The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
ENJOY ITALIAN MUSIC WITH ANNA MARIA VILLA QUINTET
The Greater Middletown Concert Association will open its 2019-20 concert season at 7:30 p.m., Sept. 28 with a performance by New York’s acclaimed singer Anna Maria Villa and her Anna Maria Villa Quintet, presenting “The Italian-American Songbook”.
All four concerts will be held in Middletown’s newlynamed Santo Fragilio Performing Arts Center, 200 LaRosa Lane. The Sept. 28 show will also include jazz standards, swing, and Great American Songbook selections as well as Italian music both classic and more contemporary music.
Italian-born Anna Maria Villa and her Quintet most recently performed at the 1,500-seat Paramount auditorium in Huntington, Long Island in August. She has appeared nationally and internationally, including in her beloved Italy. Her style of singing is smooth, elegant, expressive, appealing and fun. She thrills audiences with her emotion-filled interpretations.
The second concert is scheduled for Nov. 16, presenting the awe-inspiring opera “Tristan und Isolde” by master composer Richard Wagner. The renowned Connecticut Lyric Opera and Connecticut Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra will stage it live in our large theater that is fitting for this epic. The orchestra will be enlarged to suit the performance of this opera’s orchestration. The love that emerges between Isolde, the Irish princess, and Tristan, King Marke’s nephew, when he is transporting her by boat to be the unwilling bride of the king, rises to soulful depths and ecstatic music.
The third concert on April 3 features famous Epic Brass, a brass quintet, brought to such heights by its celebrated founder and leader Ed Raney. The Epic Brass Quintet is one of the most dynamic brass chamber music groups on the concert stage today. Founded in 1983, this Boston-based ensemble combines elegant musical artistry with a youthful flair and brilliance which captivates audiences worldwide. The Quintet has blazed a trail across forty-six states with performances at Carnegie Hall and Kennedy Center. Internationally the group has concertized in over ten countries. The Quintet is praised for its richly varied repertoire which spans Renaissance to twentieth century compositions and red-hot Dixieland jazz.
The final performance on May 30, will conclude the Greater Middletown Concert Association’s 50th Season with one of the most beloved operettas ever composed. “Die Fledermaus” was Johann Strauss II’s most celebrated and popular operetta, intoxicatingly melodious and exuberant. Mistaken identities, flirtations at a masked ball, elegant frivolities and confusions of all kinds provide a hilarious vehicle for some of the most captivating music ever written.
“Die Fledermaus” takes place around 1850 in Vienna. The operetta itself premiered in 1874 Its three acts move from the Eisenstein’s home to Prince Orlofsky’s villa and New Year’s Ball, and then to the city’s jail in the final act. Its orchestral overture is one of the most popular ever written with five of the best operetta tunes woven into a framework of the great Fledermaus Waltz.
Concert tickets are $35 each (front) and $30 (rear). Opera and operetta tickets are $40 each (front) and $35 (rear). Series subscriptions at a discounted price are available by calling 860-343-7555.
To order tickets online use the website: www.Greater MiddletownConcerts.org or call 860-343-7555 for tickets, or visit Facebook.