a golden tone, although he pushes in the final scene. His acting brings forth the naiveté and pathetique characteristics, which undermine the noble core of the nameless dwarf. This is a major performance.

He is aptly paired with Mary Dunleavy as the cold-hearted Infanta, a spoiled brat who does not understand that her "birthday present" is a human being who has fallen in love with her. Her shimmering soprano skates above the orchestra, reaching heights that recall the best vocal writing of Richard Strauss. Susan B. Anthony is also impressive in the role of Ghita, a compassionate maid who is taken aback at the Princess' cruel treatment of the dwarf. And James Johnson doubles in this opera as Don Estoban, the court chamberlain.

Part of the reason these works are forgotten lies in the actions of artists following the war. Conductors, orchestras and record companies wanted to forget the atrocities of the Nazi censors and thugs. They plumbed the 18th and 19th century catalogues. Millions were spent, and countless "complete cycles" of Beethoven, Brahms, and Bruckner were recorded in analog (and later, digital) versions. A few "modern" 20th century composers: (Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Shostakovich, to name three) were "legitimized." It is largely due to the efforts of artists like Mr. Conlon, and initiatives like  Recovered Voices, that this lost music has been found once more.