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DICAPO OPERA THEATER’S 2008-09 SEASON TO FEATURE
SEVEN NEW PRODUCTIONS

Including a World Premiere, Two U.S. Premieres and
A New York Premiere
The New Productions are:
Robert Ward’s The Crucible
Puccini’s Turandot-Concluding Dicapo’s Puccini Project
Tobias Picker’s Fantastic Mr. Fox – New York Premiere
Janácek’s Šárka – U.S. Premiere
Honegger’s La mort de Sainte Alméenne – U.S. Premiere
Lily, with music by Kurt Weill – World Premiere
Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algieri

Special events include the Celebration of Giacomo Puccini’s 150th Birthday with a Gala Concert at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater on December 22, the date of Puccini’s birth
and
A concert of arias honoring the legacy of impresario Guilio Gatti-Casazza and his patron Otto H. Kahn

Dicapo’s first commission—an opera based on The Mortara Case by
Italian Composer Francesco Cilluffo—to be premiered in 2009-10

February 19, 2008…Michael Capasso, General Director of Dicapo Opera Theatre announces Dicapo’s expanded 2008-09 season of seven new productions. Programmed with the company’s Artistic Advisor Tobias Picker, the season is highlighted by a new production of Puccini’s Turandot, which culminates Dicapo’s Puccini Project—the presentation of all of Puccini’s operas, instrumental and vocal works since Dicapo’s founding in 1981—and a 150th Puccini birthday gala at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theatre on the date of Puccini’s birth, December 22. The season also includes the New York premiere of Mr. Picker’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, based on the well-known children’s book by Roald Dahl with British director Walter Sutcliffe in his U.S. debut; the U.S. premieres of Janácek’s Šárka and Honegger’s La mort de Sainte Alméenne in a double bill; the world premiere of Lily, a monodrama inspired by and featuring the music of Kurt Weill, the first in a series of annual monodramas; and new productions of Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algieri and Ward’s The Crucible directed by Robert Alföldi, the newly appointed artistic director of the Hungarian National Theatre, who will also direct this production in November as part of the “Opera Competition and Festival with Mezzo” in Szeged, Hungary.

In addition, Dicapo Opera Theatre has commissioned Italian composer Francesco Cilluffo to write Dicapo’s first new work. The opera, to premiere in 2009-10, is based on the world-famous case about the forcible abduction by papal guards of a Jewish child named Edgardo Mortara and his parents’ desperate attempts to retrieve him.

“As we complete our historic Puccini cycle, I am very excited about steering the company in new and different directions in the future,” commented Mr. Capasso. “We are strengthening our commitment to contemporary works as well as searching for important but neglected operas to bring to our audiences.”

Other special events to take place during the 2008-09 season include a Dance at Dicapo presentation under the direction of Dicapo’s Director of Dance Nilas Martins, the second of an annual series of Composer Retrospective Concerts (this year honoring the legacy of impresario Giulio Gatti-Casazza and his patron Otto H. Kahn), and several presentations for children and their families, including the return of Giannini’s Beauty and the Beast and a Yuletides Classics program. The Dicapo Opera Resident Artists, who perform all comprimario roles, provide covers for leading roles and the ensemble for mainstage productions, will also be featured in the Composer Retrospective Concert and the Death by Aria concert of popular arias. The Resident Artists Program is under the supervision of Dicapo’s Artistic Director Diane Martindale.

2008-09 Season Presentations

Robert Ward’s The Crucible
Thursday-Sunday, September 11, 12, 13, and 14
Dicapo Opera Theatre
Robert Alföldi, director
Pacien Mazzagatti, conductor
Dicapo Opera Theatre’s 2008-09 season opens September 11 with four performances of Robert Ward’s The Crucible, based on the play by Arthur Miller and presented in participation with the first annual “Opera Competition and Festival with Mezzo” to be held in Szeged, Hungary in November 2008, following the New York performances. In his Dicapo debut, The Crucible will be directed by Robert Alföldi, the Hungarian artist, whose only other U.S. engagement was the provocative 2004 production of The Merchant of Venice in Portland, Oregon.

Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot
Friday and Sunday, October 10 and 12
Thursday and Saturday, October 16 and 18
Dicapo Opera Theatre
Michael Capasso, director
Dicapo Opera Theatre’s new production of Puccini’s Turandot is the final presentation in the company’s Puccini Project. Since Dicapo was founded in 1981 when it presented both Il Tabarro and Tosca, it has been dedicated to the music of the great Italian composer Giacomo Puccini. With these performances, Dicapo will have presented every piece of music Puccini ever wrote—his operas and his instrumental and vocal works—through his final opera, Turandot, which tells the story of Calaf, one of many suitors seeking to marry the Princess Turandot. Each must answer three riddles. If they fail to answer correctly, they die. Turandot is best known for one of the most popular arias in all of opera, Nessun dorma.

Tobias Picker’s Fantastic Mr. Fox (New York Premiere)
Saturday and Sunday, December 13, and 14
Friday and Sunday, December 19 and 21
Dicapo Opera Theatre
Walter Sutcliffe, director
Tobias Picker, conductor
Composer Tobias Picker will conduct this new production of his opera Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was premiered by Los Angeles Opera in December 1998. With a libretto by Donald Sturrock, the opera is based on the much-loved children’s book of the same name by Roald Dahl about the Fox family’s revenge against the evil farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean who scheme to rid the farm of the Fox family. British director Walter Sutcliffe makes his U.S. debut in this production.

Leos Janácek’s Šárka (U.S. Premiere)
Arthur Honegger’s La mort de Sainte Alméenne (U.S. Premiere)
Thursday and Saturday, February 19 and 21
Friday and Saturday, February 27 and March 1
Dicapo Opera Theatre
Pacien Mazzagatti, conductor
Šárka, Janácek’s first opera, with a Czech libretto by Julius Zeyer, is based on a Bohemian legend of the maiden warrior Šárka, found in the mythology of the Czech people. Written in 1887, the opera was first performed at the Brno Theatre in Brno on November 11, 1925 in honor of Janácek’s 70th birthday. Honegger completed the reduction for voice and piano of his fourth opera La mort de Sainte Alméenne in 1918, but due to lack of funding, he never finished the orchestration. The opera in one act and six scenes is based on a mystery play by Max Jacob and tells the story of Alméenne, a woman who challenges the value of earthly love. At the time of Honegger’s death in 1955 he had orchestrated only the Interlude. Based on the Interlude, French composer Nicolas Bacri and musicologist Harry Halbreich reconstructed the complete orchestral score, the concert premiere of which took place in 2005 at the Muziekcentrum Vredenburg of Utrecht. The world premiere was performed at the Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg in Brussels February 17, 2007.

Gioacchino Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algieri
Thursday-Sunday, April 16, 17,18, and 19
Dicapo Opera Theatre

L’Italiana in Algieri was written by Rossini at age 21. With an Italian libretto by Angelo Anelli, the opera is based on an earlier text set by Luigi Mosca and first performed in Venice in 1813. It is the comic tale of love in a harem as Mustafa (the Turkish Bey of Algiers), bored with his wife, tries to marry her off.

Special Presentations

Death by Aria
Saturday, September 20
Dicapo’s Resident Artists in a program of popular arias.

Yuletide Classics
Wednesday, December 17
An evening of Christmas performances by Dicapo’s Resident Artists and Children’s Chorus.

Puccini 150th Anniversary Gala
Monday, December 22
Rose Theater at Lincoln Center
Opera Orchestra of New York
Conducted by Eve Queler, among others
Dicapo Opera Theatre will celebrate the 150th birthday of Giacomo Puccini on December 22, the actual date of the composer’s birth, with a concert that includes excerpts from every Puccini opera.

Lily (World premiere)
Friday and Saturday, January 16 and 17
Dicapo Opera Theatre
Audrey Babcock, soprano
Ray Fellman, music director/pianist
Lily is a monodrama, conceived, written, and sung by mezzo-soprano Audrey Babcock. The production is inspired by and features the music of Kurt Weill. It incorporates visual and sound designs and tells the story of Lily Weiss, a German Jew beaten down by the war, who survives as a prostitute/cabaret singer. Last season Audrey Babcock sang the role of Thérèse in the New York premiere of the Tobias Picker opera Thérèse Raquin in her Dicapo Opera Theatre debut.

Composer Retrospective Concert
Saturday, January 31
A evening of arias and scenes celebrating the first American operas commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera during 1908 to 1935, the golden era of Met Director Giulio Gatti-Casazza, with the financial backing of his visionary patron Otto H. Kahn. The evening will include selections by Horatio Parker (Mona), Deems Taylor (The King’s Henchman and Peter Ibbetson), Louis Gruenberg (The Emperor Jones), Howard Hanson (Merry Mount) and Victor Herbert (Madeleine), among others, performed by Dicapo’s Resident Artists. This is the second of an annual series of composer retrospectives. The first took place during the current season and featured music by Tobias Picker.

Vittorio Giannini’s Beauty and the Beast
Saturday and Sunday, March 14 and 15
The annual Dicapo children’s opera favorite, Beauty and the Beast, returns for the 2008-09 season.

Children’s Show
Saturday and Sunday, May 9 and 10
Dicapo Opera Theatre’s Children’s Chorus is featured in an entertaining program for children and their families.

Tickets
Subscriptions for all five main stage productions—The Crucible, Turandot, Fantastic Mr. Fox, the Janácek’s/Honegger double bill, and L’Italiana in Algieri —are $275 ($250 for seniors) and are available now by calling 212-759-7652. Single tickets are $60 and will be available July 1. For children 12 and under, Fantastic Mr. Fox tickets are $30.

Single tickets for Special Events
Single tickets for the December 22 Puccini 150th anniversary gala are $65 ($50 for subscribers); for the world premiere of Lily on January 16 and 17, $30; and for the Composer Retrospective Concert on January 31, $25.

Single tickets for Resident Artists and Dicapo Children’s Chorus productions —Death by Aria on September 20, Yuletide Classics on December 17, Beauty and the Beast March 14 and 15, and the Children’s Show—on May 9 and 10 are $20 for adults and $10 for children.

All Dicapo Opera productions, with the exception of the December 22 Puccini 150th anniversary gala, will take place at Dicapo Opera Theater, 184 East 76th Street (at Lexington Avenue), on the lower level of St. Baptiste Church.

History
Co-founded in 1981 by Michael Capasso and Diane Martindale, Dicapo Opera Theatre is the only professional non-profit opera company in New York—aside from the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera—presenting a full season of opera productions, musical theater, concerts, and other events in its own facility located at St. Jean Baptiste Church on East 76th Street. Completely remodeled in 1995, the 204-seat Dicapo Opera Theatre is state of the art with supertitles, orchestra pit, and spacious lobby areas, as well as office and rehearsal spaces. Dicapo Opera Theatre’s repertoire runs the gamut from crowd-pleasing traditional repertoire to rarely performed operas, family productions, and at least one contemporary work each season. Composer Tobias Picker joined Dicapo Opera as Artistic Advisor in 2007. www.dicapo.com

Dicapo Opera Theatre 2008-09
Chronological Schedule

September 11 at 7:30 p.m. (Thursday) The Crucible
September 12 at 8:00 p.m. (Friday) By Robert Ward
September 13 at 8:00 p.m. (Saturday)
September 14 at 4:00 p.m. (Sunday)

September 20 at 8 p.m. (Saturday) “Death by Aria”

October 10 at 6:30 p.m. (Friday) Turandot
October 12 at 4:00 p.m. (Sunday) By Giacomo Puccini
October 16 at 7:30 p.m. (Thursday)
October 18 at 8:00 p.m. (Saturday)

December 13 at 7:30 p.m. (Saturday) Fantastic Mr. Fox – New York Premiere
December 14 at 4:00 p.m. (Sunday) By Tobias Picker
December 19 at 7:30 p.m. (Friday)
December 21 at 4:00 p.m. (Sunday)

December 17 at 7:30 p.m. (Wednesday) Yuletide Classics

December 22 at 8:00 p.m. (Monday) Puccini 150th Birthday Concert

January 16 at 8:00 p.m. (Friday) Lily – World Premiere
January 17 at 8:00 p.m. (Saturday) Monodrama with music by Kurt Weill
January 31 at 8:00 p.m. (Saturday) Composer Retrospective Concert

February 19 at 7:30 p.m. (Thursday) Double bill – U.S. Premiere
February 21 at 8:00 p.m. (Saturday) Janácek’s Šárka
February 27 at 8:00 p.m. (Friday) Honegger’s La Mort de Sainte Alméenne
March 1 at 4:00 p.m. (Sunday)

March 14 at 3:00 p.m. (Saturday) Beauty and the Beast
March 15 at 3:00 p.m. (Sunday) By Vittorio Giannini

April 16 at 7:30 p.m. (Thursday) L’Italiana in Algieri
April 17 at 8:00 p.m. (Friday) By Gioacchino Rossini
April 18 at 8:00 p.m. Saturday)
April 19 at 4:00 p.m. (Sunday)

May 9 at 3:00 p.m. (Saturday) Children’s Show
May 10 at 3:00 p.m. (Sunday)

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