Opera Southwest

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The National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, home of Opera Southwest since the 2011/12 season

The Opera Southwest , formerly: Albuquerque Opera Theater , is an opera house in Albuquerque , New Mexico , founded in 1972. In addition to the classical opera repertoire, the institution premieres numerous new operas by composers from New Mexico and in 2014 it received worldwide attention with the rediscovery of the 143 years Opera Amleto accomplished by Arrigo Boito and Franco Faccio .

The opera's artistic directors are the conductor Anthony Barrese and the director David Bartholomew.

history

The Albuquerque Opera Theater was founded by a group of music lovers including Edward T. Peter, the conductor Kurt Frederick, and James Blatcher, a former tenor and later choirmaster. Frederick was the first music director of the new opera, Blatcher took over this function from 1979 to 1987 and again in the mid-1990s. The first production of the new opera house was Mozart's Così fan tutte in January 1973 in the Popejoy Hall of the University of New Mexico .

The KiMo in Albuquerque, for many years the home of Opera Southwest
The stage of the KiMo Theater

The opera produces two to three new productions per season, which lasts from autumn to spring. This means that there is no overlap with the Santa Fe Opera , which traditionally runs its open-air opera season from the end of June to the end of August. The two cities are only around a hundred kilometers apart. From the early 1980s, the opera company played in the then newly renovated KiMo Theater , originally a cinema, built in 1927 by the architects Carl Boller & Robert Böller , one of the last and best preserved pueblo deco theaters in the USA, which, however, neither over Side stage still had Schnürboden. In 2009 Opera Southwest received the Albuquerque Arts Alliance Bravo Award and presented as one of its last productions at KiMo Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor with Jane Reddinggave in the title role. Since the season, the performances have taken place in the Albuquerque Journal Theater , the largest of the three theaters in the National Hispanic Cultural Center .

By 2016, Opera Southwest had released 121 operas, including 23 world premieres, some of them especially for children and young people in a separate children's opera line. The American composer and conductor Anthony Barrese joined Opera Southwest as Music Director in 2007 and was appointed Artistic Director and Chief Conductor in 2011. Barrese was responsible for the rediscovery of Franco Faccio's Hamlet setting Amleto from 1865. He reconstructed the score and conducted the opera in 2014 in concerts in Baltimore (Maryland) and staged at Opera Southwest. Directed by David Bartholomew. Barrese thus made possible the successful performance of the Bregenz Festival 2016, conducted by Paolo Carignani and staged by Olivier Tambosi . With this rediscovery after 143 years, an American premiere, the Opera Southwest gained worldwide attention and recognition in the opera industry.

repertoire

The focus of the Opera South repertoire is on Mozart, Belcanto , Verdi and Verismo . The opera company plays the three Da Ponte operas and the Magic Flute by Mozart and the classic top 10 operas by Verdi, Il trovatore , La traviata , Rigoletto , Un ballo in maschera , Aida and Falstaff . A particularly popular composer in Albuquerque is Gioachino Rossini , whose comic operas dominate the repertoire. Puccini's Madama Butterfly , La Bohème , Tosca and Trittico were shown several times at Opera South , and once - in the 1997/98 season - the tragic Turandot . The popular works Carmen , Hoffmanns Erzählungen , Die Fledermaus and The Merry Widow were also performed.

At the same time, Opera Southwest tries to introduce its audience to cumbersome operas and rarely performed works, be it from the early days of Claudio Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea from 1642 or Giovanni Battista Bononcini's Polifemo from 1702, as well Works from the high baroque period by Georg Friedrich Handel or operas from the 20th century by Gian Carlo Menotti and Henry Mollicone . The rediscovery of Faccio's Amleto , described above , also met with approval from the local audience. In addition to the masterpieces of the Viennese operetta , Opera Southwest also presented a Zarzuela Double Bill in 1993 consisting of Ruperto Chapí's La revoltosa and Tomás Bretón's La verbena de la paloma . Cross-over projects such as Jazz goes to the Opera and the popular New Year's Eve with the Opera concert round off the ambitious program.

When the opera company presented Rossini's rarely played Otello in Albuquerque in 2012 , it showed both final versions, the classic tragic and the happy ending version, on the evening of the premiere. At the second and the third performance, the audience could vote on which variant should be shown.

World premieres

Opera Southwest also regularly brings out new operas, most of them by composers based in New Mexico:

  • James (Santa Fe) Galloway
    • Pastoral (1988)
    • A Solid House (1998)
    • Rococo Confessional (1999)
    • Mirage (2003)
  
  • Alan Stringer
    • Coyote's Music (1994)
    • Miraculous Staircase (1996)
    • A Sunny Morning (1998)
    • A Circle of Love (2004)
  
  • Robert Tate
    • A Closed Case (1998)

Ethan Greene's A Way Home , premiered in Houston in 2010, premiered the revised and orchestrated version at Opera Southwest in 2012. It was a one-hour family opera.

The new work Bless Me, Ultima announced for 2017 is an opera by Hector Armienta based on the novel of the same name by Rudolfo Anaya . The commission for the composition was jointly awarded by Opera Southwest, the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque and Opera Cultura in California.

Outreach programs

Albuquerque has doubled its population since the 1970s, when Opera Southwest was founded. In the last decades of the 20th century, the metropolitan area was one of the fastest growing urban regions in the world. This growth is dramatic in the 21st century broken into. Opera Southwest positions itself as an argument in favor of locating new companies in New Mexico , as they always take a culturally interesting ambience into account when choosing a location. In its self-presentation, the company also emphasizes its commitment to diversity .

Opera Southwest's outreach programs specifically target the younger generations to whom they would like to open up opera experiences with little or no cost. Most of the world premieres are dedicated to children's and family operas , which aim to arouse understanding and enthusiasm for the complex art form of opera and to attract new audiences in later years.

Awards

  • 2009: Albuquerque Arts Alliance Bravo Award
  • 2015: International Opera Awards , nomination for best rediscovery (Faccios Hamlet )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Deborah Ziff: Bratcher: Decades of Musical Accomplishments , Albuquerque Journal, November 7, 2012, accessed August 4, 2016.
  2. ^ Albuquerque Journal: Annual Meet Set by Guild , Sep. 16, 1973, p. 13, accessed Aug. 4, 2016.
  3. ^ Central Opera Service Bulletin , Fall / Winter 1982, p. 22, accessed August 4, 2016.
  4. ^ Albuquerque Journal: Review: Lucia di Lammermoor , March 30, 2009, accessed August 4, 2016.
  5. ↑ Albuquerque Business First: Opera Southwest heads to National Hispanic Cultural Center , February 10, 2011, accessed August 4, 2016.
  6. ^ Opera Southwest: Artistic Staff , accessed August 4, 2016.
  7. ↑ The Bregenz production, sung by Pavel Černoch (Hamlet), Iulia Maria Dan (Ophelia), Dshamilja Kaiser (Gertrud) and Claudio Sgura (Claudio), received hymn reviews and established the work in the classical operatic repertoire. See: Austria Press Agency : Cheers for "Hamlet" new discovery at the start in Bregenz , quoted here from Salzburger Nachrichten , July 21, 2016.
  8. ^ Charles Jernigan: Splendid Rediscovery An opera by the Scapigliatura in the shadow of Verdi's Opera Lounge, October 26, 2014, accessed on August 4, 2016. (Eng.)
  9. ^ George Loomis, Hamlet, Opera Southwest, Journal Theater, Albuquerque, New Mexico , Review, Financial Times , October 28, 2014
  10. ↑ DS Crafts: Opera Southwest premieres long-forgotten Hamlet opera , Albuquerque Journal, October 27, 2014, accessed August 4, 2016.
  11. ↑ International Opera Awards : 2015 Nomines , accessed August 4, 2016.
  12. ^ A b Opera Southwest: Past Productions , accessed August 4, 2016.
  13. ^ D. S. Crafts: Opera Southwest triumphs with 'Otello ,' Albuquerque Journal, Nov. 2, 2012, accessed Aug. 4, 2016.
  14. ↑ Margaret Ross: Operas in English: A Dictionary , Scarecrow Press 2012, pp. 96, 558 and 629.
  15. ↑ David Steinberg: Family opera takes a trip to Mexico , Albuquerque Journal, January 27, 2013, accessed August 4, 2016.
  16. ↑ Winthrop Quigley: New Mexico's population struggle , Albuquerque Journal, January 28, 2016, accessed August 4, 2016.
  17. ^ Opera Southwest: About Us , paragraph: OSW in Our Community , accessed August 4, 2016.
  18. ^ Opera Southwest: Final Report 2012 , letter to the Brabson Library and Educational Foundation, one of the project's sponsors, accessed on August 4, 2016.

Coordinates: 35 ° 4 ′ 5 ″  N , 106 ° 39 ′ 19 ″  W.