Crusading for Reason in an Age of Anger: Redefining Opera’s Role — Glimmerglass Festival 2012 and a Social-Centric Agenda by Seth Lachterman

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L to R: Glimmerglass Festival Artistic & General Director Francesca Zambello, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Glimmerglass Festival Managing Director Linda Jackson. Photo: Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival.


Aida
Music by Giuseppe Verdi, Libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, 1871
Ramfis, bass-baritone – Joseph Barron
Radamès, tenor – Noah Stewart
Amneris, mezzo-soprano – Daveda Karanas
Aida, soprano – Michelle Johnson
The King, bass – Phillip Gay
Amonasro, bass-baritone – Eric Owens

Conductor – Nader Abbassi
Director – Francesca Zambello
Sets – Lee Savage
Costumes – Bibhu Mohapatra
Lighting – Robert Wierzel
Choreographer – Eric Sean Fogel
Hair & Makeup Design – Anne Ford-Coates

Lost in the Stars
Music by Kurt Weill, Book and Lyrics by Maxwell Anderson, 1949 (based on the novel, Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton).

The Leader, tenor – Sean Panikkar
Answerer, mezzo-soprano – Bongiwe Nakani
Nika – Chebet Too
Grace Kumalo – Ernestine Jackson
Stephen Kumalo, bass-baritone – Eric Owens
Arthur Jarvis, baritone – Ryan MacConnell
James Jarvis – Wynn Harmon
John Kumalo, baritone – Amos Nomnabo
Linda, mezzo-soprano – Chrystal Williams
Absalom, tenor – Makudupanyane Senaoana
Irina, mezzo-soprano – Brandy Lynn Hawkins
The Judge – Jake Gardner
Alex – Caleb McLaughlin

Conductor – John DeMain
Director – Tazewell Thompson
Sets & Costumes – Michael Mitchell
Lighting – Robert Wierzel
Choreographer – Anthony Salatino
Hair & Makeup Design – Anne Ford-Coates

The Music Man
Book, Music and Lyric by Meredith Willson

Harold Hill – Dwayne Croft
Marian Paroo -  Elizabeth Futral
Marcellus Washburn – Josh Walden
Mayor Shinn – Jake Gardner
Eulalie Mackecknie Shinn – Ernestine Jackson
Mrs. Paroo – Cindy Gold
Winthrop Paroo – Henry Wager

Conductor – John DeMain
Director & Choreographer – Marcia Milgrom Dodge
Sets – James Noone
Costumes – Leon Wiebers
Lighting – Kevin Adams
Hair & Makeup Design – Anne Ford-Coates

Armide (1686)
Music by Jean-Baptiste Lully
Libretto by Philippe Quinault (after Tasso’s La Gerusalemme liberateai)
Co-production with Opera Atelier

Armide, soprano – Peggy Kriha Dye
Renaud, tenor – Colin Ainsworth
Hidroat, bass – João Fernandez
Hatred, bass-baritone – Curtis Sullivan

Conductor – David Fallis
Director – Marshall Pynkoski
Choreographer – Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg
Sets – Gerard Gauci
Costumes – Dora Rust D’Eye
Lighting – Bonnie Beecher
Light Director – Jennifer Parr,
Hair & Makeup Design – Anne Ford-Coates

Should Art be merely an escape or refuge from the realities of our difficult times? In the 1940s, the debate heated and divided artists, musicians and scholars. In Wallace Stevens’s essay “The Noble Rider and The Sound of Words,” the twain are resolved in the idea that art, even “abstract” art can assume the role of social commentary only through innate and ineffable transformations of reality rather than by any explicit agenda dogmatically imposed by the creator. Great art could not be manhandled ideologically. How this solution might apply to opera of the past becomes the task of the director and musicians in balancing the surprisingly diverse elements of the music’s intent, the libretto’s intent, the historical context, and, yes, the composer’s objectives, if any. It is not surprising that Stevens regarded that an artistic creation had its own life apart from the creator’s wishes. Thus, we have the license for interpretation and deconstruction that has become the hallmark of Regietheater in our times.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the arts!