Set in 1904 Japan, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly is often considered the pinnacle of operatic tragedy, and has become one of today’s most beloved operas. The inspiration for the hit Broadway musical Miss Saigon, Madama Butterfly follows the tragic love story of the innocent, naive geisha Cio-Cio San and Pinkerton, a callous US naval officer. Cio-Cio San, while […]
Based on a book by Tom Philpott, Glory Denied tells the true story of Colonel Jim Thompson, America’s longest-held prisoner of war. The opera deals not only with Thompson’s suffering in the jungle of southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, but also the tragic aftermath that followed his liberation. Colonel Thompson endured his brutal captivity […]
afterWARds uses the words and music of Mozart’s IDOMENEO – perhaps his most radical, modern opera – in a reorganized and distilled 75-minute format that shifts the opera’s focus towards its four protagonists and their timeless struggles for love and peace in a world full of carnage and destruction. afterWARds is set on the island […]
Based on the classic fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, Englebert Humperdinck’s Hansel & Gretel is a fantastical story of a young brother and sister who must navigate an enchanted forest full of twists, turns, and one wicked witch. Siblings Hansel and Gretel are poor peasants. In a major parenting fail, their mother sends them […]
Donizetti’s comic opera Don Pasquale has been entertaining and delighting audiences worldwide since the mid-1800s. The story concerns old and wealthy bachelor Don Pasquale, who has been the caretaker of his nephew, Ernesto, for some time. Pasquale attempts to secure Ernesto’s future by arranging a marriage between Ernesto and a “proper” girl. However, Ernesto is […]
Set against the backdrop of 1830s Paris, La bohème follows four impoverished artists surviving with little more than friendship, passion, and love for their art. When Rodolfo, a poet, and Mimi, a young seamstress, meet, the two are drawn into a tumultuous and passionate affair with a love that can only be broken by death. […]
