Young Artists Series
Thursday, February 11, 2016
Bonnet House Museum and Gardens, Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Frost Opera Theater returns for its annual performance at the beautiful Bonnet House Estate. The Bonnet House Museum and Gardens Young Artist Series present some of the finest young talents in South Florida each season. The Music Series takes place in and around the house with the concert on the outdoor veranda. Sweet music, balmy starlit nights, and the setting of Bonnet House combine for a truly unique experience.
MAVRA - Igor Stravinsky and AINADAMAR - Osvaldo Golijov
Thursday, April 14, 2016 @ 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 16, 2016 @ 7:30 p.m.
UM Gusman Concert Hall
Jeffrey Buchman, guest stage director
Alan Johnson, music director/conductor and program director - Frost Opera Theater
Stravinsky’s 1922 neo-classical chamber opera in the comic ‘buffa’ tradition of the eighteenth century raises the curtain on another of Frost Opera Theater’s theatrically compelling evenings of two one-act operas. Based on a story by Pushkin, the founder of modern Russian language and literature, this twenty-five-minute opera careens along with four characters featuring two arias, a duet, and a quartet. Sung in Russian with English subtitles.
Few operas have received such critical acclaim as that of Ainadamar (Fountain of Tears), premiered at Tanglewood in 2003, produced worldwide, and recorded in 2006 with soprano Dawn Upshaw, garnering Grammy Awards that year for both Best Opera Recording and Best Classical Contemporary Composition. Taking place in the Teatro Solis, Montevideo, Uruguay, April 1969, and in flashbacks to Andalusia, Spain, Summer 1936, the Catalan tragedian Margarita Xirgu is haunted by her memories of the great Spanish playwright and poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, in life and death.
“Ainadamar is properly saturated in Spanish music, particularly Lorca’s beloved flamenco, but rival influences are felt throughout, just as Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions once mingled on the Iberian peninsula.”
- Alex Ross, Deutsche Grammophone Program Notes
“Golijov’s score is amazing, in its opening distant trumpet calls, its insinuating women’s voice. The end is a devastatingly lush trio, with the voices of Lorca and Margarita from beyond guiding the way for Nuria… A theater of delirium”
- Mark Swed, Los Angles Times
