Tuesday, March 24, 2020

West Edge Opera Festival Will Proceed

In the midst of the bad news, I'm pleasantly surprised to have received email yesterday saying that West Edge Opera is, to date, planning to have their usual summer festival. It's not scheduled to start until July 25, so it's possible that we'll be through the worst of this and it will be legal to have 500 people in one place again.

Their mail included this year's venue (same as last year's, The Bridge Yard) and the full casts for this year's operas:

Katya Kabanova (1921)
Music by Leoš Janáček
Libretto by Vincenc Červinka
In Czech with English surtitles
Conducted by Jonathan Khuner
Directed by Fenlon Lamb
A co-production with Papermoon Opera Productions
Featuring Carrie Hennessey as Katya
Kristin Claton as Kabanicha
Christopher Oglesby as Boris
Alex Boyer as Ticho
Chad Somers as Kudrjaš
Sarah Coit as Varvara
Philip Skinner a Dikój
Saturday, July 25th at 8 pm
Sunday, August 2nd at 5 pm
Thursday, August 6th at 8 pm
Elizabeth Cree (2017)
Music by Kevin Puts
Libretto by Mark Campbell
In English with English surtitles
Conducted by Robert Mollicone
Directed by Sam Helfrich
Featuring Katherine Pracht as Elizabeth Cree
Eugene Villanueva as John Cree
Samuel Faustine as Dan Leno
Simon Barrad as Inspector Kildare
Leslie Katter as Aveline Mortimer
Matt Boehler as Uncle
Ashley Dixon as Doris
J. Raymond Meyers as Victor Farrell
Sunday, July 26th at 5 pm
Friday, July 31st at 8 pm
Saturday, August 8th at 8pm
Eliogabalo (1667)
Music by Francesco Cavalli
In Italian with English surtitles
Conducted from the harpsichord by Adam Pearl
Directed by Mark Streshinsky
Featuring Randall Scotting as Eliogabalo
Derek Chester as Alessandro
Nikki Einfeld as Gemmira
Matheus Coura as Guiliano
Aura Veruni as Eritea
Jean-Paul Jones as Lenia
Malte Roesner as Nerbulone
Jonathan Smucker as Zotico
Saturday, August 1st at 8 pm
Friday, August 7th at 8 pm
Sunday, August 9th at 5 pm


2 comments:

Robert Gordon said...

This looks really great, but I hope everyone understands that the end of July -- or probably early July for rehearsals -- may well be too soon. Unless some kind of miracle drug turns up, the only thing that can end the pandemic is wide-spread herd immunity, and that can only happen when some large percentage of people (actual value unknown) have had the disease and either died or recovered. For this to have happened by July implies that the disease simply roars through the US and the world in the intervening three months, and that is what we are trying so desperately to avoid.

So yeah, I hope they have their cancellation plans in place.

Lisa Hirsch said...

Indeed. Four months out....? The Olympics aren't going to take place.