Season Announcement

Disco divas dance into Dallas with AT&T's 2020-21 musical season

National tour of Summer: The Donna Summer Musical

(Donna) Summer takes over fall at the Winspear.

Photo by Nick Gould

Hot on the heels of Dallas Summer Musicals' announcement, the AT&T Performing Arts Center has released its 2020-21 season of Broadway plays and musicals.

Thanks to the partnership between the two organizations, DSM and ATTPAC are sharing two productions, both to be performed at the Winspear Opera House and treated as an add-on for ATTPAC subscribers.

"This season is a lineup of the newest, freshest, and most exciting shows out there," says Debbie Storey, president and CEO of AT&T Performing Arts Center. "Most of these productions are seeing their Dallas premieres, and all will be seen for the first time in the Winspear Opera House, the best stage for Broadway in North Texas."

It starts with Sister Act, the feel-good musical comedy based on the hit 1992 film. When disco diva Deloris Van Cartier witnesses a murder, she is put in protective custody in the one place the cops are sure she won't be a found: a convent. Disguised as a nun, she finds herself at odds with both the rigid lifestyle and uptight Mother Superior. Using her unique disco moves and singing talent to inspire the choir, Deloris breathes new life into the church and community but, in doing so, blows her cover. It runs August 11-16, 2020.

In the fall, it's all about Summer: The Donna Summer Musical. She was a girl from Boston with a voice from heaven, who shot through the stars from gospel choir to dance-floor diva. But what the world didn't know was how Donna Summer risked it all to break through every barrier, becoming the icon of an era and the inspiration for every music diva who followed. Three actresses play the role of musical icon Donna Summer at different points in her life as "Diva Donna," "Disco Donna," and "Duckling Donna," while an inexhaustible ensemble of almost entirely women tear up the stage. It runs September 15-20, 2020.

Heidi Schreck's What the Constitution Means to Me is a boundary-breaking play that breathes new life into our Constitution and imagines how it will shape the next generation of Americans. Tony nominated for Best Play and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, the play resurrects 15-year-old Heidi, who earned her college tuition by winning Constitutional debate competitions across the United States. It runs January 26-31, 2021.

Next, meet Jenna, a Waitress and expert pie-maker who dreams of a way out of her small town and rocky marriage. Pouring her heart into her pies, she crafts desserts that mirror her topsy-turvy life. When a baking contest in a nearby county — and a satisfying encounter with someone new — show Jenna a chance at a fresh start, she must find the courage to seize it. Change is on the menu, as long as Jenna can write her own perfectly personal recipe for happiness with songs by Sara Bareilles. It runs May 4-9, 2021.

For the official season closer, everyone is invited to The Prom. The joyous Broadway hit is a new musical comedy about big Broadway stars on a mission to change the world and a love that unites them all. It runs June 1-6, 2021.

Subscriptions add-ons include Oklahoma! (December 9-20, 2020) and Hadestown (May 18-30, 2021).

The 2019 Tony Award-winning Best Musical Revival Oklahoma! has been reimagined for the 21st century. Stripped down to reveal the darker psychological truths at its core, Daniel Fish's production tells a story of a community circling its wagons against an outsider, and the frontier life that shaped America. Upending the sunny romance of a farmer and a cowpoke, this Oklahoma! allows the classic musical — and our country — to be seen in a whole new light.

Welcome to Hadestown, where a song can change your fate. Winner of eight 2019 Tony Awards including Best Musical, this acclaimed new musical by celebrated singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell and innovative director Rachel Chavkin is a love story for today and always. Hadestown intertwines two mythic tales — that of young dreamers Orpheus and Eurydice, and that of King Hades and his wife Persephone — as it invites you on a hell-raising journey to the underworld and back.

Five-show subscription packages range from $155-$685, with the option to order Oklahoma! for $50-$130 and Hadestown for $50-$140. Information is available at www.attpac.org/broadway, by phone at 214-880-0202, or in person at the box office at 2403 Flora St.

music theater

A good listen

Dallas Symphony and Fabio Luisi release landmark Wagner 'Ring Cycle' set

Fabio Luisi conducting the Dallas Symphony Orchestra

Photo courtesy of Dallas Symphony Orchestra

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Fabio Luisi wanted his Ring Cycle to be heard and not seen.

Wagner’s four-opera epic Der Ring des Nibelungen, approaching the 150th anniversary of its premiere in 1876, has been reinterpreted and deconstructed by directors finding various meanings in the conflicts among gods, humans, giants and dwarfs.

While most new recordings are on video, Luisi led his Dallas Symphony Orchestra in concert performances that were released on 13 compact discs by Delos on May 22 and are available on streaming services.

“Wagner conceived this as a total immersion in visual and acoustic, but I could focus really only on the music, and this was the point actually — not to be distracted by staging and not to have to cope with maybe strange ideas of staging,” Luisi said. “I think the music tells everything.”

Luisi became DSO music director in 2020 and broached the idea while dining two years later with (the now late) Morton H. Meyerson, a longtime board member.

“Fabio came back from lunch sort of giddy but sort of sheepishly saying: `Do you think that this would ever be possible?” recalled Kim Noltemy, the Dallas CEO at the time. “So, I said, well, let’s give it a try. So, we called around to see if there were people who wanted to support it and did a budget.”

After securing a waiver from the orchestra allowing for the needed rehearsals and performance length, recordings were made during four concerts from May 1-5 and six more from Oct. 5-20. Each opera was performed two or three times.

Americans in cast fill big roles
American singers featured prominently, with Mark Delavan as Wotan, Lise Lindstrom as Brünnhilde and Sara Jakubiak as Sieglinde, part of a cast that included Christopher Ventris (Siegmund), Daniel Johansson (Siegfried), Deniz Uzun (Fricka), Tómas Tómasson (Alberich), Michael Laurenz (Mime) and Stephen Milling (Hagen).

Delavan sang Wotan at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2013 after Luisi took over from an ailing James Levine in Robert Lepage’s much-maligned production staged on a 45-ton set of 24 rotating planks.

“We’re accessible and they know that we’re hungry and we have a chip on our shoulders,” Delavan said. “What conductors like about American singers is their technique is sound. Even a European conductor would say: Well, I’m going to give up some of the communication skills, only one degree of separation with the language, but I’m going to get a solid technique, and I’m going to get pretty good acting chops.”

Lindstrom has been in Atlanta to sing in its production of “Götterdämmerung,” the concluding night of the tetralogy, leading to what is being billed as the first complete Ring Cycles in the America South in 2029.

“The wonderful thing about it is the intimacy between the orchestra and us, because we’re not separated by a chunk of stage or a chunk a scenery or a chunk of concept,” she said of the Dallas performances. “And for people like me, who have had the opportunity to perform the role before, I have all those iterations to rely on for my portrayal that I can sort of filter myself through.”

A younger Luisi listened to famous renditions
Luisi, 67, first heard a Ring recording in Georg Solti’s famous studio set with the Vienna Philharmonic from 1958-65. He also admires Karl Böhm’s live recording from the 1967 Bayreuth Festival and Marek Janowski’s 1980-83 studio version with the Staatskapelle Dresden.

He first conducted Ring when he was music director of Dresden’s Semperoper from 2007-10. Luisi’s Dallas performances include more legato and softer sound than his rendition a decade earlier at the Met. He tries to keep an arc from the first notes of “Das Rheingold” to the final strains of “Götterdämmerung.”

“I have a deeper understanding about the meaning of this piece,” he said. “I consider the ring to be a big Bruckner symphony. So we have the introduction, then we have the first movement, this is “Walküre,” which happens to be a slow movement, and then we have the scherzo, which is “Siegfried,” of course, and then the long, long, last movement. There is a unity.”

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