While I am continuously working on the upcoming Glimmerglass season, I am simultaneously traveling and directing other works. If you are nearby, I hope you will stop to see one of the shows listed below. Better yet, leave me a comment here if you will be there and I will welcome you myself.
LONDON | ROYAL OPERA HOUSE | DON GIOVANNI
January 21 – February 29
LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO | SHOW BOAT
Feb 12 – March 17
SYDNEY HARBOUR | LA TRAVIATA
March 24- April 15
Photo: Claire McAdams
I’m currently in Switzerland, directing a new production of Rebecca (which you can see on Broadway this coming spring), but as always I have Glimmerglass on the mind. So below is my list of recommended reading for the year leading up to our 2012 Festival.
I’ve linked to the books on Amazon. I hope you will take some time to become familiar with our 2012 Festival shows, and let me know what you think of the reading selections!
AIDA
Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak by Tarek Osman
ARMIDE
The Liberation of Jerusalem by Torquato Tasso & Mark Davie; translation by Max Wickert
LOST IN THE STARS
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
Kurt Weill: A Handbook by David Drew (This book is out of print, so it unavailable brand new.)
MUSIC MAN
Glimmerglass Festival Artistic & General Director Francesca Zambello has been appointed Artistic Advisor to Washington National Opera (WNO).
Zambello will hold this position concurrently with her position at The Glimmerglass Festival, where she was appointed Artistic & General Director last year.
“I am pleased to accept the position of Artistic Advisor to the WNO at the Kennedy Center,” Zambello said. “This relationship builds on my 10-year history with the company. In terms of Glimmerglass, this appointment allows for me to continue my work in larger companies with reciprocal benefits for the Festival, such as the sharing of principal artists and programming, and placing our Glimmerglass Young Artists in other opera houses.”
As WNO Artistic Advisor, Zambello will offer the company advice and expertise related to opera repertoire, casting and creative teams, working in close collaboration with newly appointed Executive Director Michael L. Mael, Director of Artistic Operations Christina Scheppelmann, WNO Music Director Philippe Auguin and Kennedy Center President Michael M. Kaiser.
“We are excited about Francesca’s advisory appointment to WNO,” said Glimmerglass Board Chair Elizabeth Eveillard. “Her relationships with major opera houses bring an added richness of experience to her work at Glimmerglass.”
Zambello is an internationally recognized director of opera and theater, whose productions have been seen at Royal Opera House, Metropolitan Opera, Paris Opera, Teatro alla Scala, on Broadway and more. Her complete Ring Cycle opens in June at San Francisco Opera, where she currently serves as Artistic Advisor. This summer at Glimmerglass, she directs Annie Get Your Gun, starring soprano Deborah Voigt, and A Blizzard On Marblehead Neck, the world-premiere one-act by Jeanine Tesori and Tony Kushner. She returns to San Francisco Opera this fall to direct the world premiere of Heart of a Soldier, and her production of Show Boat opens February 12 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
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The Glimmerglass Festival is a professional, non-profit organization that offers approximately 40 performances of four productions that run in rotation during July and August in Cooperstown, New York. The 2011 Glimmerglass Festival opens with new productions of Bizet’s Carmen and Cherubini’s Medea. Additionally, a double bill of two new operas highlighting American artists features the world-premiere production of A Blizzard On Marblehead Neck, a Glimmerglass-commissioned work by the award-winning team of composer Jeanine Tesori and playwright Tony Kushner, and the professional premiere of John Musto and Mark Campbell’s acclaimed Later the Same Evening. The four operas are joined by Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun, starring world-renowned soprano Deborah Voigt. The mainstage productions are supplemented by special performances, concerts and lectures throughout the season. Tickets start at just $26 and all youth tickets (ages 6-18) are $10 when accompanied by an adult. Call (607) 547-2255 or visit www.glimmerglass.org for tickets and additional information.
Court Watson designs sets and costumes for our upcoming production of Annie Get Your Gun, which will feature leading dramatic soprano Deborah Voigt as Annie.
Court’s designs have most recently been seen at Salzburger Landestheater, Ford’s Theater, the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C. and Theatre Madgeburg in Germany. His production of Cabaret runs through March 27 at the John W. Engeman Theater at Northport. The New York Times review can be read here.
He took a break from his busy schedule recently to tell us a little about his designs for the Francesca Zambello-directed production of Annie Get Your Gun.
“Francesca and I were interested in exploring a time in American history when the real “Wild West” was already gone and we began to romanticize it in a fictionalized glossy way. By the 1890s, there was a Transcontinental Railroad, and Cincinnati was a big city. We looked at the graphic style of the period, from travel posters selling the idea of the Great West as well as folk art and barn paintings. The idea of the sunburst actually came from [a] photo of the rooster on the side of a barn in Ohio, near where Annie Oakley was really from. This graphic style is a romanticized version of the natural landscape in the same way that the musical romanticizes the West, but keeps it late enough that the real West is already gone.
The space is essentially an open space, like the Prairie, that can easily reconfigure as the cowgirls and cowboys of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, in and of itself a celebration of the lost West, push crates of scenery and costumes around. We are presenting their theatricalized version of the West, not the reality of the 1850s, long gone by the 1890s.
Conveniently, there is a WEALTH of biographical information and wonderfully stage studio photographs of Annie and Frank. We have drawn on them, along with period research to create a brightly colored world reminiscent of the Buffalo Bill poster art, tempered with real dirt and grime of these people working with live animals in the Great Outdoors.”
Francesca works with SUNY Oneonta student Alexandra Schleuderer.
Abby Kreh Gibson, the Chair of the Glimmerglass Guild’s Education Committee, writes about Artistic & General Director Francesca Zambello’s recent trip to one of our nearby colleges:
The Guild Education Committee’s past association with the Theatre and Music Departments at State University of New York (SUNY) College at Oneonta was the catalyst for Francesca’s appearance January 26 on campus in the Goodrich Theatre. She conducted a Master Class with four undergraduate students from the Music Department who sang arias from Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. The Music Department’s Tim Newton was the pianist. Francesca immediately put the singers at ease and worked with them to bring a greater understanding of the characters they were portraying and how to better convey their emotions and feelings on the stage.
The Master Class was followed by a “conversation” with Francesca and Theatre Department Chair Patrice Macaluso and faculty member Drew Kahl. The discussion focused on specific aspects of Francesca’s career as well as her wide global experiences. Questions asked were gathered from Theatre majors before the program as well as during the discussion.
The event was a great learning experience for all who attended – SUNY students, faculty and staff as well as members of the public. It was also a fine example of Francesca’s mandate to extend the outreach of Glimmerglass to the community.
Theatre Department Chair Patrice Macaluso and faculty member Drew Kahl with Francesca.
SUNY Oneonta presents The Marriage of Figaro March 16 through 19.
Francesca Zambello, Artistic & General Director, will speak at OPERA America on Wednesday, November 10, as part of the service organization’s Making Connections series, a professional development series for opera artists. Francesca will discuss her career and creative process with OPERA America President and CEO Marc A. Scorca.
Event Details
Time: 7:00 p.m., followed by a reception
Location: 330 Seventh Ave., 16th Floor, NYC
Registration: FREE
Seating for this event is extremely limited. Advanced registration is strongly encouraged.
Click here to register.
Not in New York? This session will be streamed live on www.operaamerica.org.
During the summer, many Glimmerglass staffers are asked – “do you ever take vacation?” The Glimmerglass season is a labor of love. We work many, many hours during the summer, but we love what we do.
That being said, yes, sometimes we do take a vacation. In fact several of us went on a trip out west in early September, which proved to be a somewhat work-related excursion. Abby, Andi and I went west with Yellowstone, the Black Hills and Badlands in mind, and found ourselves steeped in much of the history of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West – the show around which much of Annie Get Your Gun is based. Annie Oakley joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West in 1885 and stayed with the show for nearly 16 years, becoming about as famous as Buffalo Bill himself.
Upon exiting Yellowstone, we traveled to Cody, Wyoming, which Buffalo Bill helped found in the 1890s. We stopped at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center on our way through. And here you can see us posing with Ms. Oakley at Wall Drug in South Dakota.
Glimmerglass staffers with Annie Oakley
Our trip finished at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis where we saw the first preview of The Master Butchers Singing Club, which Francesca Zambello directed and developed. Adapted for the stage by Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Marsha Norman from the best-selling novel by Louise Erdrich, The Master Butchers Singing Club is based in a small town in North Dakota and follows the lives of German immigrant and butcher Fidelis and sideshow performer Delphine. The world-premiere production resonated with us particularly because we had just driven through the landscape in which this work is set. To hear more about the work, click here for an interview with Francesca Zambello and Louise Erdich on Minnesota Public Radio.
Glimmerglass staffers with Francesca Zambello at the opening preview of "The Master Butchers Singing Club" at the Guthrie.
At the MacDowell Colony with (L to R) Playwright Terrence McNally, Deborah Voigt and Music Director and Accompanist Kevin Stites
This photo was taken at the library at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, on July 23. This wonderful artists’ colony has welcomed the likes of Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland and Thornton Wilder. The four of us spent time at the Colony this July to work on ideas for a one-woman show featuring Deborah Voigt, which will premiere at The Glimmerglass Festival next summer.
During Festival Weekend, incoming General & Artistic Director Francesca Zambello spoke to friends of Glimmerglass about her background, her passion for the arts and how she came to join Glimmerglass as General & Artistic Director.WXXI’s Brenda Tremblay drove from Rochester to join us in Cooperstown for our four 2010 productions. While here she sat down with several company members, including incoming General & Artistic Director Francesca Zambello. Click here for the podcast of this interview and hear Zambello’s thoughts on programming, becoming The Glimmerglass Festival and next summer’s world premiere – A Blizzard On Marblehead Neck. You can also follow Brenda Tremblay’s blog here.
