2012-2013 Season
New York City Center
ROSSINI'S GLORIOUS MASTERPIECE, FROM DARKNESS TO DELIVERANCE.
Conducted by Jayce Ogren |Directed by Michael Counts
Choreograped by Ken Roht | Sets by Michael Counts
Costumes by Jessica Jahn |Lighting by Ryan O'Gara
Projections by Ada Whitney/Beehive
NYC Opera celebrates its return to its birthplace, New York City Center, with Gioachino Rossini’s Moses in Egypt. Opening with the Plague of Darkness and closing with the parting of the Red Sea, this rarely heard, large-scale bel canto opera tells the familiar Bible story through a libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola and music that places Rossini directly in the lineage of Mozart. Although the Italian composer revised Moses in Egypt several times, our new production presents his original version. The new production – arguably the opera’s first full NYC staging of the original version in more than 180 years – will be directed and designed by Michael Counts (2011’s Monodramas).
Running Time: 2 hours 45 minutes. Performed in Italian with English supertitles.
New York City Center
Apr 23, 2013, 7:30pm | Apr 25, 2013, 7:00pm | Apr 27, 2013, 7:30pm
LOVE, LUST, AND POWER COLLIDE IN THIS MADCAP COMIC OPERA
Conducted by Emmanuel Plasson | Directed by Christopher Alden
Sets by Paul Steinberg | Costumes by Gabriel Berry | Lighting by Aaron Black
Closing the 2012-13 season at New York City Center is a new production of Jacques Offenbach’s operetta La Périchole. With a libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, this lyrical satire verges on all-out farce. It is loosely based on the life of one of the 18th century’s most famous Peruvians, Micaela Villegas, a wildly popular entertainer who was mistress to the head of state. In the opera, Villegas becomes La Périchole, a Peruvian street-singer who maintains a love triangle between the Spanish viceroy and Piquillo, her true love and fellow street-singer, to save herself from destitution. This final production of the season will be directed by Christopher Alden, who previously helmed some of the most critically lauded stagings in NYC Opera’s recent history, including Don Giovanni, A Quiet Place, and this season’s Così fan tutte.
“Rossini famously called Offenbach "the Mozart of the Champs-Elysees" and La Périchole is among his most melodically inspired Mozartian creations - it's sexy, funny and subversive and it has the extra added kick of deeply, sweetly human emotion running through its depiction of the relationship between the feisty Périchole and her lover Piquillo, two impoverished street singers who do heroic battle with the Establishment.”
– Christopher Alden, Director of La Périchole
Running Time: 2 hours 45 minutes. Performed in French with English supertitles.