Hitting the virtual high notes
Opera San Jose, TheatreWorks partner for ‘Puccini’.
For the world premiere livestream of “Hershey Felder, Puccini,” TheatreWorks Silicon Valley has partnered with a company that knows a thing or two about staging operas by the famed composer.
Opera San Jose is the co-presenter of “Puccini,” set to livestream at 5 p.m. Sunday. A recording of the production will be available on demand through March 21. The show will be performed and filmed on location in Lucca, Italy, in the home where Puccini was born.
Felder’s production features excerpts from “La bohème,” “Tosca,” “Turandot” and other Puccini operas, with a particular focus on the female operatic characters in Puccini’s life. Felder will be joined by baritone Nathan Gunn, soprano Gianna Corbisiero and tenor Charles Castronovo.
Gunn, recipient of the Metropolitan Opera’s first Beverly Sills Award, is equally acclaimed for his roles in opera and musical theater. In 2010 he performed with Symphony Silicon Valley, singing Gustav Mahler’s “Songs of a Wayfarer.” He joined Sting at Lincoln Center that same year in a stage production based on the letters of composer Robert Schumann.
Corbisiero has performed “Tosca,” “La bohème,” “La traviata,” “Pagliacci,” “Don Giovanni,” “The Magic Flute,” “Carmen,” “The Barber of Seville” and “Falstaff” at opera houses around the world. She has sung under the baton of such conductors as Zubin Mehta, Kent Nagano and Charles Dutoit.
Castronovo has sung at most of the world’s leading opera houses, including San Francisco Opera, Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Vienna and Berlin state operas and the Paris Opera. He had the title role in Daniel Catan’s “Il Postino” opposite Placido Domingo in the work’s world premiere in Los Angeles, as well as in Paris and Santiago.
Tickets for “Puccini” are $55 per household at www. theatreworks.org or www. operasj.org. Ticket sales directly benefit the arts organization through which they are purchased.