Our 2008 - 2009 Season
As Antony Walker begins his seventh season as Artistic Director and Conductor, Washington Concert Opera presents its grandest season ever, with two full-scale operas and a special concert of operatic offerings with orchestra.
Our first opera on November 9, Maria Padilla, features one of Donizetti’s most powerful scores, with music full of emotion and virtuosity. It is a dramatic work of intrigue and cruelty containing some of Donizetti’s most compelling music. Making their WCO debuts will be Leah Partridge as Maria, Jennifer Rivera as Ines, and Scott Hendricks as Don Pedro. Don Ruiz is Bruce Ford, who returns to WCO after his outstanding performance here as Otello in 2007.
The second opera will be Saverio Mercadante’s Il Giuramento, to be presented on May 31, 2009. Mercadante was the most important composer in Italy in the period before Verdi, when Rossini and Donizetti were both resident in Paris. This opera established a new direction for Italian opera, with arias and cabalettas streamlined to maximize dramatic flow, vocal melodies imbued with colors and emotions specific to the dramatic situation, and more prominence given to the orchestra. The result is a dramatically taut, expressive, and visceral work more reminiscent of Verdi’s dramatic middle period. Returning to WCO to head the cast are Elizabeth Futral (Elaisa) and Donnie Ray Albert (Manfredo), so outstanding as Desdemona in Rossini’s Otello and Luisa’s father in Luisa Miller, respectively. Making his WCO debut is James Valenti, a young American tenor building an impressive career in Europe singing Verdi and Puccini roles.
Between these two performances is our special concert on May 3, 2009 starring mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, who was so impressive in our Tancredi in 2006. The concert will feature operatic highlights from Rossini, Verdi, and other composers and will celebrate the wonderful diversity of her operatic artistry. She will be partnered by soprano Nathalie Paulin, who will be remembered for her stellar performance with WCO in Handel’s Orlando in 2006. They will be accompanied by the WCO orchestra with Maestro Walker on the podium.
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