Season Announcement
Cool collabs fill the bill for Dallas Opera's 2019-20 season
It's been 10 years since the Winspear Opera House opened, and the Dallas Opera is paying tribute to the sleek scarlet building by naming its 63rd season "Standing Ovat10n."
Of the five mainstage productions, audiences can expect to see a co-production with Santa Fe Opera of a rarely performed work; a ballet with song — featuring dancers from Dallas Black Dance Theatre — on a double bill with a one-woman drama; and three perennial favorites.
"The coming season offers a splendid opportunity to both celebrate and recollect our first decade in the Winspear Opera House," says the DO's general director and CEO Ian Derrer. "It is also marked by a balanced mix of great opera in several languages, from classic to modern, in both popular and brand-new productions."
It begins with Mozart's The Magic Flute, set in a fairytale world where a young prince must brave enchanted beings and beasts to rescue his love. This production, originally directed by the late Sir Peter Hall, was designed by British cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, best known for a half century of scathing political cartoons for The London Sunday Times and for directing and designing the animation sequence for Pink Floyd's film and concert versions of The Wall. Sung in German with English supertitles, it runs October 18, 20 (matinee), 23, 26, and November 1 and 3 (matinee).
Next is a work by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, perhaps best known as the composer of Scheherazade. The Golden Cockerel centers on a lazy king who's surrounded by terrible advisors, a leader who'd rather be in bed eating bonbons than waging war. But when an astrologer gives him a magic bird that will sound the alarm whenever danger is near, the king thinks he can rest easy — until a voluptuous young queen arrives and demands his keys to the kingdom. Co-produced with the Santa Fe Opera and sung in Russian with English supertitles, it runs October 27 (matinee), 30, and November 2.
A concert version of Verdi's Don Carlo is the first opera of 2020, bringing the Spanish Inquisition to the stage. A French princess is forced to marry King Philip II of Spain against her will when her heart belongs to Don Carlo in what The New York Times described as "the Hamlet of Italian opera." A generation has passed since the Dallas Opera's sole presentation of this titanic tale of clashing Catholics and Protestants, and it runs March 20, 22 (matinee), 25, and 28.
The double bill of Stravinsky's Pulcinella and La Voix Humaine by Francis Poulenc and Jean Cocteau brings music and dance together into one experience. Dallas Black Dance Theatre supports the three singers of Pulcinella, which is about a mercurial rogue who constantly interrupts other people's romances because the ladies can't resist him. Patricia Racette, meanwhile, is starring in the one-woman show whose title translates to The Human Voice, about a woman who's having one final phone conversation with her callous and longtime lover, who is leaving her for another. The two shows — which have never before been seen in Dallas — run April 3, 4, 5 (matinee), and 8.
A longtime favorite closes out the season: Rossini's The Barber of Seville. This sunny comedy is filled with famous tunes and centers on "Figaro, Figaro, Figaro!" a scheming barber and jack-of-all-trades who plots to release the pretty young Rosina from her gilded cage so his pal Count Almaviva can marry her. It runs April 24, April 26 (matinee), 29, May 2, 8, and 10 (matinee).
The Dallas Opera's acclaimed family performance series, which aims to help children develop an early love of opera and music, also continues with two shows.
An operatic version of the Brothers Grimm classic fairytale The Town Musicians of Bremen is enhanced with music by Rossini, Donizetti, Offenbach, Arthur Sullivan, and Verdi to become The Bremen Town Musicians. A rooster with operatic aspirations is chased away from his farm for waking the barnyard with his tenor arias, while a dog and a cat are cast out by their owner for being too old to catch rabbits and mice. The three animals run into the woods near the road to Bremen, where a retired army donkey is playing his drum. Working together as a team to overcome difficult circumstances, the newly formed Bremen Town Musicians celebrate the idea that friendship, cooperation, and respect for others is far better than facing problems alone. Performances are October 13, 2019, and April 4, 2020.
Doctor Miracle by Georges Bizet is a romantic, one-act operetta about love and omelets that Bizet composed for a music competition when he was just 18 years old. A youthful vitality permeates this story, set in 19th-century Padua, Italy, in the home of the mayor, his wife Veronica, and his love-struck daughter, Laurette. She's enamored of the ever-resourceful Silvio, an army captain, who dons one disguise after another to infiltrate the household, in order to win the hand of the girl he adores. Performances are October 6, 2019, and March 21, 2020.
Flex subscriptions for three mainstage performances of your choice begin at $24, while full subscriptions begin at $100 for all five productions. New subscriptions will become available on April 2, 2019.
Single tickets for next season will start at $19 and are expected to go on sale in early July. Student rush $15 tickets are available 90 minutes prior to curtain with a valid student ID.
For additional information, call the Dallas Opera ticket services office at 214-443-1000 or go online at www.dallasopera.org.