Opera Columbus striving for wider audience
An opera aimed at the whole family, a rare Spanish-language opera and a return to the Ohio Theatre are among the highlights of Opera Columbus’ new season.
For its 2022-23 season, the company will open on Oct. 28 and 30 in the Southern Theatre with Gioachino Rossini’s 1817 opera “La Cenerentola,” which tells the Cinderella folk tale familiar to families from film, television and ballet adaptations.
The Italian-language opera fills a void in Opera Columbus’ recent slate of programming, said General Director and CEO Julia Noulin-merat.
“We’ve been building on inviting everyone in, and then when you’re looking back, truly, at this past season, I felt like it was always: ‘13-year-old-plus, 13year-old-plus,’” said Noulin-merat, who joined the company in early 2021.
“(‘La Cenerentola’) is just such a fun, delightful show,” said Noulin-merat, noting that the setting of the opera has been updated to 1950s-era Newport, Rhode Island, to kindle an atmosphere not dissimilar from the Audrey Hepburn movie “Sabrina.”
“I’m really excited to have families come and join us for it,” she said. “I
didn’t want it to be the big 19th-century dresses. I wanted something that was more accessible.”
Mezzo-soprano Sofia Selowsky, who has performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, will sing the title role of Angelina (essentially the same part as Cinderella in other versions of the story).
“We’re very excited,” Noulin-merat said.
On Feb. 24 and 26 in the Southern Theatre, the company will perform Astor Piazzolla’s 1968 tango opera “Maria
de Buenos Aires,” which is notable for being performed in Spanish.
“It is the first time opera in Spanish (will be) performed in Columbus,” Noulin-merat said.
The Promusica Chamber Orchestra will accompany the singers during both “La Cenerentola” and “Maria de Buenos Aires.”
The company will conclude the new season with Giuseppe Verdi’s 1851 Italian-language masterpiece “Rigoletto” on March 31-April 1 in the Ohio Theatre — a venue the troupe has been absent from in recent years. The opera itself has not been in the company’s repertoire for about two decades.
“‘Rigoletto’ hasn’t been done in 21 years (by Opera Columbus),” Noulinmerat said. (The opera was performed by another area company, Opera Project Columbus, in 2019.)
The Columbus Symphony will accompany the singers during “Rigoletto.”
Other performances outside of the main subscription shows are likely to pop up throughout the coming season — fitting for a forward-looking troupe that, during its current 40th anniversary season, has prided itself in performing in nontraditional spaces for its “40 Days of Opera” initiative, including, just this weekend, at the Residence Inn Columbus Downtown.
“We’re still cooking other projects,” Noulin-merat said.
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