Coda | BLO | Fall 2016

THE MAGAZINE OF BOSTON LYRIC OPERA | FALL 2016

ESTHER NELSON, STANFORD CALDERWOOD GENERAL & ARTISTIC DIRECTOR | DAVID ANGUS, MUSIC DIRECTOR | JOHN CONKLIN, ARTISTIC ADVISOR

EDITORIAL STAFF Lucy Caplan Cathy Emmons Julia Propp Lacey Upton Eileen Williston CONTRIBUTORS John Conklin Richard Dyer Judith Malafronte Harlow Robinson MISSION The mission of Boston Lyric Opera is to build curiosity, enthusiasm, and support for opera by creating musically and theatrically compelling productions, events, and educational resources for our community and beyond. We produce opera in all forms, large to small, popular to lesser known, from early music to newly-commissioned works.

ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE Boston Lyric Opera 11 Avenue de Lafayette Boston, MA 02111-1736 P: 617.542.4912 | F: 617.542.4913 AUDIENCE SERVICES 617.542.6772 | boxoffice@blo.org EXTERNAL RELATIONS Clara Reitz 617.542.4912 x2240 | creitz@blo.org COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT Lacey Upton 617.542.4912 x2420 | education@blo.org PATRON SERVICES Bailey Kerr 617.542.4912 x2450 | bkerr@blo.org GROUP TICKETS Rebecca Kittredge 617.542.4912 x2630 | boxoffice@blo.org For a full listing of BLO staff, please visit blo.org/about.

BLO’s programs are funded, in part, by grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Two-handled jar (amphora) depicting Oedipus and the Sphinx of Thebes, the Achilles Painter, 450–440 B.C., Ceramic, Red Figure | Bequest of Mrs. Martin Brimmer | Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

GREEK: OEDIPUS AND THE SPHINX THROUGH ART AND MUSIC October 9, 2016 | 2:00 – 3:00pm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston | Remis Auditorium

Boston Lyric Opera performers present the iconic Oedipus story though the unique Surrealism of Cocteau, the brutal melodrama of Seneca, and the searing operatic evocations of Enesco and Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Greek. Explore the dark center of this legend—Oedipus’ dramatic confrontation with the half-woman, half-lion figure of the Sphinx.

To purchase tickets to the event: visit mfa.org/tickets. $16 for BLO subscribers, MFA members, seniors and students; $20 for nonmembers.

Post-event reception with BLO performers: $50 per person

WELCOME TO BLO’S 4Oth ANNIVERSARY SEASON AND THE FALL ISSUE OF CODA! The beginning of the opera season is always filled with anticipation, but this year there is a special thrill in the air as we launch our preparations for Opening Night. Boston Lyric Opera’s 40th Anniversary Season is a milestone, not only for us, but for the entire community of opera producers, artists, and audiences— from dedicated subscribers to occasional attendees, from the schoolchildren who enjoy our performances and programs each year, to the men and women across our city that we haven’t yet met. We launch our celebration with “4O Days of Opera,” featuring live performances and events and brand new online content not only from BLO, but also from many of the diverse opera companies throughout Boston. Meet our partners and learn more about the events and activities during “4O Days of Opera”—and the history of BLO—on page 12.

In this edition of Coda, we focus on the first two operas of the Season. We open at the Opera House with Bizet’s Carmen, the highly anticipated U.S. bicoastal debut of Spanish director Calixto Bieito, one of opera’s most daring contemporary directors. Next, our Opera Annex presentation is Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Greek, a rebellious, defiant retelling of the Oedipus story set in 1980s London, which will be staged at the Emerson/Paramount Center. There is an interesting juxtaposition of those two operas. I was immediately pulled into Bieito’s telling of the Carmen story when I first saw it.

Gone are the trappings of the traditional expectations and alive comes a defiant young woman with palpable passion, determined in her desire to survive in a dangerous and often violent society. Turnage’s Eddy (Oedipus) defies the mainstream in Thatcher-era London, and even thumbs his nose at Sophocles with an expected twist ending (learn more on page 5).

These works are bold, visionary, and challenging, but above all, they are filled with real and highly charged emotions, central to all powerful operas. Our 40th Anniversary is a celebration. I look forward to sharing it with you.

Esther Nelson

Stanford Calderwood General & Artistic Director

On our cover: Boston Lyric Opera’s four Carmens: Lorraine Hunt (1994), photo by Richard Feldman; Jossie Pérez (2002), BLO Archives; Dana Beth Miller (2009), photo by Jeffrey Dunn; and Jennifer Johnson Cano, upcoming in 2016, photo by Liza Voll Photography.

Unraveling the Enigma of Carmen........................................................................... 2 High Five: Get to Know Carmen in Five Minutes or Less..................................... 4 The Hero: Complexes and All.................................................................................. 5 High Five: Get to Know Greek in Five Minutes or Less........................................ 7 Comrade Carmen: The Spanish Civil War Connection........................................ 8 Sitting Down with Mark-Anthony Turnage............................................................ 10 4O Days of Opera: Launching August 23............................................................12 The World of Carmen...............................................................................................16 The Turmoil of Thatcher’s London..........................................................................18 Contributors..............................................................................................................20 Curtains.......................................................................................................................21 CODA Magazine underwritten with the support of Jane and Jeffrey Marshall.

BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2016 | 1

From left: Carmen’s premiere poster at the Opéra Comique, 1875. Henri Lucien Doucet, Mademoiselle Célestine Galli-Marié dans le rôle de Carmen, oil on canvas, 1886 (Galli-Marie sang the role of Carmen at the opera’s premiere). Illustration of Bizet’s opera Carmen, published in Journal Amusant, 1875. Verlag Hermann Leiser, Georges Bizet, Berlin-Wilm, c. 1860-1875.

UNRAVELING THE ENIGMA OF CARMEN

CARMEN IS A BORN ENTERTAINER. IT MAY BE HER NATURE, FOR SHE IS A CREATURE OF INSTINCT. IT MAY BE A SURVIVAL TOOL, TO DISARM A THREAT OR ENTICE A VICTIM.

BY JUDITH MALAFRONTE

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Each of her arias is a dance, an outlet, and a showcase for her vitality and white-hot energy.

She introduces herself in the slinky, sultry Habanera, an exhibitionist’s proclamation that love obeys no law. It is a standard opéra-comique song, two verses with backup chorus, but the vocal line entices in its slow chromatic descent, while the truth bites naughtily, “If I love you, watch out!” Her hands tied, she sways and taps out a breezy Séguidilla with promises of sex (even giving the address “chez Lillas Pastia”) that gets her out of a prison stay. Her night-club song accelerates from languid undulations to a frenzy of pounding and stomping. The lyrics describe the very act of performing, with burning, feverish intoxication, dissolving into a wild orgy of “tra-la-la”s. Later, three girls tell their fortune with cards, but Carmen’s mounting vision of death pulses with the slow heartbeat of a ritual dance.

Who is this woman and what does she want? When is she most herself? She gets into a fight at the cigarette factory where she works and flirts with the restraining officer Don José who consequently spends a month in prison for letting her go. She is amused and perhaps touched. How much further can she push him? She makes him beat up his own captain and then join her on a smuggling gig. It is no surprise that she soon gets bored with a guy so easily manipulated. He doesn’t disappear, though, like her other discarded lovers, even though a sweet and simple girl waits for him back home. He comes back in pursuit of the one and only Carmen, who is now seeing a toreador, Escamillo, she met in a bar.

When she finally convinces this groveling and raving ex-soldier it is over, he kills her.

It is hard to believe that this most popular of operas, with its familiar tunes and colorful dances, was a flop at its first performance in 1875. “Carmen is neither scenic nor dramatic,” one critic wrote. Others claimed, “of melody, there is but little” and “if it were possible to imagine His Satanic Majesty writing an opera, Carmen would be the sort of work he might be expected to turn out.”

Even with the experienced libretto team of Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, protests accompanied the work from its inception. The director of Paris’ Opéra-Comique, where lighter fare balanced the grander works given at the Palais Garnier, was scandalized by the subject matter. “Bandits, gypsies, and girls working in a cigar factory? At a family theater?” The low-life setting was bad enough, but having the heroine die onstage was too much. “Death at the Opéra-Comique? This has never happened before. Don’t let her die. I implore you!” The protesting opera director Adolphe de Leuven eventually resigned his post and librettist Halévy mutilated the pages from his diary that cover these stressful months.

The realistic setting, scandalous as it was, helped spark a musical equivalent of the verismo school in literature, with its true (“vero”) and gritty stories of peasants, criminals, and the down-

trodden. Operas like Cavalleria Rusticana, I Pagliacci, and La Bohème replaced political, historical, and mythological plots with contemporary and often violent stories. As it was, Carmen’s libretto team had already sanitized the story and tamed the characters from Prosper Mérimée’s novella, itself influenced by a poem by Alexander Pushkin. Mérimée’s heroine viciously slashes the face of another girl at the cigarette factory, steals the narrator’s watch as an alternative to cutting his throat, has multiple lovers, and is married to a one-eyed ex-con.

The opera’s Don José is elevated from a violent bandit-murderer to a Dragoon corporal tied to his mother’s apron strings. The librettists even gave him a girlfriend back home in the form of the virtuous and chaste Micaëla, foil to the immoral and irresponsible Carmen. The critics objected nevertheless.

After the disastrous premiere Bizet, depressed and suffering from throat problems, left Paris and died of a heart attack just three months later, convinced he was a failure. He was 36 years old.

Planned performances of Carmen in Vienna went on anyway, with the original spoken dialogue replaced by grand operatic recitatives composed by Ernest Guiraud. Productions in Brussels and London soon followed, and it premiered in New York in 1878.

From the beginning, criticism centered on the depiction and performance of the title role. The first interpreter, Célestine Galli-Marié, had supported Bizet from the start, enlisting other members of the cast, and resisting demands to change the graphic ending. After Bizet’s death, she championed the work and took her interpretation all over Europe, returning to the OpéraComique for a final performance as Carmen in a fundraiser for a statue memorializing the composer. But early critics found GalliMarié’s interpretation “trivial and brutal; she turns this feline girl into a cynical harlot.”

Already the male gaze is at work, with men judging and often conflating the heroine and her impersonator. One writer is disgusted by what he sees as a progressive decline in the morals of heroines; he considers Carmen “a veritable prostitute of the gutter and the street-corner.” To one, she is “heartless, lawless, devoid of honor,” to another, “a wild animal who charges right into danger.”

One critic was infuriated by both Carmen and Galli-Marié, writing that he wanted “to put an end to her mad hip-swinging, confining her in a straitjacket after having refreshed her by pouring a tub of water over her head.” Both Carmen and Galli-Marié’s realistic performance were deemed unfit for the family-oriented theater.

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WHO’S WHO JENNIFER JOHNSON CANO AS CARMEN ROGER HONEYWELL AS DON JOSÉ Conducted by David Angus and production by Calixto Bieito, with Revival Director Joan Anton Rechi. Scenic Design by Alfons Flores, Costume Design by Mercè Paloma, and Lighting Design by Robert Wierzel.

HIGH FIVE:

Get to Know Carmen in Five Minutes or Less CARMEN SEPTEMBER 23 – OCTOBER 2 Music by Georges Bizet Libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy Based on the novella Carmen by Prosper Mérimée Length: Approximately 2 hours, 45 minutes, including 1 intermission SUPER-SHORT SYNOPSIS Carmen, a gypsy girl working at a cigarette factory, seduces the soldier Don José, wooing him away from his sweetheart, Micaëla. José helps Carmen escape from jail after a fight at the factory, and she persuades him to join her band of smugglers in the mountains. Once there, José becomes jealous of the famous toreador Escamillo, who is also attracted to Carmen. The tensions mount: Carmen mocks José’s jealousy, the men fight, and Micaëla pleads with José to return home to his dying mother. At Escamillo’s next bullfight, José confronts Carmen and begs her to return to him. She rejects his entreaties and declares her freedom.

In a fit of rage, José stabs Carmen to death.

THE SOURCE Carmen is based on Prosper Mérimée’s 1845 novella of the same name. The tale of an Andalusian bandit who tells wild stories of gypsies and bullfights, the novella exemplifies 19th-century Europeans’ fascination with travel, adventure, and exoticism. Bizet’s librettists, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, adapted Mérimée’s work to abide by the conventions of French opéra comique. The transformations didn’t stop there: the original production contained spoken dialogue, which composer Ernest Guiraud later replaced with recitatives. Today many productions—including BLO’s—have returned to using the original spoken dialogue, as Bizet intended.

THE MUSIC Carmen’s glorious melodies are familiar to many listeners, even those who have never seen the opera. While the music clearly evokes the opera’s Spanish setting, it is not especially “authentic,” 4 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA SPRING 2016

Bizet’s manuscript of the Habanera from Carmen. Inset: Poster for the film version of Carmen Jones, Saul Bass, 1954.

as Bizet never visited Spain and was not well-versed in its music (for instance, Carmen’s famous “Habanera” is based on what he thought was a folk song, but was actually a piece by an obscure composer). The opera is best understood as a combination of musical traditions: Spanish sounds mix beautifully with French lyricism, rich chromatic harmonies, and Bizet’s distinct compositional voice.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS Carmen’s 1875 premiere at the Paris Opéra Comique ignited a critical controversy. Some critics admired the music but objected to the characters’ “dubious morals,” while others found music and story equally unpalatable. Jean-Henri Dupin, a friend of librettist Henri Meilhac, was especially harsh: “I won’t mince words. Your Carmen is a flop, a disaster! It will never play more than twenty times.” Needless to say, Carmen’s detractors were mistaken. A subsequent production in Vienna was a success, and today the opera is performed hundreds of times each year. Tragically, Bizet never lived to see his opera’s astonishing popularity. He died suddenly at age 36 just months after the premiere, convinced that Carmen was a failure.

FUN FACTS • What’s in a name? The Latin word carmen means song, poem, or magic spell. It’s also the root of the word “charm.”

• T he opera’s librettists invented the word “toréador” to replace “torero” (Spanish for “bullfighter”). Its four syllables are a better fit for Bizet’s melody.

• O ne of the world’s most popular operas, Carmen has inspired more than 80 adaptations, from the 1940s Broadway musical Carmen Jones to a 2001 film, Carmen: A Hip Hopera, starring a young Beyoncé. A 2005 South African remake, U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha, toured Boston last year.

THE : HERO COMPLEXES F

AND ALL

ew concepts from modern psychology have entered the cultural and popular imagination to the extent of Sigmund Freud’s Oedipus Complex. At once a source of revulsion and titillation, the theory that young boys desire their mothers and hate their fathers is named for the ancient myth of Oedipus, who unwittingly fulfills an oracle’s prophecy that he will marry his mother and kill his father and, when he learns the truth, puts out his own eyes in despair. Yet the opera Greek, based on the play of the same name by Steven Berkoff, finds the courage—and the audacity—to turn the legend on its head: the modern-day Oedipus (Eddy) defiantly lives his passion rather than retreating in shame. Is it wrong? Or…could Eddy actually be right?

The opera—and the selections that follow from the play, the opera, Freud, and more—flirts with the ambivalence between love and duty, passion and jealousy, eroticism and paternalism as Eddy seizes his own destiny. [\ EDDY: So I run back, I run and run and pulse hard and feet pound It’s love I feel, it’s love What matter what form it takes, it’s love!

GREEK, MARK-ANTHONY TURNAGE

[\

SELECTED BY JOHN CONKLIN Photo collage: Sigmund Freud by Max Halberstadt. Sophocles bust, Pushkin Museum.

JOCASTA: And as for this marriage with your mother— have no fear. Many a man before you in his dreams, has shared his mother’s bed.

Take such things for shadows, nothing at all— Live, Oedipus as if there is no tomorrow.

OEDIPUS THE KING, SOPHOCLES

w

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His destiny moves us only because it might have been ours— because the Oracle laid the same curse upon us before our birth as upon him. It is the fate of us all, perhaps to direct our first impulse towards our mother and our first hatred and first murderous wish against our father. Our dreams convince us that this is so.

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS, SIGMUND FREUD

[\ Freud’s Oedipus was engaged in a struggle for emancipation, first from maternal nature and then from the culturally produced constraints—paternal, symbolic, cultural identifications … When the boy finally left the unconscious dynamics of the Oedipal relations behind, he brought to consciousness, and thus to completion, the process by which he recognized himself as the subject of his own history.

HAVING AND BEING, JOHN E. TOEWS

[\ EDDY: Why should I put out my eyes, Greek style, Why should you hang yourself Does it really matter that you’re my Mum? Have you seen a child from a mother and son?

No. Have I? No. Then how do we know that it’s bad?

Bollocks to all that!

Yeah, I want to climb back inside my Mum. What’s wrong with that? It’s better than shoving a stick of dynamite up someone’s arse and getting a medal for it.

DAD: You don’t fancy your Mum, do you son? You don’t want to kill me, do you boy?

EDDY: Fancy my Mum? I’d rather go down on Hitler.

GREEK, TURNAGE

[\ What Oedipus gives us, positively, is not a purgation of despair but an enthusiasm for Oedipus’ single great quality: his absurd courage. Oedipus, as he begins to see where he is going, secretly delights in it. Camus defines the absurd life as a “permanent revolution” and defines revolt as a “constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity.” Oedipus is a man in revolt against his destiny, his fate … he defies the oracles at the same time he is submitting to them. He refuses to turn back his search, he refuses Jocasta’s compromises, he refuses to alter his collision course with destiny … he becomes an absurd hero.

OEDIPUS AND THE ABSURD LIFE, ROBERT COHEN

[\ Eddy seeks to reaffirm his beliefs and to calculate a new order of things with his vision and life-affirming energy. His passion for life is inspired by the love he feels for his woman, and his detestation of the degrading environment he inherited. If Eddy is a warrior who holds up the smoking sword as he goes in, attacking all that he finds polluted, at the same time he is at heart an ordinary young man with whom many I know will find identification.

INTRODUCTION TO GREEK, BERKOFF

GREEK, STEVEN BERKOFF

[\ In the symbolic and theatrical representation of a process of revealing, I might compare the poet [Sophocles] to the work of the psychoanalyst. The past is unraveled, the guilt of Oedipus is brought to light … we are compelled like Oedipus to uncover and recognize in our own inner minds those suppressed impulses.

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS, FREUD

[\ Freud depicted the very first stages of life as already involving a dialectic of ambivalences which result from a political dynamic of domination and dependency … Freud’s paradigm dependence evokes both love and aggression. Love leads to feelings of protection and safety on the one hand and anxiety on the other, which at first gives rise to submission and obedience, and then to endeavors to gain power and become independent, as well as to hate and hostility.

OEDIPUS POLITICUS, JOSÉ BRUNNER 6 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2016

The psychologist Sigmund Freud (at age 16) with his adored mother in 1872.

WHO’S WHO MARCUS FARNSWORTH AS EDDY CAROLINE WORRA AS MUM Conducted by Andrew Bisantz and directed by Sam Helfrich, with Scenic Design by John Conklin, Costume Design by Nancy Leary, Lighting Design by Chris Hudacs.

Attic red-figured kylix Oedipus hears the riddles of the sphinx attributed to the Painter of Oedipus about 480/470 BC.

HIGH FIVE:

Get to Know Greek in 5 Minutes or Less GREEK NOVEMBER 16 – 20 Music by Mark-Anthony Turnage Libretto by Mark-Anthony Turnage and Jonathan Moore Adapted from the verse play Greek by Steven Berkoff Length: Approximately 1 hour, 30 minutes SUPER-SHORT SYNOPSIS The setting is London’s East End, where the aimless Eddy lives with his parents. Upon learning of a fortuneteller’s prediction he will kill his father and marry his mother, Eddy storms off in search of love and adventure. He murders the owner of a café and falls in love with the owner’s wife, whom he marries.

Ten years later, Eddy’s parents visit. London is besieged by social ills which seem to be caused by a Sphinx, whom Eddy confronts and ultimately kills. But then Eddy’s parents deliver the shocking news that he is not actually their son. Horrified, Eddy realizes that the fortuneteller’s prophecy has come true—the woman he married is his birth mother. Yet unlike Oedipus, he reacts with defiance, proclaiming that he will continue to love as he pleases.

FROM ANCIENT GREECE TO MODERN BRITAIN Greek is not only a reworking of the famed Greek tragedy, but also an adaptation of a 1979 play by Steven Berkoff. By setting Sophocles’ work in contemporary London, Berkoff offered a pointed commentary on the state of Britain in the late 1970s. For his part, Turnage has stated that his political sensibilities, which paralleled Berkoff’s, informed his interest in adapting this work for the operatic stage. Read more on the political climate of 1980s London in “The Turmoil of Thatcher’s London” on page 18.

THE MUSIC Mark-Anthony Turnage incorporates varied influences into the score of Greek: you’ll hear echoes of Stravinsky alongside modern jazz, the dramatic idiom of Kurt Weill, and the sounds of 1970s rock. Veering dramatically between harshly violent sounds and moments of remarkable beauty, this multifaceted soundscape is well-suited to the intense emotional trajectory of the opera, in which Eddy’s feelings move from murderous anger to blissful love to sheer horror.

A BREAKTHROUGH MOMENT Turnage was only 28 years old and a relatively unknown composer when Greek premiered at the Munich Biennale in 1988. It was an immediate sensation due to the perennially shocking story of Oedipus, the profane language of the libretto, and the vivid originality of the music. After winning prizes for best opera and best libretto in Munich, Greek had its UK premiere one month later at the Edinburgh Festival. Its first performance in the United States was at the Aspen Music Festival in 1998. BLO’s production marks the first major U.S. production of this compelling work.

FUN FACTS • The orchestra for Greek contains some unconventional percussion instruments: riot shields, trash can lids, police whistles, and even brake drums! These unusual sounds enliven the opera’s gritty aesthetic.

• F our singers perform all 11 roles in Greek, switching rapidly from character to character (only the singer playing Eddy has just one role). This tactic creates a sense of theatricality and instability around Eddy, who spends most of the opera unaware that he has been doomed by his grim fate.

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“Carmen was always about politics,” writes musicologist Susan McClary. The power of Georges Bizet’s wildly popular opera, she continues, “lies not in its ability to inspire consensus, but rather in its success at provoking and sustaining debate along the central faultlines of 19th- and 20th-century culture.”

These same faultlines split wide open in the earthquake that was the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Many of the issues raised in the opera underlay this bloody and confusing conflict: antagonism between social classes; tension between modern urban and traditional rural values; economic inequality; discrimination on the basis of race and gender; and sharply divergent views of morality, particularly sexual conduct. But the Spanish Civil War was much more than an isolated national struggle. Because the two opposing forces represented Fascism on the one hand, led by the conservative military under General Francisco Franco, and an elected socialist-dominated

COMRADE CARMEN:

THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR CONNECTION

BY HARLOW ROBINSON

Republican government on the other, it quickly became a proxy war between the rising Fascist power of Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Stalin’s USSR, the undisputed leader of the world Communist movement.

DUTCH NATIONAL ARCHIVE

Sympathizers of both sides poured into Spain to support their respective causes. Among them were idealistic Americans (the Abraham Lincoln Brigade) and numerous famous writers who wanted to be where the action was. One of these was George Orwell, who in his book Homage to Catalonia recorded his wartime adventures fighting with the (frustratingly diverse) Republican forces in and around Barcelona. “I had dropped more or less into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites.” Much to Orwell’s regret, however, the Fascist forces prevailed in the end, installing dictator Franco at the head of a repressive one-party oligarchic state that endured until his death in 1975.

Franco with his wife Carmen Polo in 1968.

8 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2016

If Bizet’s Carmen had lived during the Spanish Civil War, she would surely have sided with the Republicans. A proud member of the proletariat (making cigarettes in a large Seville factory), she experiences oppression not only as an exploited employee, but also as an independent woman with her own salary. She boldly challenges bourgeois respectability and sexual conventions,

Defensive walls in Ceuta, North Africa.

behaving more like a man than a woman in boldly satisfying her desires. Even more, Carmen is a Roma, member of a marginalized ethnic group (more popularly known as gypsies) that encountered intense racial discrimination. She represents, therefore, a triple threat to the male-dominated hierarchy upheld by the powerful Catholic Church. In her unabashed and exhibitionistic sexual promiscuity, she stomps all over the conservative “family values” promoted by the military leaders.

Carmen as revolutionary—this has been a recurring theme in productions of the opera for decades now. Even before the Spanish Civil War, Communist cultural commissars saw in her a vivid and useful fellow traveler. A revisionist staging in Soviet Moscow in 1925, set in a Polish industrial city, made Carmen into a “bright Jewish Communist girl” who strives to convert José to her political cause.

When stabbed by jealous José in the last, scene, she “uttered a fiery eulogy of Communism,” according to an eyewitness account.

In 1984, Frank Corsaro directed the opera for New York City Opera and transferred the setting to the Spanish Civil War, making Carmen a martyr to the Republican cause as she attempts to help her terrorist comrades launch an attack on the bull ring!

The most recent and acclaimed production at the Metropolitan Opera (directed by the celebrated Richard Eyre) in 2010 also located the action during the Spanish Civil War. In his review, New

York Magazine critic Justin Davidson wrote: “Who is Carmen?

To deliciously scandalized Parisian audiences in the 1870s, she merged fantasies of the erotic south and the tawdrier realities of Pigalle. Today, we can read her as a guerilla in the gender wars, a martyr to personal freedom, a narcissistic virago, or just a selfdestructive vamp.”

The creator of the current Boston Lyric Opera production, Calixto Bieito, has updated the action still further, to the era after Franco’s death, and relocated the action to the tiny Spanish colonial enclave of Ceuta in North Africa, still dominated by the post-Franco military. Bieito was born in 1963 in Catalonia, while Franco was still in power, and has witnessed the remarkable transformation of Spain in recent decades from a repressive totalitarian state to a liberal secular democracy with progressive social policies, especially towards sexual minorities. In an interview, Bieito, one of the most sought-after opera directors in the world today, has observed that he wanted to make the setting less specifically Spanish and more universal. His Carmen, he said, “walks along the border.”

For Bieito, as for all Spaniards, the Civil War was the defining event of modern Spanish history. In her brazen defiance of authority of all kinds, Bizet’s seductive heroine (or anti-heroine), the rebellious Comrade Carmen, embodies the most noble impulses of revolutionaries not only in Spain, but throughout the world.

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“ I WAS ATTRACTED TO THE MIXTURE OF TRAGEDY AND COMEDY, THE WAY THE PLAY VEERS FROM ONE DIMENSION INTO ANOTHER; IN THAT RESPECT IT IS LIKE SHAKESPEARE.” – TURNAGE

Want more Mark-Anthony Turnage?

An expanded interview special is coming this October to blog.BLO.org!

Turnage at the BLO administrative office, March 2016.

SITTING DOWN WITH

MARK-ANTHONY

TURNAGE

BY RICHARD DYER

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M

ark-Anthony Turnage’s first opera, Greek, was a sensational success at its world premiere in Munich and launched his international career as a major composer. He was only 28 at the time.

“When the opera came to Edinburgh the next year,” Turnage admits, “I tried to throw my parents off the scent. I even gave them the wrong dates. But when I was standing in the lobby, I saw them in the line to pick up their tickets, and there was nothing I could do to stop them …” In fact his parents loved the opera, but one of them did ask him why he had to use such bad language.

Then he was off the hook—he said, “I didn’t write the words— Steven Berkoff did!”

One of the things that Greek paradoxically does is to restore shock value to words you can now hear in most movies or television shows or overhear on any trip on the Red Line; we still do not expect to encounter them in an opera, and what those words do, and what the music does even more, is renew the power of this archetypal story.

Greek has its origins here in Massachusetts. In 1983, Turnage was a composition fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, where he worked with composer Gunther Schuller, and also studied with the Hans Werner Henze, the eminent German musician who was that summer’s composer-in-residence. Henze felt that Turnage had a real dramatic and theatrical instinct—and Henze would know, having composed more than a dozen successful operas himself.

Turnage initially said, “no,” because opera had never been a part of his musical world, and the whole “posh” dimension of the Royal Opera House held no appeal for him. Ultimately Turnage gave in—the opportunity was too great once Henze had arranged a commission from the Biennale Festival in Munich.

Steven Berkoff is best known in America as an actor in a chain of bad-guy roles in movies—he was even a Bond villain—but in England he has also been prominent as an in-your-face playwright and director. Turnage was initially interested in another play of Berkoff’s, but Berkoff himself suggested Greek. “And he was right,” said Turnage in an interview at the BLO administrative offices in March 2016. “I was attracted to the mixture of tragedy and comedy, the way the play veers from one dimension into another; in that respect it is like Shakespeare. With its series of short scenes, it is almost like a film. Some of it is hard-edged and brutal, but there are also long, poetic, lyrical speeches.”

Turnage also explored a mother-son relationship in his opera Anna Nicole. Pictured are Eva-Maria Westbroek as Anna Nicole and Jason Broderick as her son, the teenage Daniel, in the Royal Opera House production.

The opera tells the story of young Eddy, who rises in the world through craftiness and ambition. Along the way, he unknowingly murders his father and marries his mother, but he does not realize he has done so until the moment of crisis at the close.

Turnage admits he made a slow start on Greek—he had never before composed anything lasting longer than 10 or 15 minutes, and he found the prospect of writing 90 minutes of music intimidating.

Gradually, he grew in confidence and speed as he progressed.

The first thing you hear in the music is the rhythm of a chant heard at every soccer game—he’s a fan of Arsenal—which becomes a kind of motif in the whole opera. The music has a lot of violence in it, a strong percussive presence; there is a fair amount of speaking in it, but an equally strong lyrical impulse— there are arias and even a love duet. Jazz plays a prominent role.

There are only four singers, and three of them sing multiple roles (10 of them in all); only Eddy is always Eddy (Turnage is particularly keen on baritone Marcus Farnsworth, his favorite Eddy to date, who will take on the role for BLO). The 13 members of the orchestra must also be versatile—there are two percussionists, but each instrumentalist also plays percussion; no violins, but three cellos, brass, woodwinds, and soprano saxophone, creating a unique range of colors and attacks.

Turnage is now 56, and no longer an angry young man, “the bad boy of British music.” But he is still youthful, offbeat, and puckish in manner, and his music is still exploratory and out on the edge: he has composed a substantial and impressive catalogue of orchestral music as well as works for other ensembles and jazz musicians. There have also been two other operas, The Silver Tassie and Anna Nicole, with two additional operas in progress.

Speaking of Greek today, he says, “I am still fond of it. I am struck about how raw some of it is, and there are things in it I am not proud of anymore and that I could do better now. But I wouldn’t want to revise those things—there’s no point in rounding off the edges. After all, Greek is not mine any more …” Indeed, Greek belongs to the operatic repertory now, and soon, Boston will find out why.

BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2016 | 11

BILL COOPER

Amidst all the excitement and acclaim there was only one remaining obstacle to overcome: his parents had not yet seen it.

They were, of course, proud and happy, but Turnage was worried about how they would respond to the shocking language in the libretto, which was drawn from a play by Steven Berkoff which transferred the ancient story of Oedipus into East End, London, during the Thatcher era; the plagues of this new Oedipus were massive unemployment, riots, and political unrest.

THINK BOSTON ISN'T AN OPERA TOWN? THINK AGAIN. 4ODAYS.BLO.ORG #4ODAYSOFOPERA

4O DAYS OF OPERA: AUG 23 – OCT 2 With our 4Oth Anniversary taking place in the 2O16/17 Season, Boston Lyric Opera has distinguished itself as the longest-running opera company in the city’s history— a milestone achievement not only for the Company, but also for the entire opera community of Boston.

We’re currently in the midst of 4O Days of Opera, designed to celebrate the art form and its history in Boston, and to bring the opera community together— from producers to attendees to artists. Over the course of these 4O music-filled days, audiences are invited to immerse themselves in the art form through live events presented by BLO and by partner organizations, online articles, one-of-a-kind videos and digital content, and more.

Boston’s opera scene is thriving, and there’s never been a better time to join the music.

BLO is honored to collaborate with many of Boston’s leading opera producers to create opportunities for opera-goers and novices to experience opera throughout Boston and beyond.

Our 4O Days of Opera partners include: ArtsBoston ArtsEmerson Beth Morrison Projects Boston Baroque Boston By Foot Boston Center for Adult Education Boston Conservatory Boston Early Music Festival Boston Midsummer Opera Boston Opera Collaborative Boston Opera House Boston Public Library Boston Public Schools Arts Office Celebrity Series of Boston Emmanuel Music

Friends of Madame White Snake Guerilla Opera Handel + Haydn Society Henry Purcell Society of Boston Longwood Opera New England Opera Club NEMPAC Opera Project MetroWest Opera Odyssey Opera Opera on Tap OperaHub Opus Affair Somerville Theatre The Boston Opera Guy

DON’T MISS THESE EXCITING EVENTS, COMING UP DURING 4O DAYS OF OPERA! DIMITRIJ FRI, SEPT 16 | 7:30PM Odyssey Opera Conducted in concert by Gil Rose At: New England Conservatory Jordan Hall A TASTE OF CARMEN: SPANISH WINES, TAPAS, AND OPERA MON, SEPT 19 | 7-8:30PM BLO in partnership with Boston Center for Adult Education LOOSE, WET, PERFORATED WED, SEPT 21 – SAT, SEPT 24 | 8PM Guerilla Opera Score and Libretto by Nicholas Vines At: The Zack Box Theater at The Boston Conservatory STREET PIANOS BOSTON: PLAY ME, I’M YOURS FRI, SEPT 23 – MON, OCT 10 Celebrity Series of Boston Locations throughout the city of Boston BACH MAGNIFICAT FRI, SEPT 23 | 7:30PM & SUN, SEPT 25 | 3PM Handel and Haydn Society At: Symphony Hall CARMEN FRI, SEPT 23 – SUN, OCT 2 Boston Lyric Opera At: Boston Opera House TOURS OF BOSTON OPERA HOUSE & BLO’S CARMEN FRI, SEPT 30 | 4PM & 5PM Boston Lyric Opera At: Boston Opera House This is a free ArtWeek Boston event!

More information on these events and others, plus digital content, at: 40DAYS.BLO.org BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2016 | 13

4O YEARS OF BLO:

BLO ARCHIVES

RICHARD FELDMAN

A TIMELINE From left: Lorraine Hunt as Carmen and John Fowler as Don José. Deborah Voigt and Erie Mills in Ariadne auf Naxos.

1976: Three small Boston opera companies, New England

Regional Opera, Associate Artists Opera, and New England Chamber Opera Group, joined forces to form Boston Lyric Opera. The fledgling Company had its first performance on December 26, 1976: Amahl and the Night Visitors.

1981: BLO performed Aida with the Brookline Symphony

at the Edward A. Hatch Memorial Shell on the Charles River Esplanade—complete with a live elephant tethered near the stage—and reportedly attracted about 10,000 audience members.

1987: BLO produced the first entirely computer-assisted opera ever, entitled Countdown, after winning an OPERA America “Opera for the Eighties and Beyond” grant.

1989-90: BLO moved to the Majestic Theatre (now the Emerson/Cutler Majestic).

1991: Emerging star Deborah Voigt sang her breakout

performance in BLO’s Ariadne auf Naxos. Ms. Voigt became one of the most sought-after sopranos in opera, performing regularly at top opera houses around the world.

1981: BLO became company-in-residence at Northeastern

University, performing at the Alumni Auditorium.

1992: BLO joined forces with Boston Opera Theater, seeking to ensure the future of professional opera in Boston.

1985: Mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt made her BLO

1994: BLO forged a major partnership with WGBH public

debut in Agrippina; she also sang the title roles in BLO’s productions of Beatrice and Benedict (1992/93 Season) and Carmen (1993/94). She went on to a storied career including performances at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, and Salzburg Festival.

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radio, and the Company began broadcasting its performances throughout New England, beginning with Carmen that Season and continuing through 2008.

Visit us online for an in-depth history of BLO’s 4O Seasons at blog.BLO.org!

JEFFREY DUNN

BEN GEBO PHOTOGRAPHY

BLO ARCHIVES

ERIC ANTONIOU

Clockwise from left: Jossie Pérez and Alan Schneider in Carmen on the Common. Christine Abraham and David Kravitz in Clemency. Joyce Castle in The Turn of the Screw; projected above from L-R are Rebecca Nash, Kathryn Skemp, Aidan Gent, and Vale Rideout. BLO and the Landmarks Orchestra at the Hatch Shell.

1998: BLO acquired Opera New England (ONE), which

presented children’s operas, joined BLO and subsequently became BLO’s Education and Community Programs Department.

1998: BLO transitioned to the Shubert Theatre (now the Citi

Performing Arts CenterTM Shubert Theatre), in the 1998/99 Season; the Shubert would serve as BLO’s home for 18 years.

2002: BLO celebrated its 25th Anniversary with a gift to the

city of Boston: Carmen on the Common. Performed on Boston Common twice—for free—more than 140,000 people attended, and the event garnered awards from the Boston City Council, Arts and Business Council of Greater Boston, and OPERA America.

2009: BLO partnered with Boston Landmarks Orchestra for a free, staged concert at the Edward A. Hatch Memorial Shell. This collaboration became an annual event attracting approximately 10,000 people each year through 2014.

2010: BLO formalized its Emerging Artists initiative,

which offers paid performance opportunities, job training, and artistic coaching to professional singers, pianists, stage

directors, stage managers, and conductors who are poised to make breakthroughs in their careers. The initiative was renamed the Jane and Steven Akin Emerging Artists in 2015 in honor of the couple’s longstanding commitment to BLO.

2010: BLO launched Opera Annex, an annual presentation of a chamber opera in a non-traditional space, with Britten’s The Turn of the Screw.

2014: BLO released its first commercial recording, of

MacMillan’s Clemency, the 2013 Opera Annex selection.

2016: Celebrating its 40th Anniversary Season, BLO moved

to produce its Season’s four operas in four unique and historic venues: Carmen in the Boston Opera House—the first time local opera has been performed there since the days of Sarah Caldwell’s Opera Company of Boston; Opera Annex: Greek at the Emerson/Paramount Center; The Rake’s Progress at the Emerson/Cutler Majestic Theatre—a return to the Majestic after nearly 20 years; and The Marriage of Figaro at John Hancock Hall at the Back Bay Events Center.

BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2016 | 15

THE WORLD OF CARMEN

Director Calixto Bieito’s Carmen is a searing take on a classic of the operatic stage. Set in the arid earthiness of 1970’s post-Franco Spanish North Africa, this raw and cinematic vision is a powerful account of the defiantly free-spirited woman and her obsessive lover, set to Bizet’s intoxicating score. In a co-production with San Francisco Opera—marking the director’s long-awaited U.S. opera debut—the production is sure to seduce and enflame Boston audiences.

Take a look at Bieito’s provocative and colorful world, with scenic design by Alfons Flores and costume designs by Mercè Paloma.

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Photos by Alistair Muir for English National Opera.

In some stagings, Carmen actually runs into the knife, proving that Don José lacks the guts. She has manipulated him all along and retains this power into her own death. It is telling that in this final scene she refers to herself in the third person, theatrically. Director Francesca Zambello agrees, insisting that like Don Giovanni, Carmen has a death wish, adding “today, we would have her on meds in a flash.” Some see a battle of the sexes, where Carmen must die for refusing to submit to her man. Others see conflict between a civilized and a wild society, where Carmen’s exotic, chromatic music eventually takes over Don José’s cultured and European singing. Some consider the tug between a good woman (Micaëla) and a bad woman (Carmen). Somewhere between critic Rodney Milnes’ “sluttish femme fatale who destroyed a decent, upright soldier” and the “honest, liberated woman murdered by a maternally dominated psychopath” is Carmen.

In her fascinating study of the opera, musicologist Susan McClary shines a light on the work within the context of exoticism and an orientalist fad in late 19th-century art and music. McClary sees the character of Carmen as an example of the dangerous alien, the “racial Other who has infiltrated home turf.” In literature, art, and music, gypsies and Jews often represented outsiders, free from social norms and strict codes of behavior. Gypsies in particular were seen to have an ability to assimilate the trappings of other cultures, and McClary notes this in Carmen’s ease at slipping between musical styles in her different musical numbers.

Zambello has directed the opera many times and sees, even admires, this adaptability. “She is actually amazing, as she is a smuggler, actress, dancer, singer, and smart little hustler. I imagine her like a lot of clever people who make it through the edges of society.”

Bizet might even have heard gypsies performing exotic songs and dances in Paris nightclubs, and both he and his librettists knew the world of showgirls, entertainers, and artists’ models that fed a well-established prostitution industry. It is even possible that Bizet

A statue of Carmen in front of Plaza de Toros de la Maestranza, Seville, placed in 1973. Seville Plaza de Toros de la Maestranza Bullring.

Poster for an American production of Carmen, Liebler & Maass Lith., New York, c. 1896.

SEVILLE PHOTOS: ROBERT HOLLEY

Carmen continued from page 3 By now pretty much everything has been tried with Carmen.

Peter Brook’s 1983 stripped-down Tragédie de Carmen eliminated the grand opera trappings to focus on the story’s intimacy and fatalistic vision. In the filmed version, Zehava Gal’s clear voice and direct gaze are more alluring than the cleavage and hiked-up skirts of a more traditional Carmen. Risë Stevens, the leading Carmen of the 1950s, was all hungry mouth and feline energy, while Marilyn Horne brought toughness and earthy humor. There is grand vocalism to showcase the verismo vocal talents of Giulietta Simionato and glittery set-pieces for the passionate intensity of Anna Caterina Antonacci. Régine Crespin so commanded the role that a friend remembers the night she kept kicking the knife away from Plácido Domingo—who had accidentally dropped it in their final, fatal duet—until he became genuinely angry at her teasing and taunting. She finally let him pick it up and “died” laughing, as she slowly slid down his body.

modeled Carmen on his patron Céleste Mogador, an illegitimate runaway-turned-prostitute and celebrity entertainer, who married a count and turned to writing. Under Carmen’s influence, Don José dips down into this underworld, where he is destroyed. Yet Bizet himself took the opposite route, giving up his womanizing and clubbing to marry a “good” girl. “No more soirées!” he writes jubilantly. “No more sprees! No more mistresses! I have met an adorable girl whom I love! The good has killed the evil!”

Opera director Beth Greenberg thinks that Carmen needs constant attention to feel powerful and in control over a life of low wages and societal disdain. Sex is her strongest weapon, so she dresses sensationally and moves “like a panther stalking the night—by instinct rather than reason.” In her stagings, Greenberg highlights Carmen’s skills as a singer and dancer, but always clarifies the character’s need to dominate and not merely entertain.

Tchaikovsky admired the vitality and charm of the title character, and found Galli-Marié an outstanding and spellbinding actress, overcoming vocal resources that were “far from first-rate.”

Similarly, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche appreciated what he called an “African” gaiety in the work, a “southern, tawny, sunburnt sensitiveness.” She may be a victim, a seductress, a free spirit, or a demon, but Carmen lives by her own code of conduct. “No, I will never give in to you!” she shouts before her death. In the ensemble that ends Act Two, she cries, “La liberté!” extolling the open sky, the wandering life, the entire universe spread out for the taking. But the most intoxicating thing, she insists, is freedom.

Originally published by San Francisco Opera.

BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2016 | 17

THE TURMOIL OF

BY LACEY UPTON Greek, Mark-Anthony Turnage’s 1988 operatic setting of the Oedipus story, is set in the gritty, seething political turmoil of 1980s London: the era of Thatcherism, of extreme political and social changes, and of artistic and cultural revolt. The prosperity and triumph of capitalism that marked Margaret Thatcher’s time as Prime Minister from 1979-1990 were not without cost or controversy—especially in the arts.

ROB BOGAERTS / ANEFO - NATIONAAL ARCHIEF

THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT During the winter of 1978–79, disputes between unionized workers and Prime Minister James Callaghan, of the Labour Party, led to a series of strikes that crippled the British economy. Demanding that the caps on their pay raises be lifted, public sector unions that went on strike included lorry drivers, train drivers, nurses and ambulance drivers, gravediggers, and—crucially—waste collectors, leading to huge piles of rubbish and trash in London’s posh Leicester Square. All of this disorder, combined with the coldest winter in England in nearly 20 years, hurt the economy and retail spending and brought Britain to a halt. Though the strikes were mainly over by February of 1979, the political fallout cost Callaghan his job, as Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party swept to power that spring.

THATCHERISM Thatcher became Britain’s first female prime minister in May of 1979. She immediately moved to curb the power of the unions, decrease nationalized industry, and promote capitalism.

Determined and resolute, her core principles became known as “Thatcherism”—belief in small government, personal responsibility, and free markets unencumbered by regulation. During her 11 years in office, Thatcher emphatically rejected socialism, reducing the British welfare state, breaking up unions and nationalized industries, and touting traditional values and the nuclear family.

“I am not a consensus politician,” she declared in 1979. “I am a conviction politician.”

From left, Waitress, Act I; Chief of Police, Act I; Doreen, Act I; Eddy, Act I. Renderings

by Nancy Leary, costume designer.

18 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2016

Her first term had a fraught beginning. Unemployment swelled to its highest level since the Great Depression, a record number of businesses went bankrupt, and in 1981 riots broke out in the

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London district of Brixton, the cities of Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, and more. But with time, the economy began to turn and the middle class swelled as she slashed taxes and subsidies to failing industries, sold over a million public housing units to their occupants, sold state-owned industries to the private sector, and took on the National Union of Mineworkers in an infamous 1984 standoff that culminated in a strike of 362 days.

From left, Margaret Thatcher, 1983. The Brixton riots, 1981.

“Skinheads,” by Miles Gibson, Telegraph Sunday Magazine, Number 320, November 21, 1982.

THATCHER & THE ARTS The arts and culture sector did not escape Thatcher’s cuts. She pushed the arts to be profitable and self-sufficient, shifting away from state subsidies to a greater reliance on corporate sponsorship.

Britain’s leaders in the arts ridiculed her tastes as provincial, and her focus on commercialism as antithetical to true “art.” Thatcher came to stand in for everything that had gone wrong in Britain in the view of many cultural leaders and the intelligentsia: greed; bourgeois, reactionary tastes and values; and the worship of capitalism.

THATCHER & GREEK Steven Berkoff’s verse play Greek, upon which the opera is based, premiered in February of 1980—shortly after the Winter of Discontent and Thatcher’s rise to power, but before her reforms began to take effect. As he explained it in the foreword to the play, “Britain seemed to have become a gradually decaying island, preyed upon by the wandering hordes who saw no future for themselves in a society which had few ideals or messages to offer them.”

Mark-Anthony Turnage was in his late 20s when he composed Greek, and he described himself at the time as “very antiThatcher and anti-Conservative.” There were many disaffected by her dismissal of culture and pushed to the fringes of society by her focus on traditional, reactionary family values, with little tolerance for alternatives outside the mainstream. Turnage’s Greek premiered in 1988, during Thatcher’s third term. She had already gone from underdog candidate to Prime Minister, been lauded as the savior of the economy, been vilified as narrow-minded and unyielding, and taken her place as a world leader. Polarizing and dominant, Thatcher was nothing if not operatic.

BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2015 | 19

Join us for the Gala opening of Boston Lyric Opera’s electrifying new co-production of Carmen and 4Oth Anniversary Season

CODA CONTRIBUTORS v John Conklin (page 5) is an internationallyrecognized set designer and dramaturg. He has designed sets on and off-Broadway, at the Kennedy Center and for opera companies around the world, including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Bastille Opera in Paris, the Royal Opera and the opera houses of Munich, Amsterdam, and Bologna, among many others. Mr. Conklin is on the faculty of New York University’s Tisch School and has served as the Artistic Advisor to BLO since 2009. v Richard Dyer (page 10) is a distinguished writer and lecturer. He wrote about music for The Boston Globe for more than 30 years, serving as chief music critic for most of that time. He has twice won the Deems Taylor/ASCAP Award for Distinguished Music Criticism. v American mezzo-soprano Judith Malafronte (page 2) is currently on the faculty at Yale University and writes regularly for Opera News. v Harlow Robinson (page 8) is an author, lecturer and Matthews Distinguished University Professor of History at Northeastern University.

His books include Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography and Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood’s Russians. He is a frequent lecturer and annotator for the Boston Symphony, Metropolitan Opera Guild, and the Aspen Music Festival.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2016 Pre-Performance Cocktails | 5:30pm Upper and Lower Lobbies, Boston Opera House, 539 Washington Street

Boston Opera House, 539 Washington Street

Gala Dinner | 10:00pm The Ritz-Carlton, Boston, 10 Avery Street 20 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2016

Jennifer Johnson Cano sings the title role in BLO’s Carmen

LIZA VOLL PHOTOGRAPHY

East Coast Gala Premiere of Calixto Bieito’s Carmen | 7:00pm

Over a weekend of perfect weather in September of 2002, a reported 140,000 people enjoyed Carmen on the Common, celebrating BLO’s 25th Anniversary Season.

CURTAINS

A LOOK BACK AT BLO’S PAST PRODUCTIONS

BLO ARCHIVES © 2002

BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2016 | 21

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Coda

+

noun \ co·da \ ‘ko¯-d \ symbol O \ (1) a concluding musical section that is formally distinct from the main structure (2) something that serves to round out, conclude, or summarize and usually has its own interest.

CELEBRATING 4O YEARS OF WORLD-CLASS OPERA IN THE HEART OF BOSTON.

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