The Singing Season
Categories: In the News , Entertainment , Award Winners , Local Interest
Cincinnati has a wonderful tradition of welcoming spring and summer with magnificent singing – first the May Festival, held during two May weekends, then the opera season with four productions in June and July.
This tradition has a very long history! The May Festival, established in 1873, is the oldest continuous choral festival in the Western hemisphere. Music Hall was built to house it. Cincinnati Opera, founded in 1920, is the second-oldest opera company in the United States.
The Library will join the celebration this year by unveiling treasures from the Cincinnati Opera Archives, which were entrusted to the Art & Music Department last year. The exhibit Highlights from the Cincinnati Opera Archives, on view in the department from June 13 through September 2, will showcase photographs of the many legendary stars who performed with the company, along with historic programs, posters, scrapbooks, and other documents.
Under long-time musical director James Conlon, the May Festival remains a major event, drawing visitors from around the world to hear the renowned May Festival Chorus and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra with distinguished guest artists. The first of the two weekends has passed, but you can still get tickets for the final performances.
On Friday evening, the Berlioz oratorio L’Enfance du Christ will be accompanied by projections of various artists’ depictions of the nativity story, assembled by Cincinnati Art Museum curators. The Saturday program is Acts II and III of the Gluck opera Orpheus and Eurydice, followed by the Rossini Stabat Mater.
Cincinnati Opera will again present a combination of perennial favorites and newer or less frequently performed works, all sung by international opera stars. This season’s Cincinnati premiere will be Nixon in China by Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer John Adams. Another innovation will be a staging of the charming Mozart farce Così Fan Tutte as a 1930s Hollywood “screwball comedy.”
Here’s the schedule, along with some suggestions for books, librettos, and scores to enhance your experience of what are sure to be great productions:
MAY FESTIVAL
100 years of the Cincinnati May Festival by Sylvia Kleve Sheblessy
25th anniversary of James Conlon as Music Director of the May Festival, a tribute booklet created in 2004
L’Enfance du Christ, Hector Berlioz May 25
The Childhood of Christ: A Sacred Trilogy (piano/vocal score)
Berlioz by Hugh Macdonald
Orpheus and Eurydice, Christoph Willibald Gluck May 26
Orfeo ed Euridice (score)
Orpheus and Euridice: Opera in Four Acts (libretto)
C.W. von Gluck, Orfeo Gluck and the Birth of Modern Opera by Patricia Howard
Stabat Mater, Gioacchino Rossini May 26
Stabat Mater: For Two Sopranos, Tenor and Bass, and Chorus (piano/vocal score)
Rossini by Richard Osborne
CINCINNATI OPERA
Faust, Charles Gounod June 14 & 16
Faust; Opera in Four Acts (piano/vocal score)
Faust: Opera in Four Acts (libretto)The Operas of Charles Gounod by Steven Huebner (reference book)
Memoirs of an Artist; An Autobiography by Charles Gounod
Così Fan Tutte, W. A. Mozart June 28 & 30
Così Fan Tutte (score)
Così Fan Tutte: Opera in Two Acts (libretto)
W.A. Mozart, Così Fan Tutte by Bruce Alan Brown
The Mozart-Da Ponte Operas: The Cultural and Musical Background to Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così Fan Tutte by Andrew Steptoe
Così?: Sexual Politics in Mozart's Operas by Charles Ford Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: A Biography by Piero Melograni
Nixon in China, John Adams July 12 & 14
Nixon in China: An Opera in Three Acts (piano/vocal score)
The John Adams Reader: Essential Writings on an American Composer
Aïda, Giuseppe Verdi July 25, 27, 29 & 31
Aïda: Opera in Quattro Atti (score)
Verdi’s Aïda (libretto with commentary and discography)
Aïda by Leontyne Price (children’s book about the opera by one of the greatest divas to perform the title role)
Verdi's Aida: The History of an Opera in Letters and Documents
Verdi with a Vengeance: An Energetic Guide to the Life and Complete Works of the King of Opera by William Berger
