LA Opera's 2007/08 Season Opening Weekend Celebration: Beethoven’s Fidelio and Company Premiere of the Verdi Requiem
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Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra's "Italian
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Director James Conlon conducts the Season-opening production of Fidelio, which
is directed and designed by Pier’Alli in his Company debut. Soprano
Anja Kampe as Leonore and tenor Klaus Florian Vogt as Florestan both make
their Company debuts as separated lovers, and Matti Salminen returns as Rocco.
The production also features baritone Eike Wilm Schulte playing the role of
Don Pizarro, Oleg Bryjak as Don Fernando and soprano Rebekah Camm as Marzelline.
The production additionally stars Greg Fedderly as Jacquino and Robert MacNeil
and James Creswell as prisoners.
Fidelio, a celebration of humanity's desire for freedom and justice, is the
only opera written by Ludwig van Beethoven. It premiered more than 200 years
ago, yet the drama of wrongful imprisonment and the triumph of true love remains
as relevant as ever. Unjustly incarcerated by a ruthless oppressor, Florestan
languishes in a secret prison, held without charge or trial. His wife Leonore,
desperate to find him and willing to die if she must, adopts the disguise
of a young man – Fidelio – and becomes the jailer's assistant,
hoping to free her beloved husband. This astonishingly forceful contemporary
production resonates with edge-of-your-seat excitement and matchless music,
complete with stunning arias, inspiring choruses, two of the most famous quartets
in all of opera and exuberant orchestral writing.
The first performance is on Saturday, September 8 at 6pm. Other performances
are on September 15, 26, 29, October 3 at 7:30pm, with Matinee Performances
on September 23 and October 6 at 2pm
On Sunday, September 9 at 2pm, Plácido Domingo Conducts LA Opera Orchestra
and Chorus with Soloists Adrianne Pieczonka, Stephanie Blythe, Jonas Kaufmann
and René Pape in a special concert of the first ever LA Opera presentation
of Verdi's Requiem,
concluding the Gala opening Weekend Celebration. Although intensely dramatic
in nature, the Requiem is the best known non-operatic work by Giuseppe Verdi,
the greatest of all Italian opera composers. The Requiem was written to honor
one of the central figures of 19th-Century Italian cultural life, Alessandro
Manzoni. On the one-year anniversary of Manzoni’s death, May 22, 1874,
Verdi conducted the premiere of the Requiem at the Church of San Marco in
Milan, with a repeat performance three days later at La Scala.
All performances are held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Avenue,
Los Angeles, CA 90012. Tickets are on sale at the LA Opera Box Office, by
phone at (213) 972-8001 or online at www.laopera.com.
Source: LA Opera
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