Season Announcement

Dallas Summer Musicals lands big Broadway shows and new name for 2022-23

Six plays December 6-25, 2022, at the Winspear Opera House

Photo by Joan Marcus

Dallas Summer Musicals — or Broadway Dallas, as it will now be known — has revealed its 2022-23 season of touring Broadway shows in partnership with Broadway Across America, and there are some pretty big names on the list.

"We changed our name from Dallas Summer Musicals to Broadway Dallas to accurately capture who we are and what we do," says Broadway Dallas president and CEO Ken Novice. "It encompasses not only the magnificent work that we put on our stage, but also our other exciting events and community engagement and education programs through which we share 'the spirit of Broadway' with as many members of our community as possible."

In other words, not just musicals and not just in the summer.

The Germania Insurance Broadway Series launches in September with the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Ain't Too Proud - The Life and Times of The Temptations. The group's extraordinary journey from the streets of Detroit to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was written by three-time Obie Award winner Dominique Morisseau, directed by two-time Tony Award winner Des McAnuff (Jersey Boys), and choreographed by Sergio Trujillo. It's set to the beat of the group's treasured hits, including "My Girl," "Just My Imagination," "Get Ready," "Papa Was a Rolling Stone," and so many more. It runs September 6-18, 2022, at the Music Hall at Fair Park.

The series continues with Lincoln Center Theater's critically acclaimed production of Lerner & Loewe's My Fair Lady. Boasting such classic songs as "I Could Have Danced All Night," "The Rain in Spain," "Wouldn't It Be Loverly," and "On the Street Where You Live," My Fair Lady tells the story of Eliza Doolittle, a young Cockney flower seller, and Henry Higgins, a linguistics professor who is determined to transform her into his idea of a "proper lady" — but who is really being transformed? It runs November 1-13, 2022, at the Music Hall at Fair Park.

The worldwide phenomenon Six is next, playing at the Winspear Opera House as part of Broadway Dallas' ongoing collaboration with the AT&T Performing Arts Center. From Tudor queens to pop princesses, the six wives of Henry VIII take the mic to remix five hundred years of historical heartbreak into an exuberant celebration of 21st-century girl power. This new original musical written by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss is the global sensation that everyone is losing their head over. It runs December 6-25, 2022.

Pretty Woman, The Musical, based on one of Hollywood's most beloved romantic stories of all time, springs to life with a powerhouse creative team led by two-time Tony Award-winning director and choreographer Jerry Mitchell. It features an original score by Grammy winner Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance and a book by the movie's legendary director Garry Marshall and screenwriter J. F. Lawton. It runs January 24-February 5, 2023, at the Music Hall at Fair Park.

Enter a world of splendor and romance, of eye-popping excess, of glitz, grandeur, and glory with the first North American tour of Moulin Rouge! The Musical. Baz Luhrmann's revolutionary film comes to life onstage, remixed in a new musical mash-up extravaganza directed by Tony Award winner Alex Timbers. It runs March 15-April 2, 2023, at the Music Hall at Fair Park.

Tootsie tells the story of Michael Dorsey, a talented but difficult actor who struggles to find work until one show-stopping act of desperation lands him the role of a lifetime. It runs April 18-30, 2023, at the Winspear Opera House.

Bartlett Sher is back directing Aaron Sorkin's new adaptation of Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning book To Kill a Mockingbird, which will star Emmy-winning actor Richard Thomas as Atticus Finch. It runs May 16-28, 2023, at the Music Hall at Fair Park.

The Riverdance 25th Anniversary Show is an optional season add-on that's a powerful and stirring reinvention of the beloved favorite, celebrated the world over for its Grammy Award-winning score and the thrilling energy and passion of its Irish and international dance. It runs June 6-8, 2023, at the Music Hall at Fair Park.

Autorenewals for subscription packages will be processed on April 12, 2022 — existing subscribers can log in to their account and renew their seats now. All subscribers will be automatically renewed into the 2023-24 season and beyond; a valid email address and credit card are required.

New patrons are encouraged to sign up for the official waiting list here and will be notified once new subscriptions become available. Subscriber benefits include access to the best seats for one low price, priority access to additional tickets before public on sale, option to enroll in interest and fee-free payment plans, plus ticket exchange privileges.

Single tickets to individual shows will go on sale at a later date. Group pricing is available now for groups of 10 or more. Reserve by calling 214-426-4768 or emailing Groups@BroadwayDallas.org.

Six plays December 6-25, 2022, at the Winspear Opera House.

Photo by Joan Marcus

Six plays December 6-25, 2022, at the Winspear Opera House.

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.”

dso luisi ring wagner recording concerts music symphony