Area opera update

By Temple Ligon

 

If you move it, you can still make it to New York City this weekend and sit down in front orchestra center seats Saturday night for the Metropolitan Opera’s performance of Puccini’s La Boheme. As of early Thursday morning, December 11, two tickets for the best seats are still available. Lucky you. Just $1040 each. That’s $2080 for pre-dinner entertainment. Intermission Champagne is extra.

Or you can hold off a couple months and save a couple thousand. You should plan to attend Palmetto Opera’s La Boheme at the Koger Center on Saturday night, February 28. Two seats down front are offered at $46 each – $92 instead of $2080, plus transportation.

The international cast performing La Boheme on February 28 works for Teatro Lirico d’Europa, a European-style production company based in Baltimore. Performances so far total more than 4,000, including last year’s Carmen in Columbia.

The 40-piece orchestra in the pit is a healthy mix of traveling and local professional musicians.

La Boheme is one of grand opera’s war horses, one of the top five in favor. So favorable, in fact, a successful Broadway musical, Rent, is based on La Boheme.

Grand opera is rising in favor in our South. It’s not all around us, but it is heading our way in a determined expansion to follow our population and economic gains. Opera follows money, like everything else.

This article offers a good bit of what’s playing this winter and spring in our three-state area of the Carolinas and Georgia – not everything, but this is enough to justify placing it behind miniature magnets on the refrigerator door to keep the household aware of opera. And when you travel, particularly among the world’s capitals, attend the opera and return with a feel for how Columbia fits in. And you’ll see we are taking opera in the right direction.

Columbia also has an opera concert at the Harbison Theatre on January 24, again performed on by Teatro Lirico d’Europa and put on by Palmetto Opera.

At the Newberry Opera House, Carmen – last year performed in the Koger Center and produced by Palmetto Opera – by Bizet is scheduled for Saturday, February 7. One of the advantages of the Newberry Opera house, something ordinarily seen as a disadvantage, is the small number of seats, about 400. With so few seats, every seat is close to the stage and every seat gets good acoustics and a short line of sight.

On Monday, April 20, also at the Newberry Opera House, the Newberry College Opera will give a free concert with individual scenes selected from opera favorites.

Opera at USC is selling Koger Center tickets to Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte for Friday and Saturday night at 7:30, February 20 and 21, and a more affordable matinee is on for Sunday at 3:00 p.m.

In Raleigh with the North Carolina Opera at the Duke Energy Center, Verdi’s La Traviata, produced by Palmetto Opera a few years back, is scheduled for Friday night, February 27, and that Sunday afternoon, March 1. Also coming to Raleigh at the Duke Energy Center is Mozart’s Don Giovanni, five performances altogether: Saturday, April 18, 8:00 p.m.; Sunday, April 19, 3:00 p.m.; Wednesday, April 22, 7:30 p.m.; Friday, April 24, 8:00 p.m.; and Sunday, April 26, 3:00 p.m.

In Charlotte’s Belk Theatre uptown, Opera Carolina is performing Puccini’s Turadot for two nights and a matinee: Saturday, January 24, 8:00 p.m.; Thursday, January 29, 7:30 p.m.; and Sunday, February 1, 2:00 p.m. The same sequence applies to Carolina Opera’s Lucia di Lammermoor by Donizetti: Saturday, April 11, 8:00 p.m.; Thursday, April 16, 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, April 19, 2:00 p.m.

The really nice thing about Charlotte’s Belk Theatre is the direct elevated walk-up connection to the Ritz-Carlton. I walked up to the check-in clerk at the Ritz-Carlton on a recent Sunday afternoon – research, you might say. I asked for the Sunday afternoon walk-up single room rate, something I thought might be going for a bit of a discount during a slow period. The clerk told me $439. Uptown Charlotte does well, which is all the more reason to keep an eye on the schedule at the Belk Theatre.

The Atlanta Opera this winter has Verdi’s Rigoletto at the suburban Cobb Energy Center, next to the Galleria Specialty Mall along Interstate 75. Opera is a city game, and opera needs to play in the city’s core away from franchise food. But Georgia doesn’t understand these things, so overlooking the freeway interchange seems a fine fit for the Atlantans. Rigoletto runs on Saturday, February 28, 8:00 p.m.; Tuesday, March 3, 7:30 p.m.; Friday, March 6, 8:00 p.m.; and Sunday, March 8, 3:00 p.m.

Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro is scheduled by the Atlanta Opera for Saturday, April 4, 8:00 p.m.; Tuesday, April 7, 7:30 p.m.; Friday, April 10, 8:00 p.m.; and Sunday, April 12, 3:00 p.m.

Atlanta Opera’s Three Decembers, based on a play by Terrance McNally, has a contemporary setting with music by composer Jake Heggie. It will be performed at the Cobb Energy Center on Friday, May 29, 8:00 p.m.; Saturday, May 30, 8:00 p.m.; and Sunday, May 31, 6:00 p.m.

In Charleston at Spoleto during the end of May and the first few days in June, expect one or two world-class operas of recent creation, something avant garde. Spoleto’s schedule for 2015 still isn’t public.

In Greenville’s Peace Center there’s no grand opera planned for this coming winter and spring, but on the Furman campus at the little (110 seats) Playhouse, Threepenny Opera is playing at 8:00 p.m. on April 15, 16, 17, 18, 22, and 25; and there are afternoon performances at 3:00 on April 18, 19, and 25. Threepenny Opera is by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. Their play is based on an English ballad opera, The Beggar’s Opera by John Gays. It’s something of a socialist’s critique of a capitalist’s world, but it’s no grand opera. It’s a play with music. Still, with just 110 seats inside the Playhouse, the show should be worth the trip, and the lines of sight and the acoustics should be great.

 

 

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