Chamber Music Sedona kicks off its thirtieth season with two performances of The Met: Live in HD at the Sedona Performing Arts Center, 995 Upper Red Rock Loop Road, Saturday, October 13 with L’Elisir d’Amore by Gaetano Donizetti, and Saturday October 27 with Verdi’s Otello. “The Met: Live in HD has proven to be a wonderful addition to Sedona’s cultural landscape,” said Bert Harclerode, Chamber Music Sedona executive director. “The ambiance of the Sedona Performing Arts Center – it’s surround sound, the big screen installed to the Met’s specifications, the pre-opera talks and intermission gourmet lunches all combined make SPAC Arizona’s place to see The Met: Live in HD,” said Harclerode. The Met: Live in HD, the world’s leading provider of alternative cinema content, is now shown in more than 1,900 theaters in 60 countries, making the Met the only arts institution with an ongoing global art series of this scale. The Met was the first arts company to experiment as an alternative content provider, beginning on a modest scale in 2006. Since then, its program has grown every season, with more than 9.6 million tickets sold to date. Close to 3 million tickets are expected to be sold in the current season alone. Met opera stars serve as hosts for the HD series, conducting live interviews with cast, crew, and production teams, and introducing the popular behind-the-scenes features; altogether the worldwide HD audience is given an unprecedented look at what goes into the staging of an opera at one of the world’s great houses. The Live in HD season begins October 13 at 10am with a new production of Donizetti’s comic gem L’Elisir d’Amore, directed by Bartlett Sher and conducted by Maurizio Benini. Anna Netrebko makes her Met role debut as the beautiful landowner Adina, with Matthew Polenzani as Nemorino, the simple peasant who falls in love with her. Mariusz Kwiecien sings Adina’s arrogant fiancé, Sergeant Belcore, and Ambrogio Maestri will sing the role of the magic potion-peddling Doctor Dulcamara. “L’Elisir d’Amore is kind of two operas at the same time,” Sher says. “It’s an opera that’s a great entertainment, and it’s an opera that has something else happening underneath. It’s informed by when in Italian history it was written—you can see the early stirrings of a cry for independence.” A pre-opera talk “Curtain-raiser” will be presented from 8:45-9:25am by Russell Fox. Gourmet opera box lunches may be ordered on line. The Sedona presentation is sponsored by Sally and Stan Gorski. Saturday, October 27 at 10am is Verdi’s towering masterpiece, Otello, based on Shakespeare’s tragedy, makes its first Live in HD appearance. Semyon Bychkov conducts an extraordinary cast led by Johan Botha in the title role of the jealous Moor of Venice, opposite Renée Fleming in one of her greatest roles, Otello’s innocent wife Desdemona. Falk Struckmann sings Iago, Otello’s disloyal ensign, and Michael Fabiano is the captain Cassio. A pre-opera “Curtain-raiser” talk will be presented by Edward Ingraham from 8:30-9:25am. Gourmet opera box lunches may be ordered on line. The Sedona presentation is sponsored by Ann and John Steinbrunner.
In November CMS presents a two-day weekend of Magical Music in the Red Rocks: Saturday, November 10 is Thomas Adès’s The Tempest, a Met Premiere. Composer Thomas Adès conducts the Metropolitan Opera premiere of his own work and Sunday, November 11 The Romeros, “The Royal Family of the Guitar”, makes its Sedona debut in a 2:30pm program at SPAC. Tickets to all operas and concerts are available on line and range from $10 to $40 and ‘member’ prices are available the day of the event. Gourmet Opera lunches are available on line only and must be purchased Thursday prior to the Saturday opera. Chamber Music Sedona’s 30th Anniversary Season is made possible with underwriting support from Aspey, Watkins, Diesel, P.L.L.C., Attorneys at Law. Additional support comes from The City of Sedona; Arizona Commission on the Arts with funding from the State of Arizona and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Verde Valley Medical Center and WESTAF.
# # # For information call 928.204.2415 or visit www.ChamberMusicSedona.org
15 |