The Kentucky Opera is the state opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 of Kentucky

Kentucky

The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...

, located in Louisville

Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...

. The operas are accompanied by the Louisville Orchestra

Louisville Orchestra

The Louisville Orchestra is the primary orchestra in Louisville, Kentucky and has been called the cornerstone of the Louisville arts scene. It was founded in 1937 by Robert Whitney and Charles Farnsley, Mayor of Louisville...

. Founded in 1952 by Moritz von Bomhard, it is the twelfth oldest opera company in the United States and has a more than $2 million budget. The Kentucky Opera is an important part of theater in Kentucky

Theater in Kentucky

- Ashland :* Paramount Arts Center, a Kentucky landmark on the Historic Register, opened in 1931.- Bardstown :* Stephen Foster - The Musical at My Old Kentucky Home State Park- Danville :...

. In January 2006, David Roth was announced as the new general director of Kentucky Opera. Roth had been with Fort Worth Opera

Fort Worth Opera

According to the company, Fort Worth Opera is the oldest, continually performing opera company in the state of Texas and among the oldest in the United States. While originally presenting operas one at a time over a fall/winter season, it changed to a "festival" format in 2007...

 since 2000 where he was both Director of Production and Director of Finance.

Performance history

The 2004-2005 season included Massenet's Thaïs

Thaïs (opera)

Thaïs is an opera in three acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Louis Gallet based on the novel Thaïs by Anatole France. It was first performed at the Opéra Garnier in Paris on 16 March 1894, starring the American soprano Sybil Sanderson, for whom Massenet had written the title role...

, Rossini's 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...

, and Puccini's 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...

.

The 2005-2006 season included Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin

Eugene Onegin (opera)

Eugene Onegin, Op. 24, is an opera in 3 acts , by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto was written by Konstantin Shilovsky and the composer and his brother Modest, and is based on the novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin....

, Adamo's Little Women

Little Women

Little Women is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott . The book was written and set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts. It was published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869...

, and Rossini's 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...

. Onegin was the company's first ever production to be performed in Russian.

The 2006-2007 season included Puccini's 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...

, Donizetti's 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....

, and Bizet's The Pearl Fishers.

The 2007-2008 season included Puccini's 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...

, Verdi's 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...

, Poulenc's 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...

, and a special concert version of Saint-Saëns' Samson and Delilah

Samson and Delilah (opera)

Samson and Delilah , Op. 47, is a grand opera in three acts and four scenes by Camille Saint-Saëns to a French libretto by Ferdinand Lemaire...

 starring Metropolitan Opera star Denyce Graves.

The 2008-2009 season included Verdi's 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....

, Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance, a showcase of baroque opera, Massenet's Werther

Werther

Werther is an opera in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Édouard Blau, Paul Milliet and Georges Hartmann based on the German epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe....

, and a special concert version of Tchaikovsky's Iolanta

Iolanta

Iolanta, Op. 69, is a lyric opera in one act by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. The libretto was written by the composer's brother Modest Tchaikovsky, and is based on the Danish play Kong Renés Datter by Henrik Hertz. The play was translated by Fyodor Miller and adapted by Vladimir Zotov...

.

In 2009-2010 Kentucky Opera moved their entire season to the newly renovated Brown Theatre on Broadway. The season opened with Puccini's blockbuster, 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...

, starring Metropolitan Opera star, Elizabeth Futral. The remainder of the season included Carlisle Floyd's Of Mice and Men

Of Mice and Men

Of Mice and Men is a novella written by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it tells the tragic story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers during the Great Depression in California, USA....

 and finished with Humperdink's Hansel & Gretel.

The company has previously performed many other operas in the standard repertoire, including 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...

, 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...

, Aïda

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...

, 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...

 and Salome

Salome (opera)

Salome is an opera in one act by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by the composer, based on Hedwig Lachmann’s German translation of the French play Salomé by Oscar Wilde. Strauss dedicated the opera to his friend Sir Edgar Speyer....

 among many others.

External links

• Official website
• Information from KET
  Ket
  Ket can also refer to:*Ket people, a people of Siberia*Ket language, the language of the Ket people*Ket River, a river in Siberia*Keť, a village in south-west Slovakia...