by Mike Telin
“What do I enjoy about singing Verdi? Oh my gosh, everything about it,” tenor Jorge Pita Carreras exclaimed during a recent interview. On Saturday, June 11 at 7:30 pm at the Ohio Theatre in Playhouse Square, Carreras will perform the role of Manrico in Opera Circle Cleveland’s production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Il trovatore. Mezzo-soprano Christina Carr, who will perform the role of Azucena, shares Carreras’s feelings about the composer’s music. “There’s just something about the way Verdi approaches the emotional side of his music that brings you along. It’s just wonderful,” she said during a separate interview.
Based on a Spanish play by Antonio Garcia Gutierrez adapted by Verdi’s librettist Salvatore Cammarano, the opera is the middle child in the trio of popular titles Verdi produced in the early 1850s, preceded by Rigoletto and followed by La traviata. Joel Smirnoff will conduct the Opera Circle Orchestra and a cast that will also include baritone Kevin Wetzel as Il Conte di Luna, soprano Dorota Sobieska as Leonora, bass Nathan Resika as Ferrando, tenor Brian Skoog as Ruiz, and soprano Lauren Wright as Inez. [Read more…]
