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Cleveland Opera Theater and
BW Conservatory present
The Threepenny Opera

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Dreigroschenoper“There’s a very raw, visceral style to the language and the drama in Threepenny,” said Cleveland Opera Theater director Scott Skiba in a recent conversation. “Nothing is whitewashed, nothing is varnished.”

On Friday, October 27 at 7:30 pm at Maltz Performing Arts Center, Cleveland Opera Theater opens its season with The Threepenny Opera, co-produced by Baldwin Wallace Conservatory. Presented in English, the work brings together Kurt Weill’s genre-fusing music and Elisabeth Hauptmann’s and Bertolt Brecht’s famously provocative text, adapted from John Gay’s 18th-century English ballad opera, The Beggar’s Opera. A second performance will be given on Sunday, October 29 at 3:00 pm.

“It’s a relevant, exciting piece that hasn’t been done here for a long time, and this is going to be a special version,” said Skiba, who also serves as director of opera studies at BW. “Sometimes the word ‘opera’ scares people, but this will feel more like musical theater. It’s outrageous and vibrant.” [Read more…]

Overnight review —
Cleveland Opera Theater:
The Marriage of Figaro (April 28)

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by Mike Telin

COT-FIgaroLast night, Friday, April 28 at Masonic Auditorium, Cleveland Opera Theater scored a win with its latest mainstage production, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. Directed by Scott Skiba, the exceptionally strong cast performed with solid vocal prowess and comedic flair, making for an enjoyable musical as well as theatrical experience. [Read more…]

Cleveland Opera Theater: a conversation with The Marriage of Figaro’s title character

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by Mike Telin

Holmes-Christopher“The challenge of performing the role of Figaro is holding onto all of the words, but the character is so much fun,” Christopher Holmes said. “As a baritone, I’m used to playing the bad guy, which is a lot of fun too, but this role is written so well that I’m really looking forward to it.” This week the Oberlin graduate will make his Cleveland Opera Theater debut, singing the title role of Mozart’s popular opera buffa Le nozze di Figaro.

Directed by Scott Skiba, performances will take place at the Cleveland Masonic Auditorium in MidTown on Friday, April 28 at 7:30 pm and Sunday, April 30 at 3:00 pm. Domenico Boyagian will conduct the Cleveland Opera Theater Orchestra and cast, which includes Christopher Holmes as Figaro, Marian Vogel as Susanna, Brian Keith Johnson as Count Almaviva, and Rachel Copeland as Countess Rosina. The opera will be sung in Italian with English supertitles. [Read more…]

Cleveland Opera Theater launches {New Opera Works} Festival

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by Mike Telin

Amelia-LostThe presentation of new and recently composed operas has been part of Cleveland Opera Theater’s mission since it was founded in 2006. Beginning on Friday, January 20, the company will launch its first festival dedicated to new opera works.

Scott Skiba, executive artistic director of COT, said that this year’s {New Opera Works} Festival features works that are in the beginning, middle, and ending stages of development. “Federico García Lorca’s final play, The House of Bernarda Alba, is in the initial stages of being adapted into an opera, and there will be a reading of the English translation by Lorca scholar Caridad Svich,” Skiba said during a recent interview.

Representing the middle period of development will be a preview of Scene Three from composer Nkeiru Okoye’s and librettist David Cote’s new opera We’ve Got Our Eye on You. “This will be a teaser of the complete opera, which will be presented during next year’s {NOW} Festival,” Skiba said. A recently completed work at the Festival will be Amelia Lost, a new opera by Larry Delinger and Brad Carroll which had its world premiere in Knoxville back in 2014 (pictured above). [Read more…]

Save the dates: January events to log in your classical music calendar

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by Daniel Hathaway

gaffigan-jamesFormer assistant conductor James Gaffigan will return to the podium at Severance Hall from Thursday, January 5 through Saturday, January 7 to lead The Cleveland Orchestra and pianist Kirill Gerstein in Bernard Hermann’s Suite from Psycho, Arnold Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto, the original, jazz band version of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. Performances include Thursday and Saturday evenings, a Friday matinee and a Fridays@7 event.

From January 6-8, the Philadelphia-based vocal ensemble, The Crossing, will give sixeen performances of David Lang’s Lifespan in Gallery 218 — the glass house that rises above the Cleveland Museum of Art’s East Boulevard façade. Surrounding a 4-billion-year-old rock suspended from the ceiling, three vocalists will whistle and breathe, moving the rock like a pendulum, “a poetic form of wind erosion” (read a preview here). Performances are scheduled for Friday at 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 7:45 and 8:30 pm, and on Saturday and Sunday on the hour from noon to 4:00 pm. Weigh in on your experience by sharing your own comments on the ClevelandClassical.com Facebook page. [Read more…]

A weekend of short(ened) operas from Opera Circle, Kent, and Baldwin Wallace

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by Daniel Hathaway

zanetto-st-stanNovember became Northeast Ohio’s unofficial Opera Month as a number of institutions unveiled productions during the first two weeks. Particularly dense was the weekend of November 4-6, when Opera Circle Cleveland, Kent State Opera, and Baldwin Wallace Opera Theater — in cooperation with Cleveland Opera Theater — all brought titles to the stage. [Read more…]

Six opera productions hit the boards this month, four clustering on the weekend of November 4-6

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by Daniel Hathaway

serseOpera fans in Northeast Ohio will enjoy a bumper crop of productions this harvest-time. Six shows, two of them double-bills, will open between November 2 and 11. We’ll be running separate previews for Oberlin Opera Theater’s Donizetti/Poulenc evenings (November 2,4, 5, and 6), for CIM Opera’s Puccini/Menotti performances (November 9-11) and for Opera Western Reserve’s single performance of Carmen (November 11).

But let’s take a look at the busiest opera weekend of the year. Baldwin Wallace’s Serse, Kent State Opera’s scenes from The Magic Flute, and the first pair of a dozen performances of Mascagni’s Zanetto by Opera Circle Cleveland, plus the remaining Oberlin Opera performances, all fall on the weekend of November 4-6. With some astute planning, you can catch a performance of each of them. Here’s a rundown of the BW/COT, Kent State, and Opera Circle productions. [Read more…]

Cleveland Opera Theater to sing al fresco at the Dunham Tavern Museum

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by Mike Telin

Dunham-Tavern-FacadeWhy should tailgating parties be limited to sporting events — how about opera tailgating? On Sunday, August 14, gather your friends and family, pack up your blankets and lawn chairs, and head to Cleveland’s Midtown area for an evening of opera favorites presented by Cleveland Opera Theater at the Dunham Tavern Museum. The performance is part of the company’s Summer Series.

Hosted by WCLV’s “Queen of the Morn,” Jacqueline Gerber, the free concert will feature opera and light opera favorites performed by sopranos Rachel Copeland, Rebecca Freshwater, and Marian Vogel, tenor Timothy Culver, and baritone Brian Keith Johnson, assisted by pianist Judith Ryder. [Read more…]

Bohemian Rhapsody: Cleveland Opera Theater’s La bohème at Masonic PAC (April 29)

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by Nicholas Jones

COT-Boheme-CafePuccini’s La bohème, probably one of the world’s most performed operas, packs a wallop pretty much every time you hear it. This weekend at Cleveland Opera Theater, that was again the case for me. But the emotional ending isn’t the whole of the opera. In its first three acts (and even in the opening of the fourth), La bohème often seems more comic than tragic, more boisterous than tender. Perhaps its mix of contraries, not just its sentiment, is what makes it so powerful. [Read more…]

Cleveland Opera Theatre: La bohème — soprano Marian Vogel talks about Musetta

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by Mike Telin

VOGEL-MarianOn Friday, April 29 at 7:30 pm and Sunday, May 1 at 3:00 pm at Masonic Auditorium Performing Arts Center, Cleveland Opera Theater will present Giacomo Puccini’s  La bohème, directed by Scott Skiba. Conducted by Domenico Boyagian, the opera will be sung in Italian with English subtitles.

Puccini’s opera centers around the writer Rodolfo, the painter Marcello, the musician Schaunard, and the philosopher Colline, who are roommates in an attic apartment in Paris’s Latin Quarter. On Christmas Eve, Schaunard decides to treat his three friends to a night out at Café Momus.

Rodolfo stays behind, and is surprised a few minutes later by a knock at the door. It is the charming seamstress Mimì who lives in a neighboring apartment. Rodolfo later joins his friends with Mimì in tow, but things heat up when Marcello’s on-again, off-again flame Musetta arrives to cause a scene. [Read more…]

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