Zambello, Francesca

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    She Made Glimmerglass a True Festival. Now She’s Moving On.

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    During Francesca Zambello’s 12 years as the festival’s leader, she did what she set out to do: took on “complex issues through storytelling and music making.”COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Before every opera performance at the Glimmerglass Festival, Francesca Zambello, its artistic and general director, cruises around its bucolic campus in a golf cart that she calls “Grane” after Brünnhilde’s trusty steed. Zambello greets audience members, gives welcome lifts to some older patrons, and gets out regularly to mingle. That a leader should be the festival’s public face is something Zambello takes seriously.On a recent steamy Friday afternoon, she was an especially enthusiastic greeter. A performance of “The Jungle Book,” a youth opera she had commissioned, was about to begin at the Alice Busch Opera Theater, and lots of children, including very young ones, were in the crowd. “Hi,” she said to two little girls holding hands. “Is this your first opera?” When the girls nodded yes, Zambello, like a den mother, said: “That’s so exciting. I bet you’ll love it!”After 12 ambitious, innovative years running Glimmerglass, Zambello, 65, is stepping down after this year’s six-week summer festival, which ends on Aug. 21. She will turn her focus to the Washington National Opera, where she has been artistic director since 2012. Proud of her tenure at Glimmerglass, and for leaving the company, in “a very healthy financial position, far different than I found,” she said in a recent interview, she felt the time was right to move on.She has accomplished what she set out to do. “Creating a ‘festival’ environment and focusing on our brand of theater as a bridge to diverse communities,” she wrote in an email, as well as “addressing complex issues through storytelling and music making.”Commissioning youth operas was just one initiative that Zambello brought to Glimmerglass, one that allowed her to give composers and librettists a chance. And it was essential to her, she said, that “young people should see works by living composers; they should know that music is alive.”She also expanded the young artists program, created an artist residency (this year, it’s Kamala Sankaram, the composer of “Jungle Book”), and commissioned works for almost every festival — 11 in all, including one-acts and, a high point, “Blue” (2019), a timely opera with a score by Jeanine Tesori, and a libretto by Tazewell Thompson. A gripping, timely work about a Black policeman and his wife trying to raise a rebellious teenage son in Harlem, “Blue” has gone on to national stages. It plays in Toledo, Ohio, this month and next spring at Zambello’s Washington company and the English National Opera in London.From the start, Zambello set a goal that “a third of the company should be nonwhite,” she said. This was a public manifestation of her efforts at diversity, and for the most part, she delivered.And while most performing arts institutions talk up their community outreach programs, few have made more efforts than Glimmerglass under Zambello, including bringing opera to Attica, the maximum-security prison in western New York.A scene from the “The Jungle Book,” with a score by Kamala Sankara, this year’s artist in residence.Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass FestivalThese initiatives helped Zambello with her mission — to transform the Glimmerglass Opera, as it was known when she arrived, into the Glimmerglass Festival. Many opera companies and orchestras present summer seasons called festivals that are essentially more of the same. Under Zambello, Glimmerglass has been a true festival, with mostly new productions of works, new and old, with ancillary concerts and talks. All of these often touch on larger themes and issues, a way, she said, to make the festival “more socially responsible,” particularly “during the second half of my tenure.”Last summer, with the pandemic lingering, Zambello presented Glimmerglass on the Grass, with inventively staged, trimmed-down productions performed on a makeshift platform outdoors with amplification. This summer, opera has returned to the main stage — an intimate 918-seat theater — but, to be cautious, no ancillary events were scheduled.This year’s six productions touched to various degrees, Zambello said, on “serious questions around faith, around resistance, around freedom and community.” Especially, to my delight and surprise, “The Jungle Book.”In this version, directed by Zambello and Brenna Corner, Mowgli, the feral boy raised by a pack of wolves, is a girl (the sweet-voiced, impish Lily Grady). In the opening scene, Raksha, the matriarch of the pack (Kendra Faith Beasley), gathers her underlings and tells them: “To get along in the jungle, you have to know who you are.”Sankaram’s music is an enchanting blend of Indian styles, especially from the Carnatic tradition, with Western harmonies, cyclic rhythms, inventive instrumental colors and tender, snappy vocal writing. I hope the young girls and boys in attendance noted that the composer, librettist (Kelley Rourke), conductor (Kamna Gupta), and directors of this enchanting production were all women.A scene from “Taking Up Serpents,” a one-act by Sankaram.Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass FestivalSankaram’s range came through in a production of “Taking Up Serpents,” a 2018 one-act opera, with a libretto by Jerre Dye, on a double bill with a Glimmerglass commission and premiere, “Holy Ground,” with music by Damien Geter and a libretto by Lila Palmer. “Taking Up Serpents” is a dark, intense story of a young woman, Kayla (Mary-Hollis Hundley), who has taken a job at a drugstore in an Alabama gulf town to get away from her parents, who lead a rural church that believes in speaking in tongues and practices rituals with snakes.Sankaram and Dye dig below the parents’ seeming fanaticism to explore the spiritual yearnings that drive them and that, in some way, speak to the confused Kayla. “Holy Ground” explores spirituality quite differently. With a fanciful, skillfully written score, the piece presents a beguiling present-day story of a group of hapless archangels having trouble recruiting a young woman to bear God in human form. (Again? Did the first time not take hold?)Within the context of this summer’s offerings, even a work as familiar as Bizet’s “Carmen” came across with extra bite: a tale of exploited female factory workers and a dark portrait of a “community,” Carmen (Briana Hunter) falls in with a group of bandits. Denyce Graves, a renowned interpreter of the title role, directed the psychologically penetrating production. Zambello’s imprint on the festival had never seen clearer.But back in 2010, when her appointment was announced, she might not have seemed a logical choice for the job. For nearly 30 years, Paul Kellogg (who died last year) had brought gracious leadership skills and a “superb aesthetic,” as Zambello said, to Glimmerglass. When he stepped down in 2006, amid staff turmoil, it went into a four-year transitional period under Michael MacLeod. It was ready for an artistic jolt.Zambello had earned international acclaim as an opera director at major houses in Paris, Milan, London, Moscow and more. She had taken her share of knocks for staging concepts that critics felt did not work, especially in the early years. Her 1992 debut at the Metropolitan Opera, “Lucia di Lammermoor,” was deemed by many a symbolism-strewn fiasco. She came back to the Met in 2003 with a visually stunning and emotionally involving production of Berlioz’s epic “Les Troyens.”But she had never run a company.Ben Heppner and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in Zambello’s visually impressive and emotionally involving production of “Les Troyens” at the Met, in 2003.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“I had hit 30 years of being an itinerant director,” she said. “I wanted to have an anchor.”Sherwin M. Goldman, then the president of the Glimmerglass board (and still a member), said the board took a leap in going with Zambello.“I was not overwhelmed by her taste, to be quite frank,” Goldman said in an interview. “It was more her intelligence than her talent that intrigued me.” Zambello, who was born in New York and grew up in Europe, speaks five languages and talks with sweeping confidence about all facets of theater and the arts.What finally convinced Goldman, he said, was Zambello’s readiness “to fight for what she believed in.” And she was no pushover. “Every day was a fight with Francesca,” he said. “That’s the way she communicated.”At the time, Glimmerglass’s endowment had gone down, and there was a stubborn deficit, Zambello recalled. Along with tireless fund-raising skills, she articulated a bold vision that moved the festival into its next chapter. Her commitment to diversity was clear by her second season, in 2012, when artists from the Cape Town Opera were on the summer roster along with a number of Black American singers. That summer, years before the current discussions about race-conscious casting in opera and theater, Zambello’s festival explored dimensions of this complex issue.Zambello, dressed for “The Sound of Music,” which she director this summer.via The Glimmerglass FestivalThere was a poignant production (by Thompson) of Kurt Weill’s musical “Lost in the Stars,” based on Alan Paton’s novel “Cry, the Beloved Country,” about a Black priest in South Africa struggling to serve his rural congregation. The festival was able to cast with affecting sensitivity to the racial identities of the characters; Eric Owens excelled in the lead role of Stephen Kumalo.There was also a contemporary production of Verdi’s “Aida” directed by Zambello with a Black soprano (Michelle Johnson) in the title role of an Ethiopian princess held captive in Egypt, and, daringly for the time, a Black tenor (Noah Stewart) as Radamès, the leader of the Egyptian forces who is in love with her. The production was asking you to see beyond assumptions about the racial identities of the lovers.Verdi’s opera “is not about race,” Zambello said. “It’s almost a civil argument between Ethiopia and Egypt. It’s not even like there is a fixed border; these are like two tribes.”Then there was a lively staging, by Marcia Milgrom Dodge, of Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man.” With so many Black singers to call upon, the town of River City, Iowa, and its small-minded, gossipy citizenry, came across here as a racially mixed community.“The Music Man” was an early entry into Zambello’s series of classic American musicals, presented in fresh productions, with full orchestras (a rarity on Broadway), singers who combine operatic training and musical theater savvy, and, for the most part, no amplification.This summer Zambello directed “The Sound of Music,” starring Mikaela Bennett in a radiant, endearing performance as Maria. In this vibrant staging, with adorable child performers as the von Trapp children, the musical’s themes of faith, community and resistance to tyranny, which often seem smothered in sentimentality, felt real and timeless.Mikaela Bennett, right, as Maria in Zambello’s production of “The Sound of Music.”Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass FestivalZambello’s successor will be Robert Ainsley, who has been the director of the Washington National Opera’s young artists program and its American opera initiative. “Rob will bring his own sensitivity to programming,” Zambello said, adding, “I know he is committed to continuing to provide a range of ways for people to come together around song and story.”For her part, Zambello is gratified to have overseen the return of live opera to Glimmerglass. Nothing, she said, can replace a “group of strangers, responding together, magnifying each other’s sense of tension, shock, wonder and delight.” More

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      Lend Me a Jukebox Opera. Yuks and Tenor Required.

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      “Let’s do a Rossini comedy that doesn’t exist yet,” the head of the Glimmerglass Festival said. Coming soon: Ken Ludwig’s “Tenor Overboard.”Comic operas tend to be crowd-pleasers: At last, a break from all the tragic deaths and doomed lovers. The problem is there aren’t that many to choose from. Opera companies can program “Così Fan Tutte,” “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” or “L’Elisir d’Amore” and a handful of others only so many times.So Francesca Zambello, the artistic and general director of the Glimmerglass Festival, came up with a novel idea. “I just said, ‘Let’s do a Rossini comedy that doesn’t exist yet,’” she said in a recent video conversation.In other words, a jukebox opera — “Tenor Overboard,” which is to have its premiere at the festival, in Cooperstown, N.Y., on Tuesday and run through Aug. 18.While the jukebox format is common enough on Broadway, it is much rarer in opera houses. Baroque opera lends itself to the genre better than most styles, from the “pasticcio” of yore, which recycled pre-existing works, to “The Enchanted Island” in 2011, a Metropolitan Opera commission in which the librettist Jeremy Sams inserted music by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau and others into a plot borrowed from Shakespeare plays.Undaunted by this relative dearth, or maybe stimulated by it, Zambello called the playwright Ken Ludwig last summer to ask if he would be interested in writing the libretto for the project. He was a good candidate on two counts: He wrote the book for “Crazy for You,” the Tony-winning Gershwin jukebox musical, and his most famous play, “Lend Me a Tenor,” is a farce involving an opera star in the 1930s. (His new “Lend Me a Soprano,” with lead female characters in the same basic plot, opens at the Alley Theater in Houston in September.)Ludwig, an opera buff, jumped on the opportunity to collaborate, sort of, with Rossini. He decided to set “Tenor Overboard” in the 1940s and to cram it with what he called “the great tropes of comic opera.”“Often they are stories about love that can’t be fulfilled because the older generation is trying to stand in the way of the sexual urges of the younger generation: ‘You can’t marry that boy,’” he said in a video chat. “I also wanted a storm — they often change the story, as they did in ‘Barber of Seville’ and ‘The Italian Girl in Algiers.’”Rossini “was such a comic genius,” Ludwig said. “And I’ve tried to write a libretto that is comic in the same way, and in the same way my plays normally have that sense of rhythm.”Adrianna Newell for The New York TimesLudwig cooked up a story involving two New York sisters, Gianna (Reilly Nelson) and Mimi (Jasmine Habersham), trying to escape their domineering father and an arranged marriage for Mimi. They end up joining — in cross-dressing disguise, a narrative device beloved by Shakespeare, opera and screwball comedy alike — an all-male quartet called the Singing Sicilians on a ship sailing to Sicily. Naturally, mayhem ensues.“Tenor Overboard” relies more on theatrical dialogue than on the usual operatic recitative, so Ludwig’s libretto had to be fairly extensive — and funny. “Rossini has given you moments that clearly land comically because he was such a comic genius,” Ludwig said he told the singers. “And I’ve tried to write a libretto that is comic in the same way, and in the same way my plays normally have that sense of rhythm.”Ludwig also retooled the supertitles that accompany the arias, which are sung in Italian, trying to give some of them “rhyme and rhythm,” as he put it. “Opera supertitles do need to convey to people something and you want people to be looking at the stage,” said Zambello, who is directing the production with Brenna Corner, “but these also have a little bit of extra Ludwig humor.”From left, Matt Grady and Gavin Grady, with Stefano de Peppo. “Tenor Overboard” was hatched in about a year. “Rossini wrote his operas sometimes in a month so why shouldn’t we?” Francesca Zambello said.Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass FestivalAfter a general synopsis had been agreed upon, the hardest part was still to come: It had to be filled with music — which, in the end, came from 15 different sources.“We wanted to be absolutely sure that we weren’t just rehashing famous arias of Rossini,” Joseph Colaneri, Glimmerglass’s music director, said on Zoom. “Yes, we have the ‘Barbiere’ duet, but we wanted this piece to also represent lesser-known music by Rossini.”Colaneri became part detective, tracking down obscure versions of obscure operas online and in libraries, and part MacGyver, adapting some vocal scores to make them work in their new context. The text of the “Barbiere” duet, “Dunque io son,” that Colaneri referred to, for example, was slightly adjusted to make sense in the story. And because Ludwig’s main couple is made up of a mezzo and a baritone (a nod to “Dunque io son”), some transposing was required — Rossini tended to pair a tenor and a soprano for the love duets of his comic operas.Another challenge was the scene introducing the Singing Sicilians, whom we first meet at a Y.M.C.A. — because why not? Colaneri looked at male quartets in Rossini operas but couldn’t find anything suitable. So he turned his attention to short pieces the composer wrote for “soirées musicales” after he stopped writing operas, and spotted the patter song “La Danza” (recorded by Luciano Pavarotti, among others).Colaneri had to write a vocal arrangement for two tenors, a baritone and a bass — and more. “It has to work again in the second act because two of the men are replaced by the two women who are in disguise as men,” he said. “They’re singing in the female range, but I designed the piece so that it could work with mixed vocal styles.”“Some people would say, ‘How can you transpose Rossini?’” Colaneri said. “But Rossini did this himself all the time.”For Act 2, Colaneri had to find a basso buffo aria for the sisters’ father, Petronio (Stefano de Peppo). Instead of the popular “A un dottor della mia sorte,” from “Il Barbiere,” he chose “Io, Don Profondo” from “Il Viaggio a Reims” (an opera Rossini himself had harvested for parts, reusing some of it in “Le Comte Ory”). “To me, it’s the greatest of these buffo arias,” Colaneri said. “Rossini kind of went over the top with it. We knew we were going to have Stefano and that he would be able to pull it off.”Contreras and Reilly Nelson in this jukebox opera.Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass FestivalColaneri and his cast also had to deal with the vocal embellishments and ornamentation that are part of performing Rossini. The conductor suggested that the singers listen to Ella Fitzgerald’s live version of “How High the Moon” for an example of masterful improvisation, which he described as “harmonically off the charts.” He also worked closely with them to come up with ornamentations that fit their register and roles. “You can’t write ornamentation for someone until you hear what they can do,” Colaneri said. “You have to kind of suss that out.”As with most comedies, speed and timing are of the essence onstage and even off — “Tenor Overboard” was hatched in about a year. “Rossini wrote his operas sometimes in a month so why shouldn’t we?” Zambello said.Fans should be reassured that they will laugh with Rossini, not at him. “We are seeking to perform these pieces with all the musical integrity necessary to make them come off,” Colaneri said. “We’re taking it all musically very seriously, and putting a spin on it.”Still, it’s clear that Zambello wants this work, part of her last season as the head of the Glimmerglass Festival (she remains the artistic director of the Washington National Opera), to be unabashedly festive. “It’s Italy, Sicily, food — things that people love.”When asked if she was willing to embrace Ludwig’s love of farcical shenanigans and have someone hurl a plate of spaghetti for a laugh, Zambello smiled. “I’m resisting that,” she said. “But I think it’s going to work its way in.” More

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      Robert Ainsley Is Named Glimmerglass Festival Director

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      Robert Ainsley, a champion of new American opera, takes the reins from Francesca Zambello. He said the festival would continue to showcase work that tells “everyone’s story.”The Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, N.Y., announced on Wednesday that it has named Robert Ainsley as it next artistic and general director, giving the festival a new leader as it moves toward its 50th season, in 2025.Ainsley most recently served as the director of the Cafritz Young Artists program at the Washington National Opera and of the American Opera Initiative where, over a span of six years, he commissioned, developed and premiered more than 30 new operas and other works. He has also held leadership positions at the Portland Opera, Minnesota Opera and Opera Theater of Saint Louis and has worked at other summer music festivals.He succeeds Francesca Zambello, who led Glimmerglass, a summer festival of opera and theater, for more than a decade. In an interview, Ainsley said he was committed to building on Zambello’s efforts to “make this an art form for everyone — telling everyone’s story and trying to ensure everyone has agency in how those stories are told.”“She’s really built something that is inclusive and representative of the diversity of America today,” Ainsley said. “And that’s something I really want to carry on and make a central part of our mission.”Robert Ainsley, the new artistic and general director of the Glimmerglass Festival.Arielle DonesonHe also said he was dedicated to ensuring that the festival has a balance of everything from 17th-century opera to musical theater to the kinds of new works and formats he has championed in previous jobs.Glimmerglass has offered new productions and other stagings of opera and musical theater in Cooperstown every summer since 1975.“The intense experience of drawing so many people together from all over the country and all over the world is what makes a festival very special,” Ainsley said. “But what Glimmerglass has is the best bits of all of the summer programs.”In a news release, Zambello called Ainsley “a wonderful artist” who will bring “excellent vision and leadership” to a time of transition for the company. Robert Nelson, the chair of the Glimmerglass Festival board of trustees, said Ainsley “is perfectly poised to lead the Glimmerglass Festival into its next era.”Ainsley said he was eager to get to Cooperstown to become part of the community there.“When an institution gets me, they get all of me,” he said. “Bringing people together of all backgrounds and creating something wonderful is what has made Glimmerglass special, and that’s definitely what I want to do with it.” More

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      Glimmerglass Festival Unveils Its Leader’s Final Season

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      Francesca Zambello, who has overseen a dozen editions of the opera festival in upstate New York, will depart next summer.Next summer, the Glimmerglass Festival of opera and music theater in Cooperstown, N.Y., will return indoors in full force for the farewell season of its artistic and general director, Francesca Zambello, the festival announced on Friday.Zambello, 65, who is also the artistic director of Washington National Opera and an independent stage director, will have led Glimmerglass for 12 seasons when she leaves. In an interview, she said it was the right moment “for a page turn,” and that since she has been with the Washington company for less time, “I decided to extend my contract and devote myself there.”“Part of my heart is super sad, but I also think I don’t want to repeat myself,” she added. “I don’t want to be one of those people. I just want new challenges.”Among the hallmarks of her tenure at Glimmerglass have been the addition of original youth operas each season; an initiative at Attica Correctional Facility; a broadened repertoire that includes Broadway musicals, concert programming and new works; and the introduction of high-profile artists in residence such as Christine Goerke, Eric Owens and, for the 2022 season, Denyce Graves.Graves is scheduled to direct a new production of Bizet’s “Carmen” during next summer’s festival, which will run from July 8 through Aug. 21. It will be something of a homecoming for this mezzo-soprano: Carmen was one of her signature roles. Graves is also set to reprise her performance from this past summer’s outdoor premiere of “The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson,” Sandra Seaton’s play about the founder of the National Negro Opera Company, with music by Carlos Simon.The 2022 program also includes a new production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The Sound of Music,” originally scheduled for 2020 but postponed because of the pandemic; the premiere of “Tenor Overboard,” a Rossini pastiche with a book by Ken Ludwig, the Tony Award-winning playwright of “Lend Me a Tenor” and “Crazy For You”; and a double bill of Kamala Sankaram and Jerre Dye’s “Taking Up Serpents” and the premiere of Damien Geter’s “Holy Ground,” with a libretto by Lila Palmer. (Sankaram, the festival’s composer in residence next summer, also wrote the season’s youth opera, “The Jungle Book.”) More

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      Glimmerglass Creates Magic in Its Own Backyard

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      The pandemic forced the company outdoors and to trim staples by Verdi and Mozart. Our critic found the experience to be ripe with potential for drawing in new audiences.COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — The Glimmerglass Festival has long boasted two features that made it a magnet for opera lovers during summer seasons: A bucolic setting in upstate New York, and the acoustically splendid, ideally intimate Alice Busch Opera Theater, which has a sizable stage and just 914 seats.That very intimacy has made this theater an especially challenging space to present works during the pandemic, and like most performing arts institutions, Glimmerglass was closed last summer, though there was some online programming. But in July live opera came back: the company hosted a monthlong outdoor season — at least it could make the most of its environment.Under the adventurous leadership of Francesca Zambello, the Glimmerglass Festival built a temporary stage on the grassy grounds of the campus. Audience members either sit on the lawn in socially distanced squares, or purchase one of 14 wood sheds, seating six. Of course amplification was necessary. The singers wear microphones; the Glimmerglass Festival orchestra performed from the stage of the opera house, with its sound channeled into the general amplification. (Singers watch the conductor via video monitors.)Natural sound has been the glory of opera for centuries. It’s always hard to fully assess amplified voices. Yet, for the four rewarding programs I took in recently, the sound came across with resonance (sometimes too much) and clarity. The lawn theater, created by the set designer Peter J. Davison, served its function: the raised wood stage is framed by a network of black steel beams, with colored light bulbs dangling on cords from above. A group of tree trunks off to one side provided a permanent feature of scenic designs and blended in magically with the forest background.Raehann Bryce-Davis, a mezzo-soprano with a burnished voice and dramatic fervor, as Azucena in “Il Trovatore.”Karli Cadel/Glimmerglass FestivalThe ongoing challenges of Covid-19 compelled the company to keep performances to 90 minutes or less, with no intermissions. That meant making considerable trims to staples like Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” and Mozart’s “The Magic Flute.” For some devotees this might seem sacrilegious. But during earlier golden eras of opera works were routinely cut. I found the experience fascinating, and rich with potential for drawing in new audiences. Zambello said in an interview that with the informal outdoor setting and intermission-less programs, the festival attracted many people attending for the first time. The crowds have averaged about 700 per performance, she said. The audiences I saw — beginning on Thursday morning with “Il Trovatore” — were eager, despite some steamy weather.The core of the “Trovatore” story might seem the ill-fated love between Leonora, a lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Aragon, and Manrico, the troubadour of the title, an officer in the forces of a rival prince at time of civil war. But the opera is driven by Azucena, supposedly the mother of Manrico, who is consumed with fulfilling her mother’s dying command to “Avenge me,” after the woman was accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake.Zambello, who directed the production with Eric Sean Fogel, decided to make Azucena the focus. This adaptation, set in contemporary times, opened with Part 2 of Verdi’s work, which the composer subtitled “The Gypsy.” Here, Azucena (Raehann Bryce-Davis, a mezzo-soprano with a burnished voice and dramatic fervor) sang the character’s gloomy, haunting aria, when she recalls her mother’s dying words, while looking at a steel container emitting smoke from burning refuse. Then, we were taken back to the actual start of the work, the scene with Ferrando (Peter Morgan) and his band of soldiers, here presented as scrappy militia forces of the count.In an opera with a plot as convoluted as this one, it was hard to complain that the reordering of scenes made a hash of the story. Dramatically, the reframing certainly gave a central place to the obsessed Azucena. The bright-voiced veteran tenor Gregory Kunde was a volatile Manrico; the soprano Latonia Moore, the Leonora of this production, was ill on Thursday and replaced by Alexandria Shiner, who displayed a gleaming, powerful voice. The young baritone Michael Mayes was a compelling Count di Luna. Joseph Colaneri conducted a sure-paced account of the abbreviated score.Eric Owens and Lisa Marie Rogali in “The Magic Flute.”Karli Cadel/Glimmerglass FestivalThat evening came Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” performed in an English adaptation and translation by Kelley Rourke, directed by NJ Agwuna, and conducted by Colaneri. This trimmed version introduced Sarastro, the priest who heads a temple of wisdom, as the narrator of Mozart’s fairy-tale opera. We first saw him (the formidable bass-baritone Eric Owens) reading the tale from a huge story book.The concept allowed the creative team to do away with whole chunks of spoken dialogue in Mozart’s work, which, truth to tell, there’s too much of. The other leads, mostly younger artists, were all impressive: the tenor Aaron Crouch as the questing Tamino; the soprano Helen Zhibing Huang as the tender Pamina; Emily Misch as the fearsome Queen of the Night; Michael Pandolfo as a wonderfully hardy Papageno.Concerns during a pandemic about casting three children in the roles of the three boys led to a bold decision: The three ladies who serve the queen see the light, turn against her, and eventually side with Sarastro! So they become the guiding spirits who help bring the opera to its joyous end. And why not? The relative goodness and badness of the characters in this opera is an open question.On Friday morning, the festival presented the final performance of a new play with music, “The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson,” which tells the story of the pioneering founder of the National Negro Opera Company in the early 1940s. Sandra Seaton wrote the play, which loosely focuses on an incident in 1943, when Dawson, who had been presenting opera performances on a floating barge on the Potomac River, tried to book a hall in Washington, D.C., for a performance of “Carmen.” But she was met with Jim Crow policies that would have entailed playing before a segregated audience, which she refuses here to do.Denyce Graves, center, with, to her left, Mia Athey, Victoria Lawal and Jonathan Pierce Rhodes in the world premiere of “The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson.” The play by Sandra Seaton has music by Carlos Simon. Karli Cadel/Glimmerglass Festival“Passion,” directed by Kimille Howard, was conceived as a vehicle for the mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves, who was glamorous, gritty and poignant in the title role. We see her rehearsing three young singers (Victoria Lawal, Mia Athey, Jonathan Pierce Rhodes) for the “Carmen” she hopes to present, while taking infuriating calls from the renter of the hall. Dawson’s story is little-known and this work is an important step in telling it. In a revealing moment for Dawson, we hear Graves sing a melting, wistful song, “Free,” by the composer Carlos Simon, with words by Seaton. But this 70-minute play could benefit by being a little longer and having more of Simon’s music. Zambello, in the interview, said she hopes to develop the work further with Graves in mind.Weather, of course, is always a factor in outdoor opera, and rain and lightning forced the cancellation of Friday evening’s performance of “Songbird,” an adaptation of Offenbach’s “La Périchole.” (It was only the second cancellation, so far, of a 28-performance season.)“Gods and Mortals,” on Saturday morning, was a 90-minute program of excerpts from Wagner operas, directed by Zambello (with Foley as associate) and led by Colaneri. The work came across not just as a staged concert, but also as a dramatic entity on its own terms. Selections from “Tannhäuser,” the “Ring” operas, “Der Fliegende Holländer” and, a rarity, “Die Feen,” Wagner’s first completed opera, were presented in a manner that invited you to simply follow the themes of fate, love, mortality and the supernatural that run through Wagner’s works.The singers were excellent. Shiner, so good in “Trovatore,” was the star here, singing several excerpts thrillingly. Ian Koziara proved a youthful, exciting Wagner tenor. Owens gave a solemnly expressive account of Wotan’s farewell from “Die Walküre.” There was even a feisty performance, with six female singers wearing jeans and forest-green T-shirts, of the “Ride of the Valkyries” ensemble, against a dream-come-true Wagnerian backdrop: a real forest.From left: Mia Athey, Emily Misch, Alexandria Shiner, Stephanie Sanchez and Lisa Marie Rogali in “Gods and Mortals” at the Glimmerglass Festival.Karli Cadel/Glimmerglass FestivalI found the baritone Mark Delavan’s brooding, powerful account of the Dutchman’s monologue from “Holländer” especially moving. He sang this role memorably in 2001, when, four days after the Sept. 11 attacks, New York City Opera returned with a new production of this opera, signaling a first step back to normalcy. The 20th anniversary of that horrific event is coming up, even as New York, the performing arts, and the entire world continue to grapple with a very different kind of crisis. “Glimmerglass on the Grass,” as this summer’s festival was called, provided rewarding signs of renewal.Glimmerglass FestivalThrough Aug. 17; glimmerglass.org. More

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      Glimmerglass Festival to Stage Its Operas Outdoors This Summer

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyGlimmerglass Festival to Stage Its Operas Outdoors This SummerThe festival, in Cooperstown, N.Y., plans to resume performances this summer in “the most ventilated area we could find: the great outdoors.”A rendering of the stage that will be built for summer. The lawn will be transformed into socially distanced areas for four to six people.Credit…via GlimmerglassMarch 1, 2021Updated 7:18 p.m. ETWith many performing arts organizations trying to determine when it will be safe to return to their theaters, the Glimmerglass Festival announced Monday that it would take advantage of its bucolic surroundings in upstate New York to build an outdoor stage so it can perform this summer for socially-distanced audiences on its lawn.The festival, in Cooperstown, N.Y., about 200 miles from New York City, was determined to make a comeback this summer after the coronavirus forced the cancellation of its 2020 season. So it will move performances out of its usual theater, the Alice Busch Opera Theater, to an outdoor stage, and will divide its rolling lawns into socially distanced areas that can fit up to four people with chairs and blankets. Covered booths will also be offered that can fit up to six. “We invite you to join us this summer for a socially distanced festival where you will experience reimagined operas in the most ventilated area we could find: the great outdoors,” Francesca Zambello, the festival’s general and artistic director, said in a video presentation.Festival leaders made the choice to move outdoors from its intimate 915-seat theater “primarily for the health and safety of our company members, audience members and community,” Ms. Zambello said. The stage will be built on the south side of its grounds. The open-air performances will not be the only thing different about this summer’s festival, which is scheduled to run from July 15 to Aug. 17. The company said it would shorten its operas to 90 minutes for the safety of its audiences — avoiding the need for intermissions when people would mingle — and to build on the success it had with an abbreviated work in 2019, when it presented a 90-minute adaptation of “The Queen of Spades,” which combined elements of Tchaikovsky’s score and the Pushkin story. Among this summer’s operas will be shortened versions of Verdi’s “Il Trovatore,” Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” and Offenbach’s “Songbird (La Périchole).” The festival has lined up several opera stars for its summer’s offerings, including the bass-baritone Eric Owens and the mezzo-sopranos Isabel Leonard and Denyce Graves. The company will also mark the beginning of a three-year initiative this season called “Common Ground” that would unveil six new pieces that show an audience stories of life in America. As part of the initiative, the festival will offer two new pieces, a dance called “On Trac| More