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Plácido Domingo Announces Woody Allen and William Friedkin
Woody Allen to Make Operatic Debut Staging Gianni Schicchi Music Director James Conlon to Conduct (LOS ANGELES, CA) June 21, 2007 – “I am delighted to announce that LA Opera will open its 2008/09 Season with a new production of Giacomo Puccini’s Il Trittico, to be staged by two Academy Award-winning film directors,” announced Plácido Domingo, who holds the title of Broad General Director of Los Angeles Opera. “The three operas that make up Puccini’s unique ‘triptych’ will be split between Woody Allen, who will make his operatic debut directing Gianni Schicchi, and William Friedkin, who will return to LA Opera to direct Il Tabarro and Suor Angelica. Music Director James Conlon will conduct, and the production will be designed by Tony Award winner Santo Loquasto, with lighting designed by Mark Jonathan.” The production will open on September 6, 2008, to be followed on September 7 by LA Opera’s U.S. premiere of Howard Shore’s The Fly, directed by David Cronenberg and conducted by Plácido Domingo. Performances will take place at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 North Grand Avenue, Los Angeles. “I’ve seduced many a film director into directing opera, starting with John Schlesinger and The Tales of Hoffmann at London’s Covent Garden,” Mr. Domingo continued. “I will admit that my pursuit of Woody takes the prize of the longest pursuit, because LA Opera Chairman and CEO Marc Stern and I first started talking to him some four years ago. I’m especially thrilled that this new Trittico will have the collaboration of both Woody and Billy, because Billy already gave us his take on Puccini’s comic masterpiece five years ago in connection with Bartók’s brooding Duke Bluebeard’s Castle.” “I have no idea what I am doing,” said Mr. Allen, “but incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm.” “Somewhere in the pantheon, I’m sure Puccini is smiling,” said William Friedkin. “To have Woody Allen direct Gianni Schicchi is a match made in heaven. He’s one of the world’s best filmmakers and an accomplished man of theater as well.” Il Trittico, which received its world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1918, opens with the brooding Il Tabarro (The Cloak), a masterpiece of the verismo style of opera that focused on the harsh realities of working class people. LA Opera’s production of Il Tabarro features a high profile international cast that includes American baritone Mark Delavan as Michele, a Parisian barge owner who suspects his younger wife of infidelity; Italian tenor Salvatore Licitra as Luigi, a young stevedore who makes a fatal error in judgment; and German soprano Anja Kampe as Giorgetta, the young wife who has fallen out of love. William Friedkin directs. Frequently considered to be Puccini’s finest work, Il Tabarro is a gripping, tightly constructed drama set on the banks of the Seine in 1910, with highly innovative orchestrations that evoke a tense, ominous atmosphere. Il Trittico continues with Suor Angelica (Sister Angelica), an unabashedly sentimental work set in a late 17th-Century Italian convent, directed by William Friedkin. Forced to take the veil after bearing an illegitimate child, Angelica learns from her aunt that the child has died. In despair, she drinks poison, realizing too late that suicide will condemn her to eternal separation from the child she so desperately loves. In a miracle of redemption, the Holy Virgin herself appears with the child, welcoming Angelica into heaven. Suor Angelica features an all-female cast led by American soprano Sondra Radvanovsky in the title role, with Russian mezzo-soprano Larissa Diadkova in her Company debut as Angelica’s aunt, a princess whose coldness leads to tragedy. Notable for its sharply defined characters and emotional conflicts, Suor Angelica also features one of Puccini’s great soprano arias, Angelica’s heart wrenching “Senza mamma.” The final opera in Il Trittico is Puccini’s only comedy, the rambunctious
Gianni Schicchi. This is the only part of Il Trittico that
has been previously staged by LA Opera, in a 2002 double bill with Bartók’s
Duke Bluebeard’s Castle directed by William Friedkin. This time, the new
production of Gianni Schicchi will be staged by Woody Allen,
who makes his operatic debut. Set in medieval Florence, the opera depicts a farcical family
squabble, as the survivors of a wealthy gentleman persuade Gianni Schicchi to pose as the
deceased and rewrite his will in their favor. The great British baritone Thomas Allen
returns as the clever Gianni Schicchi, who has no scruples about including himself
as a beneficiary in the will. Two fast-rising young singers, soprano Laura Taulescu
and Albanian tenor Samir Pirgu, make their Company debuts
as young lovers who hope that the rich man’s fortune will lead to their marriage.
William Friedkin, who returns to LA Opera to stage Il Tabarro and Suor Angelica, the first two parts of Il Trittico, may be best known for his film The Exorcist (1973), one of the most terrifying films of all time. It received ten Academy Award nominations including Best Director and Best Picture. Prior to that, he directed The French Connection (1971), for which he received the Director’s Guild of America Award and the Academy Award for Best Director. The film also won for Best Actor, Best Editing, Best Screenplay and Best Picture. Other films include Sorcerer (1977), The Brinks Job (1979), Cruising (1981), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) and Blue Chips (1994). In 1997, he directed a Showtime/MGM television remake of Twelve Angry Men with Jack Lemmon, George C. Scott, Hume Cronyn and Ossie Davis. The DGA nominated him for Outstanding Directorial Achievement for Best Dramatic Special. It was also nominated for six Emmy Awards. He made his operatic debut in 1998 with a widely acclaimed Wozzeck in Florence and his LA Opera debut in 2002 with a double bill of Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and Gianni Schicchi. He returned to Los Angeles Opera in 2004 to direct Ariadne auf Naxos. His latest films include Rules of Engagement (2000), The Hunted (2003) starring Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio del Toro and the recently released Bug starring Ashley Judd. In just two decades of existence, LA Opera has become, under the leadership of the Eli and Edythe Broad General Director Plácido Domingo, the nation’s fourth largest opera company. The Company created a sensation with its debut production of Verdi’s Otello starring Plácido Domingo in October 1986. Since then, LA Opera has grown to become a company of international stature. Presenting leading productions in the standard repertory as well as new and rarely-staged operas, the Company brings prominent Los Angeles artists and Hollywood figures together with other world-renowned singers, designers, directors and conductors to create productions that attract the attention of international audiences and critics. Highlights of the upcoming 2007/08 Season include one U.S. premiere and three Company premieres. Five productions will be conducted by Mr. Conlon, including the Company’s first fully-staged productions of LA Opera’s groundbreaking Recovered Voices project, highlighting the works of composers affected by the Holocaust.
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