The Duluth Festival Opera will open its 2008 summer season with a newly-conceived, fully-staged production of Verdi’s shocking tragedy, La traviata. The performances will be presented at 7:30 pm on June 26 and 28, 2008 at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center in Duluth’s Canal Park and will feature the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra and the choral singers of the Arrowhead Chorale, led by Stanley Wold. The production will be produced and directed by DFO artistic director, Craig Fields and conducted by DSSO musical director, Markand Thakar.
This young professional company, established in 2005, has promoted and popularized opera as an accessible art form to local and regional Arrowhead audiences. Artistic Director Craig Fields stated that, “The vision for this new company is to produce a powerful, creative, quality opera experience that will inspire the public. As the festival concept unfolds, it will one day transform the cultural and economic landscape of Duluth, much like the music festivals in Charleston, South Carolina (the Spoleto Festival) and Santa Fe, New Mexico. We will gradually build upon the artistic quality of our productions to attract ‘cultural tourists’ from all over the United States. Thanks to the successes of our first three productions, Three Terrific Tenors, Madama Butterfly, and The Barber of Seville, we have gained the enthusiastic support of many Twin Ports’ patrons who share this vision.”
New Time and Setting: Hollywood, California, circa 1937
The tragic story of La traviata, a famous Parisian courtesan who sacrifices love for a moral cause, is the re-telling of the well-known tale of the ‘hooker with the heart of gold.’ The plot will unfold, however, in a new time and place: Hollywood, California during the 1930’s, an era where female exploitation and debauchery lurked beneath the bright lights and glamour of ‘tinsel town’. Derived from the same source as the Garry Marshall film, “Pretty Woman” (but with a happy ending) and the 1937 Greta Garbo film “Camille”, the opera is based upon Alexander Dumas (fils) 1848 novel “The Lady of the Camelias” and is set in the mid-nineteenth century in Paris, France.
For this production we have fast-forwarded the opera’s locale into Hollywood’s glamorous heyday during the sensational 1930’s – among the bright lights, the glamorous movie stars and the powerful studio moguls. Echoing the tragic story of many hopeful young film stars, we enter that murky world where countless beautiful, young women vied for glamour, fame and wealth on the silver screen, only to lose their self-respect, their identity and their souls in the process. The cost of human tragedy is felt anew in a time and place that mesmerized us and re-defined our new American entertainment culture.
The cast of outstanding singers includes beautiful, enigmatic soprano Penelope Shumate, who will sing the role of the compromised courtesan who seeks true love, Violetta Valery. She has recently sung leading roles with the Baltimore Opera, Philadelphia Concert Opera, Opera Roanoke, Opera on the James, Jacksonville Opera and Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. She brings an incredible combination of vocal beauty and dramatic understanding to this most demanding ‘diva’ role.
New American tenor, Marc Schapman, will join the cast as the handsome, intense lover, Alfredo Germont. Mr. Schapman is a “fresh, exciting new voice on the operatic scene.” He presents a handsome figure along with a thrilling lyric tenor voice of outstanding quality and intensity. He recently completed his doctoral studies in voice at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he was a protégé of the great Metropolitan Opera soprano, Martina Arroyo.
Dramatic baritone, John Packard will appear as the unsympathetic father of Alfredo, Georgio Germont. John Packard is garnering international prominence on the opera stage. Creating the acclaimed role of Joseph de Rocher in the San Francisco Opera world premiere of Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally's Dead Man Walking, the San Francisco Chronicle proclaims his voice to be full of "ferocious power and insistence" and The New York Times affirms his characterizations as "deeply and vividly affecting." He recently reprised the role with Semper Oper in Dresden, Pittsburgh Opera, New York City Opera, Baltimore Opera, and can be heard on the world premiere recording of this opera on the Erato Disques label.
Rounding out the cast will be baritone and UMD graduate, Nathan Herfindahl as Baron Douphol, soprano Sally Clayburn as Flora, mezzo-soprano Alicia Heckler as Annina, baritone Gerry Schmidt as Dr. Grenvile and UMD graduate Colyn Tvete in the role of Gastone.
