“For a banner opening like your 80th anniversary, you want everybody to be happy, everybody to come and everybody celebrating,” he says. “[Madama Butterfly] is such a perennial favorite that people can never see enough of [it].”
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Pittsburgh Opera opens 80th Season with Puccini’s Tragedy, “Madama Butterfly"
“For a banner opening like your 80th anniversary, you want everybody to be happy, everybody to come and everybody celebrating,” he says. “[Madama Butterfly] is such a perennial favorite that people can never see enough of [it].”
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3 comments:
I first heard of Madame Butterfly in my global histories class last week. I have never known much about opera because I was never really exposed to it before now, but I am glad this is to be one of the first operas I will learn about. I hope to see the production while it is in town, and I appreciate that the tickets can be relatively affordable. It’s a good way to make this kind of entertainment accessible to everyone, which it seems they’re trying to do. Christopher Hahn says “It’s a really good vehicle for opera putting its best foot forward in the community,” so I look forward to it being my introduction to opera. Pittsburgh Opera deserves credit for reaching out to the community, and for being what looks like a wonderful company to work with. Their performers seem to be very excited to work with them, and that speaks volumes about the dynamic of their company.
Unfortunately, I have never had much experience with Opera, largely due to my location. While Atlanta is one of the larger cities in the country, much of the artistic expression present in the rest of the country is not yet as present there. It is much harder to discover artistic events such as Opera in Atlanta. Perhaps it is just the environment I was raised in however. I am aware that this is a classic opera to perform, and would very much enjoy the opportunity to see it. There are many direct quotes from the artistic director of the Pittsburgh Opera in this article, however it especially strikes me that he is attempting to encourage new people to become interested in Opera. This is a perpetual problem in theatre, which the target audience being generally older than that of cinema, and I imagine that this is also a very large problem in opera as well.
Thank you Dr Ricky Law! I have never seen Madame Butterfly, though I know it is basically what Miss Saigon is based upon. In Chicago the Lyrics does many classic operas, but I cannot afford a ticket to the opera more than once a year and that is usually spent on a touring show, the Nutcracker, or the Christmas Carol. But back to my opening statement, for those who are not in Genocide Global History, Ricky Law is our professor and he bought group tickets for our entire class so we are going to see it in October. He used it in his lectures to comment upon imperialism and clash of cultures. It will be the first proper opera I have ever seen the only other one being a semi-professional production of The Magic Flute. As to the article, I very much like the fact that they chose classic or recognizable operas to perform for this anniversary season. The wonderful thing about operas is that there are fewer new operas than musicals, so they are mostly revivals which allows a great opportunity to reinvent the wheel and create beautiful new art from classic works. I am very much excited to see this show and especially to experience it with the rest of the class. Even more than ballets, operas can be poo-pooed as boring very long and unexciting but for some reason I am looking forward to it even more because of that or inspite of that. It makes me smile when I think of attending and being all classy for the night.
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