3 operas focus on strong women
“Three Strong Women, Three Powerful Operas” is the theme for the 2017 Opera in the Ozarks season, incorporating 22 mainstage performances Friday-July 25, centering on Inspiration Point, west of Eureka Springs.
More than 40 singers from 17 states and instrumental musicians from across the country are converging on the mountainside venue in Northwest Arkansas for Opera in the Ozarks’ 67th season.
They’ll put on 19 fully staged and costumed performances in repertory of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah and Georges Bizet’s Carmen. Three Sunday matinees, one of each opera, will be on stage at Benton-
ville’s Arend Arts Center.
Performances of Figaro and Carmen will be in their original languages — Italian and French, respectively — with English supertitles. Susannah is in English.
“It’s a very strong season,” says General Director Nancy Preis. “This is one of those seasons where the music is very familiar to people. People know Carmen whether they’ve seen the opera or not. They know the music from Figaro from commercials, but they probably don’t know it’s opera.”
Artistic Director Thomas Cockrell, who also conducts the orchestra, picked the lineup, in consultation with Preis. In addition to what will work artistically, of course, part of the decision is whether his choices will sell tickets.
Figaro and Carmen are among the most standard of standard operatic repertoire. Susannah, Preis notes, is the second-most-performed American opera, behind George and Ira Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Written during the McCarthy era, it focuses on an innocent woman victimized by a narrow-minded evangelical community in rural Tennessee.
Cockrell also chose this season’s 42 singers through national auditions. “We audition people from all over the country,” Preis says. There are comparatively large contingents from Texas and Michigan — specifically from the University of Michigan, “where we always get a good representation because one of our mentors
is on the faculty there.”
Three have Arkansas ties — tenor Daniel Foltz-Morrison, singing the role of Sam Polk in Susannah and Don Jose in Carmen; soprano Genevieve Fulks, who’ll sing Susanna in Figaro and will be in the chorus for the other two; and baritone Benjamin Rorabaugh, a student at Harding University in Searcy, one of the company’s “studio artists,” who participate by forming the cast of the annual children’s opera, which tours Northwest Arkansas, and sing in the chorus.
That children’s opera this summer is Jack and the Beanstalk, John Davies’ setting of his libretto to Gilbert & Sullivan music (and so it’s not quite, as it’s being billed in some places, “Gilbert and Sullivan’s Jack and the Beanstalk”).
The main stage schedule (all Inspiration Point performances, 7:30 p.m.; at Arend Arts Center, 3 p.m.):
The Marriage of Figaro,
June 23, 28, July 1, 6, 13 and 19; July 2 in Bentonville
Susannah, June 24, 29, July 7, 11, 15, 20; July 9 in Bentonville
Carmen, June 27, 30, July 5, 8, 12, 14, 21; July 16 in Bentonville.
Inspiration Point will also host a special Opera Sampler, featuring selections from all three mainstage operas, 7:30 p.m. July 3, and an Opera Scenes program, portions of other operatic works, 7:30 p.m. July 18.
Members of the orchestra will perform in the annual Chamber Music concert, 7:30 p.m. July 17 at the Eureka Springs Auditorium, 36 S. Main St. And “A Taste of Opera,” 5 p.m. July 19, at the Crescent Hotel, 75 Prospect Ave., Eureka Springs, will feature food, wine and opera entertainment. Ticket information is available online at opera.org.
Outreach performances of Jack and the Beanstalk will take place in Eureka Springs on June 28; Springdale July 6; Green Forest July 8; Rogers July 12; and Bentonville July 13. A public performance is on the schedule for 2 p.m. July 1 at the Eureka Springs Auditorium. Tickets are $10, free for children under 18.