Des Moines Metro Opera
Encyclopedia
The Des Moines Metro Opera (DMMO) is based in Indianola, Iowa
, a town of approximately 14,000 located 12 miles south of Des Moines, Iowa
. DMMO was founded by Dr. Robert L. Larsen and Douglas Duncan in 1973. A summer opera festival, the company usually performs three operas in rolling repertory during June and July. Although created as an opera company for the Midwest, the company's audience base has grown over the years. As of 2008 it claims audiences from some 35 states and several foreign countries.
The company also sends its educational arm, Opera Iowa, to sites throughout the state from fall through spring. Typically a troupe of several singers, a pianist and technical director, Opera Iowa has also traveled for educational performances in nine neighboring states and participated in exchange programs with like organizations in Japan and China.
An important function of the Des Moines Metro Opera is its apprentice program (The James M. Collier Apprentice Artist Program). Every summer the program affords approximately forty young singers an opportunity to study the work of seasoned performers and to work with opera coaches and directors. The apprentice artists perform in the chorus, prepare short scenes, and in some cases understudy principal singers and perform small solos in main-stage productions. More than 1,000 singers have passed through the apprentice program since its inception in 1975.
Most of DMMO's opera productions are performed at the Blank Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of Simpson College
. With 488 seats arranged in a semicircle, the Blank Center provides an intimate setting for opera. This intimacy is enhanced by an unusual stage design which features a semicircular stage in front of the orchestra pit, in addition to the traditional proscenium stage behind the orchestra pit. This semicircular stage, or "playing circle", is separated from the front row of audience seats by only a railing. Bridges crossing over the orchestra on each side allow performers to move between the two stage areas. Occasionally, DMMO has presented productions at a larger venue, the Civic Center in Des Moines.
Initially committed to producing opera in English, DMMO first presented a foreign-language production, Tosca
, in 1998 at the Civic Center in Des Moines.
Since then, the company's season typically includes one opera in English and two operas in other languages (Italian, German or French), all presented with supertitles. The season also usually includes an opera written in the twentieth century.
Singers who had their start at DMMO include: John Osbourn, Kimm Julian, Jane Redding, Beverly Thiele, Theodore Green, and Lauren Flanigan. In 1986 DMMO premiered a new opera of Shakespeare's The Tempest with music by Lee Hoiby and a libretto by Mark Shulgasser. The opera was broadcast on Iowa Public Television.
Although the running of DMMO has passed down through the hands of several business managers over the years, from its inception in 1973 through the 2010 season, Dr. Robert L. Larsen was the sole guiding artistic force for the company. In this capacity, he selected the operas (subject to Board approval), cast all principal singers and apprentices, and both directed and conducted each performance. In addition, he created scene assignments for all apprentices, which are performed publicly as an aspect of their educational activities. In the fall of 2010 Michael Egel was appointed Artistic Director to replace Robert Larsen. Robert Montana continues as Managing Director. Larsen remains with the company as Director Emeritus in a lifetime appointment.
La Rondine
, G. Puccini
Albert Herring
, B. Britten
Prima Donna, A. Benjamin / The Medium
, G.C. Menotti
1974
Falstaff
, G. Verdi
Madama Butterfly
, G. Puccini
The Crucible
, R. Ward
1975
Il Trittico
, G. Puccini
The Magic Flute
, W.A. Mozart
The Rake's Progress
, I. Stravinsky
1976
The Barber of Seville
, G. Rossini
Manon
, J. Massenet
Susannah
, C. Floyd
1977
The Tales of Hoffmann, J. Offenbach
Così fan tutte
, W.A. Mozart
La traviata
, G. Verdi
1978
La bohème
, G. Puccini
The Consul
, G.C. Menotti
Carmen
, G. Bizet
1979
Die Fledermaus
, J. Strauss
A Midsummer Night's Dream
, B. Britten
Rigoletto
, G. Verdi
1980
Il trovatore
, G. Verdi
Don Pasquale
, G. Donizetti
Ariadne auf Naxos
, R. Strauss
1981
Tosca
, G. Puccini
The Ballad of Baby Doe
, D. Moore
Lucia di Lammermoor
, G. Donizetti
1982
Otello
, G. Verdi
The Elixir of Love, G. Donizetti
Don Giovanni
, W.A. Mozart
1983
Cavalleria rusticana
, P. Mascagni / I Pagliacci, R. Leoncavallo
The Merry Widow
, F. Lehár
The Daughter of the Regiment, G. Donizett
1984
The Marriage of Figaro
, W.A. Mozart
Dialogues of the Carmelites
, F. Poulenc
Aida
, G. Verdi
1985
Faust
, C. Gounod
La Cenerentola
, G. Rossini
Of Mice and Men, C. Floyd
1986
Falstaff
, G. Verdi
The Tempest, L. Hoiby
Romeo and Juliet
, C. Gounod
1987
La bohème
, G. Puccini
The Flying Dutchman
, R. Wagner
The Turn of the Screw
, B. Britten
1988
The Barber of Seville
, G. Rossini
Turandot
, G. Puccini
The Magic Flute
, W.A. Mozart
1989
The Tales of Hoffmann, J. Offenbach
Die Fledermaus
, J. Strauss
The Crucible
, R. Ward
1990
Boris Godunov
, M. Mussorgsky
Martha
, F. von Flotow
La traviata
, G. Verdi
1991
Madama Butterfly
, G. Puccini
Peter Grimes
, B. Britten
The Abduction from the Seraglio, W.A. Mozart
1992
Hansel and Gretel, E. Humperdinck
Lucia di Lammermoor
, G. Donizetti
Der Rosenkavalier
, R. Strauss
The Girl of the Golden West, G. Puccini
1993
Don Pasquale
, G. Donizetti
A Masked Ball, G. Verdi
The Saint of Bleecker Street
, G.C. Menotti
1994
Carmen
, G. Bizet
Rigoletto
, G. Verdi
Regina
, M. Blitzstein
1995
Indianola, Iowa
As of the census of 2000, there were 12,998 people, 4,748 households, and 3,261 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,414.7 people per square mile . There were 4,981 housing units at an average density of 542.1 per square mile...
, a town of approximately 14,000 located 12 miles south of Des Moines, Iowa
Des Moines, Iowa
Des Moines is the capital and the most populous city in the US state of Iowa. It is also the county seat of Polk County. A small portion of the city extends into Warren County. It was incorporated on September 22, 1851, as Fort Des Moines which was shortened to "Des Moines" in 1857...
. DMMO was founded by Dr. Robert L. Larsen and Douglas Duncan in 1973. A summer opera festival, the company usually performs three operas in rolling repertory during June and July. Although created as an opera company for the Midwest, the company's audience base has grown over the years. As of 2008 it claims audiences from some 35 states and several foreign countries.
The company also sends its educational arm, Opera Iowa, to sites throughout the state from fall through spring. Typically a troupe of several singers, a pianist and technical director, Opera Iowa has also traveled for educational performances in nine neighboring states and participated in exchange programs with like organizations in Japan and China.
An important function of the Des Moines Metro Opera is its apprentice program (The James M. Collier Apprentice Artist Program). Every summer the program affords approximately forty young singers an opportunity to study the work of seasoned performers and to work with opera coaches and directors. The apprentice artists perform in the chorus, prepare short scenes, and in some cases understudy principal singers and perform small solos in main-stage productions. More than 1,000 singers have passed through the apprentice program since its inception in 1975.
Most of DMMO's opera productions are performed at the Blank Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of Simpson College
Simpson College
Simpson College is a four-year, coeducational liberal arts institution situated in Indianola, Iowa, USA, and affiliated with the United Methodist Church. Simpson, which has been fully accredited by North Central Association since 1913, is a small school with approximately 1,400 full-time students...
. With 488 seats arranged in a semicircle, the Blank Center provides an intimate setting for opera. This intimacy is enhanced by an unusual stage design which features a semicircular stage in front of the orchestra pit, in addition to the traditional proscenium stage behind the orchestra pit. This semicircular stage, or "playing circle", is separated from the front row of audience seats by only a railing. Bridges crossing over the orchestra on each side allow performers to move between the two stage areas. Occasionally, DMMO has presented productions at a larger venue, the Civic Center in Des Moines.
Initially committed to producing opera in English, DMMO first presented a foreign-language production, Tosca
Tosca
Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900...
, in 1998 at the Civic Center in Des Moines.
Since then, the company's season typically includes one opera in English and two operas in other languages (Italian, German or French), all presented with supertitles. The season also usually includes an opera written in the twentieth century.
Singers who had their start at DMMO include: John Osbourn, Kimm Julian, Jane Redding, Beverly Thiele, Theodore Green, and Lauren Flanigan. In 1986 DMMO premiered a new opera of Shakespeare's The Tempest with music by Lee Hoiby and a libretto by Mark Shulgasser. The opera was broadcast on Iowa Public Television.
Although the running of DMMO has passed down through the hands of several business managers over the years, from its inception in 1973 through the 2010 season, Dr. Robert L. Larsen was the sole guiding artistic force for the company. In this capacity, he selected the operas (subject to Board approval), cast all principal singers and apprentices, and both directed and conducted each performance. In addition, he created scene assignments for all apprentices, which are performed publicly as an aspect of their educational activities. In the fall of 2010 Michael Egel was appointed Artistic Director to replace Robert Larsen. Robert Montana continues as Managing Director. Larsen remains with the company as Director Emeritus in a lifetime appointment.
Productions
1973La Rondine
La rondine
La rondine is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Giuseppe Adami, based on a libretto by Alfred Maria Willner and Heinz Reichert...
, G. Puccini
Albert Herring
Albert Herring
Albert Herring, Op. 39, is a chamber opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten.Composed in the winter of 1946 and the spring of 1947, this comic opera was a successor to his serious opera The Rape of Lucretia...
, B. Britten
Prima Donna, A. Benjamin / The Medium
The Medium
The Medium is a short two-act dramatic opera with words and music by Gian Carlo Menotti. Commissioned by Columbia University, its first performance was there on 8 May 1946. The opera's first professional production was presented on a double bill with Menotti's The Telephone at the Heckscher...
, G.C. Menotti
1974
Falstaff
Falstaff (opera)
Falstaff is an operatic commedia lirica in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeare's plays The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV. It was Verdi's last opera, written in the composer's ninth decade, and only the second of his 26 operas to be a comedy...
, G. Verdi
Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Puccini based his opera in part on the short story "Madame Butterfly" by John Luther Long, which was dramatized by David Belasco...
, G. Puccini
The Crucible
The Crucible (opera)
The Crucible is an English language opera written by Robert Ward based on the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller. It won both the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for Music and the New York Music Critics Circle Citation. The libretto was lightly adapted from Miller's text by Bernard Stambler.Ward received a...
, R. Ward
1975
Il Trittico
Il trittico
Il trittico is the title of a collection of three one-act operas, Il tabarro, Suor Angelica, and Gianni Schicchi, by Giacomo Puccini...
, G. Puccini
The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....
, W.A. Mozart
The Rake's Progress
The Rake's Progress
The Rake's Progress is an opera in three acts and an epilogue by Igor Stravinsky. The libretto, written by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, is based loosely on the eight paintings and engravings A Rake's Progress of William Hogarth, which Stravinsky had seen on May 2, 1947, in a Chicago...
, I. Stravinsky
1976
The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville, or The Futile Precaution is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's comedy Le Barbier de Séville , which was originally an opéra comique, or a mixture of spoken play with music...
, G. Rossini
Manon
Manon
Manon is an opéra comique in five acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille, based on the 1731 novel L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost...
, J. Massenet
Susannah
Susannah
Susannah is an opera in two acts by American composer Carlisle Floyd, who wrote the libretto and music while a member of the piano faculty at Florida State University. Floyd adapted the story from the Apocryphal tale of Susannah and the Elders, though the latter story has a more positive ending...
, C. Floyd
1977
The Tales of Hoffmann, J. Offenbach
Così fan tutte
Così fan tutte
Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti K. 588, is an opera buffa by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first performed in 1790. The libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte....
, W.A. Mozart
La traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
, G. Verdi
1978
La bohème
La bohème
La bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...
, G. Puccini
The Consul
The Consul
The Consul is an opera in three acts with music and libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti, his first full-length opera. Its first performance was on March 1, 1950, at the Shubert Theatre in Philadelphia with Patricia Neway as the lead heroine Magda Sorel, Gloria Lane as the secretary of the consulate,...
, G.C. Menotti
Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
, G. Bizet
1979
Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée.- Literary sources :...
, J. Strauss
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream (opera)
A Midsummer Night's Dream is an opera with music by Benjamin Britten and set to a libretto adapted by the composer and Peter Pears from William Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream...
, B. Britten
Rigoletto
Rigoletto
Rigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851...
, G. Verdi
1980
Il trovatore
Il trovatore
Il trovatore is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play El Trovador by Antonio García Gutiérrez. Cammarano died in mid-1852 before completing the libretto...
, G. Verdi
Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale is an opera buffa, or comic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The librettist Giovanni Ruffini wrote the Italian language libretto after Angelo Anelli's libretto for Stefano Pavesi's Ser Marcantonio ....
, G. Donizetti
Ariadne auf Naxos
Ariadne auf Naxos
Ariadne auf Naxos is an opera by Richard Strauss with a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Bringing together slapstick comedy and consuming beautiful music, the opera's theme is the competition between high and low art for the public's attention.- First version :The opera was originally...
, R. Strauss
1981
Tosca
Tosca
Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900...
, G. Puccini
The Ballad of Baby Doe
The Ballad of Baby Doe
The Ballad of Baby Doe is an opera by the American composer Douglas Moore that uses an English-language libretto by John Latouche. It is Moore's most famous opera and one of the few American operas to be in the standard repertory...
, D. Moore
Lucia di Lammermoor
Lucia di Lammermoor
Lucia di Lammermoor is a dramma tragico in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian language libretto loosely based upon Sir Walter Scott's historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor....
, G. Donizetti
1982
Otello
Otello
Otello is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare's play Othello. It was Verdi's penultimate opera, and was first performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on February 5, 1887....
, G. Verdi
The Elixir of Love, G. Donizetti
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
, W.A. Mozart
1983
Cavalleria rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from a play written by Giovanni Verga based on his short story. Considered one of the classic verismo operas, it premiered on May 17, 1890 at the Teatro...
, P. Mascagni / I Pagliacci, R. Leoncavallo
The Merry Widow
The Merry Widow
The Merry Widow is an operetta by the Austro–Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. The librettists, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein, based the story – concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband – on an 1861 comedy play,...
, F. Lehár
The Daughter of the Regiment, G. Donizett
1984
The Marriage of Figaro
The Marriage of Figaro
Le nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata , K. 492, is an opera buffa composed in 1786 in four acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro .Although the play by...
, W.A. Mozart
Dialogues of the Carmelites
Dialogues of the Carmelites
Dialogues of the Carmelites , is an opera in three acts by Francis Poulenc. In 1953, M. Valcarenghi approached Poulenc to commission a ballet for La Scala in Milan; when Poulenc found the proposed subject uninspiring, Valcarenghi suggested instead a screenplay by Georges Bernanos, based on the...
, F. Poulenc
Aida
Aida
Aida sometimes spelled Aïda, is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette...
, G. Verdi
1985
Faust
Faust (opera)
Faust is a drame lyrique in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part 1...
, C. Gounod
La Cenerentola
La Cenerentola
La Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was written by Jacopo Ferretti, based on the fairy tale Cinderella...
, G. Rossini
Of Mice and Men, C. Floyd
1986
Falstaff
Falstaff (opera)
Falstaff is an operatic commedia lirica in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeare's plays The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV. It was Verdi's last opera, written in the composer's ninth decade, and only the second of his 26 operas to be a comedy...
, G. Verdi
The Tempest, L. Hoiby
Romeo and Juliet
Roméo et Juliette
Roméo et Juliette is an opéra in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, based on The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. It was first performed at the Théâtre Lyrique , Paris on 27 April 1867...
, C. Gounod
1987
La bohème
La bohème
La bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...
, G. Puccini
The Flying Dutchman
The Flying Dutchman (opera)
Der fliegende Holländer is an opera, with music and libretto by Richard Wagner.Wagner claimed in his 1870 autobiography Mein Leben that he had been inspired to write "The Flying Dutchman" following a stormy sea crossing he made from Riga to London in July and August 1839, but in his 1843...
, R. Wagner
The Turn of the Screw
The Turn of the Screw (opera)
The Turn of the Screw is a 20th century English chamber opera composed by Benjamin Britten with a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, "wife of the artist John Piper, who had been a friend of the composer since 1935 and had provided designs for several of the operas". The libretto is based on the novella...
, B. Britten
1988
The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville, or The Futile Precaution is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's comedy Le Barbier de Séville , which was originally an opéra comique, or a mixture of spoken play with music...
, G. Rossini
Turandot
Turandot
Turandot is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.Though Puccini's first interest in the subject was based on his reading of Friedrich Schiller's adaptation of the play, his work is most nearly based on the earlier text Turandot...
, G. Puccini
The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....
, W.A. Mozart
1989
The Tales of Hoffmann, J. Offenbach
Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée.- Literary sources :...
, J. Strauss
The Crucible
The Crucible (opera)
The Crucible is an English language opera written by Robert Ward based on the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller. It won both the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for Music and the New York Music Critics Circle Citation. The libretto was lightly adapted from Miller's text by Bernard Stambler.Ward received a...
, R. Ward
1990
Boris Godunov
Boris Godunov (opera)
Boris Godunov is an opera by Modest Mussorgsky . The work was composed between 1868 and 1873 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is Mussorgsky's only completed opera and is considered his masterpiece. Its subjects are the Russian ruler Boris Godunov, who reigned as Tsar during the Time of Troubles,...
, M. Mussorgsky
Martha
Martha (opera)
Martha, oder Der Markt zu Richmond is a 'romantic comic' opera in four acts by Friedrich von Flotow, set to a German libretto by Friedrich Wilhelm Riese and based on a story by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges....
, F. von Flotow
La traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
, G. Verdi
1991
Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Puccini based his opera in part on the short story "Madame Butterfly" by John Luther Long, which was dramatized by David Belasco...
, G. Puccini
Peter Grimes
Peter Grimes
Peter Grimes is an opera by Benjamin Britten, with a libretto adapted by Montagu Slater from the Peter Grimes section of George Crabbe's poem The Borough...
, B. Britten
The Abduction from the Seraglio, W.A. Mozart
1992
Hansel and Gretel, E. Humperdinck
Lucia di Lammermoor
Lucia di Lammermoor
Lucia di Lammermoor is a dramma tragico in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian language libretto loosely based upon Sir Walter Scott's historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor....
, G. Donizetti
Der Rosenkavalier
Der Rosenkavalier
Der Rosenkavalier is a comic opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to an original German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It is loosely adapted from the novel Les amours du chevalier de Faublas by Louvet de Couvrai and Molière’s comedy Monsieur de Pourceaugnac...
, R. Strauss
The Girl of the Golden West, G. Puccini
1993
Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale is an opera buffa, or comic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The librettist Giovanni Ruffini wrote the Italian language libretto after Angelo Anelli's libretto for Stefano Pavesi's Ser Marcantonio ....
, G. Donizetti
A Masked Ball, G. Verdi
The Saint of Bleecker Street
The Saint of Bleecker Street
The Saint of Bleecker Street is an opera in three acts by Gian Carlo Menotti to an original English libretto by the composer. It was first performed at The Broadway Theatre in New York City on December 27, 1954. David Poleri and Davis Cunningham alternated in the role of Michele, and Thomas...
, G.C. Menotti
1994
Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
, G. Bizet
Rigoletto
Rigoletto
Rigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851...
, G. Verdi
Regina
Regina (opera)
Regina is an opera by Marc Blitzstein, to his own libretto based on the play The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman. It was completed in 1948 and premiered the next year. Blitzstein chose this source in order to make a strong statement against capitalism...
, M. Blitzstein
1995