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Toronto, Ontario – The Canadian Opera Company’s spring 2010/2011
season continues with one of Richard Strauss’s most brilliant
operas, Ariadne auf Naxos. The legendary Sir Andrew Davis
conducts the COC Orchestra in this masterful madcap melodrama,
performed by a sublime cast led by Canadian stars, soprano
Adrianne Pieczonka and tenor Richard Margison and staged by
award-winning Australian director Neil Armfield.
Ariadne auf
Naxos runs for eight performances at the Four Seasons Centre for
the Performing Arts on April 30, May 3, 12, 15, 18, 21, 27 and
29, 2011, and is sung in German with English SURTITLES™.
The backstage antics that make up the Prologue of Strauss’s
opera-within-an-opera are just a precursor to the second half’s
onstage expressions of love, loss and spiritual transformation.
When an opera company and a commedia dell’arte group are forced
to perform the opera “Ariadne auf Naxos” together, comedy,
romance and drama clash as the rival companies pick up the tale
from where the Greek myth leaves off, with Ariadne abandoned on
an island, longing for death.
Singing the role of the opera company’s Prima Donna as well as
the role of Ariadne is the soprano critics have called “one of
the most important artists working today” (Seen and Heard
International), Adrianne Pieczonka. She returns to the COC in a
role that has brought her great acclaim in Munich and Vienna.
Richard Margison returns as the Tenor/Bacchus, one of the most
demanding roles in the tenor repertoire and one that has brought
him great success at the Metropolitan Opera. Exciting young
Canadian coloratura Jane Archibald is the leader of the commedia
dell’arte troupe, Zerbinetta, a role which has earned her
ecstatic reviews across Europe. Renowned British mezzo-soprano
Alice Coote makes her COC debut as the Composer, a role in which
she has been called “simply electrifying” (The Daily Telegraph).
Sir Andrew Davis, Lyric Opera of Chicago’s music director and
principal conductor as well as conductor laureate of the Toronto
Symphony Orchestra, makes his much-anticipated COC conducting
debut guiding Strauss’s beautiful, lush melodic score. Joining
Davis in leading the creative team is multiple award-winning
director Neil Armfield, last with the COC for 2009’s A Midsummer
Night’s Dream and 2001’s Billy Budd.
Several graduates of the COC Ensemble Studio return to the
company with this production: baritone Peter Barrett, fresh from
performances in the COC’s acclaimed presentation of The
Nightingale and Other Short Fables at BAM and a Metropolitan
Opera debut in Don Pasquale, is the Harlequin; mezzo-soprano
Lauren Segal, Nancy T’sang in the COC’s acclaimed Nixon in
China, is Dryad; and soprano Teiya Kasahara, also heard in the
COC’s The Nightingale and Other Short Fables at BAM, is Echo.
Baritone Doug MacNaughton, Elviro in 1999’s Xerxes, returns as a
Lackey, and tenor Roger Honeywell, last with the COC in 2005’s
Macbeth and garnering acclaim across the U.S. for performances
with Lyric Opera of Chicago and Glimmerglass Opera as well as
the opera companies of Philadelphia, St. Louis and Minnesota, is
an Officer.
Current members of the Ensemble Studio tenor Christopher Enns,
bass Michael Uloth, soprano Simone Osborne and baritone
Adrian
Kramer – all of whom won over audiences with their recent
performances in the COC’s The Magic Flute – take to the
mainstage in supporting roles as Scaramuccio, Truffaldino, Naiad
and the Wig-Maker, respectively.
Rounding out the cast are tenor John Easterlin, Monostatos in
this winter’s The Magic Flute, as Brighella and the Dancing
Master and baritone Richard Stilwell, the “best type of American
singing actor,” (New York Times), as the Music Master.
With Ariadne auf Naxos, Neil Armfield reunites with A Midsummer
Night’s Dream’s set and costume designer Dale Ferguson to
explore the emotional core found beneath this opera’s layers of
comedy and irony, using elements of realism and abstraction to
visually distinguish the two halves of this piece. Paul
Woodfield recreates Tim Mitchell’s original lighting design, and
choreography is by Denni Sayers, most recently the movement
director for the 2009 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
This production of Ariadne auf Naxos comes to the COC courtesy
of Welsh National Opera and was first staged by Armfield in
2004.
Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos was first performed in Stuttgart in
1912. Following some revisions, a second version premiered in
Vienna in 1916, becoming the standard repertory version
performed to this day.
TICKET INFORMATION
Tickets for Ariadne auf Naxos are available online at
coc.ca, by
calling 416-363-8231 or in person at the
Four Seasons Centre Box Office (145 Queen St. W., Toronto).
Ticket prices range from $62 to $281, plus applicable taxes.
NEW THIS SEASON: Standing Room
Standing Room tickets for only $12 go on sale at 11 a.m. on the
morning of each performance at the
Four Seasons Centre Box Office. Limit of two tickets per person.
Subject to availability.
Young People
Special young people’s tickets are priced from $31 to $95, plus
applicable taxes. These ticket prices apply to those who are 15
years of age or under, accompanied by and sitting next to an
adult.
Opera for a New Age
Patrons between the ages of 16 and 29 may purchase $22 Opera for
a New Age tickets as of Saturday,
April 9, 2011 at 10 a.m., online at coc.ca or in person at the
Four Seasons Centre Box Office. Opera for a New Age is presented
by TD Bank Financial Group.
Student Group Tickets
Student group tickets are $22 per student and may be purchased
by calling 416-306-2356.
Rush Seats
Rush seats, starting at $22 and subject to availability, go on
sale at 11 a.m. on the morning of each performance at the Four
Seasons Centre Box Office.
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Strauss’s
