By Matthew Ozawa Director of Madame Butterfly As we allow ourselves to become immersed in the fantasy of Japan portrayed in Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, it’s illuminating to consider through whose lens we are viewing this opera. What experiences, perspectives, histories, and biases do we bring with us as we engage with Butterfly’s story? When I …
Lisa Montes Ph.D. Department of Romance Languages and Literatures University of Michigan Born June 5,1898, in Fuente Vaqueros, a small town in Granada, Federico García Lorca spent much of his childhood experiencing the culture of rural Spain. The eldest of four, Lorca was the child of a teacher and wealthy landowner. From an early …
Detroit Opera announces its 2023–24 Opera season under the leadership of President and CEO Wayne S. Brown, Gary L. Wasserman Artistic Director Yuval Sharon, Associate Artistic Director Christine Goerke, and Music Director Roberto Kalb. In the coming season, Detroit Opera will present four operas embracing the themes of collision and collage, with stories spotlighting characters …
‘Ainadamar is about how a myth is actually being born, how Lorca that was a breathing, living, laughing, loving person became a symbol, a myth – and how we can bring him back to be that man.’ — Osvaldo Golijov Ainadamar, literally meaning ‘Fountain of Tears’ in Arabic, is the name of an ancient well …
by Diana Burgwyn Osvaldo Golijov’s remarkable sound world in the opera Fountain of Tears (Ainadamar) is an amalgamation of his own Argentinian/ Jewish heritage and numerous other cultures, including Muslim, Jewish and Christian musical traditions. Above all, the score is suffused with the music of Lorca’s Spain: lush, seductive and with a strong undercurrent of …
How did you get started in music? I first started singing in my church. Our mother sings gospel, so we’ve always had music around us. She taught me and my twin brother, Kay’mon, how to sing. I was going to go the gospel route, until I got into the Youth Performing Arts School. I fell …
I am a bit of a Handel specialist; I’ve written a book about him as well as conducted a huge amount of his music. But I have never done Xerxes! I can’t believe I have gotten to my great age without doing it because, in a way, it’s one of the most popular of all …
In 2018, French musicologist Paul Prévost, in collaboration with music publisher Bärenreiter-Verlag, produced a new edition of Gounod’s Faust. This performing edition restores the spoken dialogue of the 1859 original that premiered at the Théâtre Lyrique on March 29, 1859, as well as previously unpublished numbers and melodramas. As Prévost further describes: Although several numbers …
BY DAVID SHENGOLD David Shengold explores the opera’s tragic heroine, a character who is in some way familiar to us all. Most American accounts of Gounod’s Faust get around sooner or later to two diverting facts about the piece. First, that in its early decades the Metropolitan Opera performed the score so often that wags …
At the southwest corner of the Detroit Opera House, you may have noticed a huge mural of our proscenium overlooking the intersection of John R and Broadway. The stage, which at first appears empty, is the site of an exciting new way for Detroit Opera to share its newest productions with Detroiters! Using augmented reality, …
