Friday evening I had a wonderful opportunity to tour the brand new home of the Arizona Opera Company and to hear about their upcoming U. S. premiere of the Opera "Arizona Lady". Above is a view of the rehearsal hall with the cast below.
I am attending this opera later this month so I didn't stay for the whole rehearsal but I did stay long enough to snap a few photos.
As you can see from the photos, this opera has a decidedly Western theme in spite of the fact that it was composed by Austria-Hungarian born Emmerich Kalman. During WW11, Kalman resided in the United States and spent a lot of time watching Westerns and Western films. He wrote this opera as a love letter to his new home in the Southwest. The Arizona Opera Company did quite a bit of work translating the opera from it's original German and preparing it for it's U. S. premiere.
Much of the work that was needed was done by the woman chosen to conduct the opera Kathleen Kelly, pictured above conducting during the rehearsal. It was fun spending an evening with such amazingly talented people and learning about the work that goes into staging an opera that hasn't been presented to an audience in many, many years. I can hardly wait to see it on stage.
I have a new post on Sharon's Sojourns today. Take a look at the treasures inside the Getty Villa.
17 comments:
Great peep into the rehearsals!
Great candid shots.
Mersad
Mersad Donko Photography
What fun to read your post today. I like very much Emmerich Kalman's approach. Enjoy attending this Opera.
This opera promises to be an exciting event, Sharon. What a wonderful love letter to the Southwest and Arizona particularly.
This is just a wonderful story and your photos really help tell it!
That must have been fun to see.
I bet you'll enjoy this night out. Love musicals.
These are delightful shots...thank you for posting them. I shore enuf see some rowdy-lookin' cowboy folks down there. Thet will be inturestin'!
Unusual to see rehearsals... I like the space!
What a great opportunity that was, Sharon! Looks like it will be a fun performance.
Interesting! I haven't heard of Arizona Lady -- how cool to have an opera with local interest!
That just wouldn't work in German. Glad they let you take photos. If you tried that with our opera company they would throw you out.
Looks like a winner, Sharon. Naples also has a new opera company and a new facility, but it seems a lot more modest than this fine space. We await your review of the opera itself.
It looks like great fun!
This sounds like it's going to be a great opera. I like the idea of updating and modernizing to make it more relevant to more people. And nice that you could take pictures here!
I remember I attended a few rehearsals at the Lisbon's Opera House long ago.
It's eye opening to see how much goes into the shows we see hey Sharon, you'll be thinking about this while watching the show :)
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