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Nightingale Opera Theater: Jake Heggie’s If I Were You (July 9)

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by Jacob Strauss

Si j’etais vous, I would not trust anyone who tries to solve your problems for you. You have to do it yourself, face up to the bleak black wall looming above and keep standing straight. You succumb if you don’t, and that spells long, regressive rest. Atrophying strength. Decomposition.

In Nightingale Opera Theater’s production of Jake Heggie’s 2019 two-act opera If I Were You — presented at Hudson’s Barlow Community Center on Saturday, July 9 — the protagonist, Fabian Hart (tenor Ye Lynn Han), buys the snake oil offered by Brittomara (mezzo-soprano Sydney Murrell), and Hart keeps asking for more. Dressed in red and black, Murrell gave a sharp, Luciferean performance, enabling the young Fabian’s destructive behavior. [Read more…]

Nightingale Opera Theatre: Menotti’s The Consul in Hudson (July 21)

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by Timothy Robson

WaitingRoomGian Carlo Menotti’s 1950 cold-war era opera The Consul received a strong performance on July 21 by the Nightingale Opera Theatre at the intimate Barlow Community Center theater in Hudson. [Read more…]

Nightingale Opera Theater to stage Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Consul

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by Daniel Hathaway

Nightingale-ConsulAt the same time last year that Nightingale Opera Theater executive director Melissa Davis was thinking about a title to produce in 2017, she was also feeling distraught by stories she read about the emerging refugee crisis.

“I listened to Menotti’s The Consul and was so moved by it that I thought there was no better time to perform the work than this summer.” That plan has now come to fruition: two performances are scheduled for Friday, July 21 at 7:30 pm and Sunday, July 23 at 2:30 pm in the Barlow Center in Hudson. (Read a plot synopsis here.) [Read more…]

Nightingale Opera Theatre: Mark Adamo’s Little Women at Hudson’s Barlow Center (July 16)

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by Daniel Hathaway

FourSistersA strong cast of singer-actors and superb production values made Nightingale Opera Theatre’s recent production of Mark Adamo’s Little Women a beautiful experience. I saw the second of two performances in the intimate theater of the Barlow Community Center in Hudson on Sunday afternoon, July 16. [Read more…]

Nightingale Opera Theatre: Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love in Hudson (June 13)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Adina-reading-TristanThe Elixir of Love, one of Donizetti’s most-performed operas, makes use of a time-honored device: a magic potion that causes people to fall in love. This time, the concoction is peddled by a quack doctor to a gullible gardener who is hopelessly in love with his employer. A manufactured love triangle involving a soldier and a series of misunderstandings complicate the plot, but after more than two hours of delightful, bel canto singing, everything gets sorted out and the right people get married. Nightingale Opera Theatre’s beautiful production of Elixir was presented one night only, on Saturday, June 13, in Knight Fine Arts Center at Western Reserve Academy in Hudson. [Read more…]

Nightingale Opera Theatre to produce Donizetti’s Elixir in Hudson June 13

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by Daniel Hathaway

Elixir-PosterHudson’s Nightingale Opera Theatre will mark its move into a new venue at Western Reserve Academy on Saturday, June 13 at 7:30 pm with a production of Gaetano Donizetti’s “melodramma giocoso,” The Elixir of Love.

One of the top comic operas of all time, Elixir was the most-performed opera in Europe during the decade following its premiere in 1832, and unlike many titles, has never fallen off the charts.

In a telephone conversation, we asked Melissa Davis, Nightingale’s artistic director, why she chose the piece for the company’s summer production. “We wanted to do a show with a smaller principal cast this year,” she said. “Tim Culver, the tenor who will be singing the role of Nemorino, told me, ‘I just really love Elixir. Have you thought about doing that?’ I’ve performed the opera three times in my career and remember it so fondly. It has such great music and such a fun plot. We decided to go with it.” [Read more…]

Review: Nightingale Opera Theatre: Hansel and Gretel at the Barlow Center, Hudson (June 29)

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by Daniel Hathaway

WitchIntoOvenWarning to all witches: you’re courting danger if you try to turn children into gingerbread in Northeast Ohio. You’ve been punished for that many times recently — at the Cleveland Institute of Music (March 2012), at Youngstown State University (April 2013), at the Oberlin Conservatory (November 2013) and at Baldwin Wallace University (February 2014). The children rebelled once again last weekend at the Barlow Center in Hudson, as Nightingale Opera Theatre staged three performances of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. And once again, the witch didn’t survive the trip through her own oven. I saw the show, which was sung in English, on Sunday, June 29.

It was talented student casts who turned the tables on the sorceress in those previous performances. Nightingale, a company of professional singers, brought an especially high level of vocal prowess and acting experience to Humperdinck’s retelling of the famous fairy tale, while retaining the feel of a community production by casting young human beings as children and angels. [Read more…]

Review: Nightingale Opera Theatre: Werther at Solon Center for the Arts (August 2)

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by Robert Rollin

werther_banner_360Last Friday evening’s Nightingale Opera Theatre production of Jules Massenet’s opera, Werther, was a delight. Above all it was meticulously prepared. Music Director John Simmons’ piano rendition was so exceptionally flawless that the orchestra was not missed. His expression was constant, and his balance of contrapuntal sections with and without the singers was meticulous.

Equally important was that tempos, climaxes and other details were so well ingrained that the pace was swift and effective. All cast members and even the children’s chorus kept things moving and did not not let the plot’s overwhelming sadness overcome the dramatic flow. The Solon Center for the Arts has an intimate, but well-equipped, stage that helped make scene changes seamless. The fine acoustics made the English translation easily intelligible.

Massenet imbued the opera with a wonderful musical tapestry that Simmons and the cast took great pains to delineate. [Read more…]

Nightingale Opera Theatre and Hudson Chamber Players plan August production of Werther and chamber concerts

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by Daniel Hathaway

DAVIS-MelissaMany performing organizations lay low in August. Others are just gearing up for late summer seasons. Nightingale Opera Theatre is in the final stages of rehearsals for its production of Massenet’s Werther at the Solon Center for the Arts on August 2 and 4, and the Hudson Chamber Players have three Sunday afternoon concerts in the works for August 4, 11 and 18 in Hudson and Cleveland. Both organizations are new on the scene in Northeast Ohio, and reflect the entrepreneurial spirit that seems to be bubbling up all over in today’s classical music world.

Melissa Davis (left) created Nightingale Opera Theatre just last summer with a production of Kurt Weill’s Street Scene at the Akron Art Museum. “There’re just not a whole lot of opportunities in this area for opera singers, especially sopranos. I wanted to start something and I guess I was just crazy enough to do it!”, Davis told us in a phone conversation. She chose Street Scene because its large cast allowed more than just a few singers and students to participate. “The Akron Art Museum was a bit too small for the show but we managed to make it work. It was a very intimate experience for the audience.”

Davis and her company followed up in March with two one-act shows, also staged at the Akron museum. [Read more…]

Review: Nightingale Opera Theatre: two one-acts at Akron Art Museum (March 9)

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by Daniel Hathaway

GORDON-Ricky-IanOne-act operas are a vastly neglected sub-genre — except for the few that are performed over and over again. Nightingale Opera put on two rarely-performed titles by American composers last Saturday afternoon, March 9, in the auditorium of the Akron Art Museum. Ricky Ian Gordon’s Orpheus and Euridice and Lee Hoiby’s The Scarf, each about an hour in length, made for a very interesting pairing — and a nice contrast to The Met’s Don Carlo, which ran more than twice as long that afternoon.

Also in contrast to grand opera, one-acts can thrive with a slim personnel roster. Saturday’s shows called for only four singers, a clarinetist, and a tag-team of pianists who more than filled the small theater with sound and created two very different but equally riveting dramatic situations. [Read more…]

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