Saturday night’s all right for opera
It’ll be a bloody end to Opera Niagara’s first season in downtown Niagara Falls.
The company formed by New York opera star Aprile Millo and local singer/teacher Mary-Lou Vetere follows up a comedic June 4 show with a sampler of three classic tragedies June 17: Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore and MacBeth, and Georges Bizet’s Carmen. Millo dubs it the ‘blood trio.’ “Everybody either dies by stabbing or poisoning,” she says. “It all deals with blood boiling and jealousy and all the wonderful things you associate with opera.”
Along with special guests Gustavo Ahualli from the Teatro Colon and Erica Iris Huang from the Canadian Opera Company, Millo will be filling in on Il Trovatore for a singer who pulled out late.
A classically-trained soprano, Millo will step in as a mezzo for the role of Azucena. It will be a local appearance for Millo before performing in sold-out concerts and recitals in Italy and Brazil this summer.
It’s the company’s third show in two months, and it’s still a work in
progress, says Millo. Performances are held at the 300-seat Seneca Queen Theatre.
“The first night (May 5) was almost two-thirds filled,” she says. “But like every company, we have to be in the area and (people) have to know.
“They’re hungry for this kind of thing here.”
Vetere trains local singers at her Vetere Studio in Niagara Falls, and also brings them to Italy every summer for her Operavision Academy. In August, she’ll represent Canada singing at the foot of the Christ Statue in Brazil, and then for an internationally broadcast concert at Taormina, Sicily.
When Opera Niagara returns in the fall, it will stage two complete operas, says Millo.
“We’ll try to do it authentically, because we’ve had such a successful start.” jlaw@postmedia.com