The Fort Worth Opera  will kick off its 66th season  with Puccini’s Tosca, followed by Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. Well- known for its reputation for programming contemporary works, the company will premiere  two regional premieres: Mark Adamo’s Lysistrata and Jake Heggie’s Three Decembers.

The 2012 Festival will run May 12 – June 3, 2012. Tosca, The Marriage of Figaro, and Lysistrata will be performed in world-renowned Bass Performance Hall. As part of Fort Worth Opera’s ongoing dedication to performing in alternative venues, Three Decembers will play in the Scott Theatre, an intimate 500-seat venue at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center that is ideally suited to the chamber work.

Ticket Pre-Sale

Tuesday, August 22 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Call 1.877.396.7372
Use code word: PUCCINI

Tosca

Music by Giacomo Puccini and libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa
May 12, 20, 25, and June 2, 2012 ␣ Bass Performance Hall, Fort Worth
In Italian with projected English and Spanish translations

The season kicks off with Tosca, Puccini’s blockbuster opera about the fiery diva who makes a dreadful bargain with the lecherous Baron Scarpia in order to save her beloved Cavaradossi. Fort Worth Opera welcomes back soprano Carter Scott (Tosca) and baritone Michael Chioldi (Scarpia), whose performances in Fort Worth Opera’s Tosca in 2005 were burned into the city’s memory. “The intensity they projected was almost frightening,” raved the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The Marriage of Figaro

Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte * denotes Fort Worth Opera Debut Season
May 19, 27, and June 1, 2012 ␣ Bass Performance Hall, Fort Worth
In Italian with projected English and Spanish translations

Considered revolutionary when it was written, Mozart’s comedy The Marriage of Figaro is as fresh and relevant now as when it was premiered—and Fort Worth Opera has assembled a young cast packed with rising stars. Singing the title role is bass-baritone Donovan Singletary. Making their house debuts are soprano Andrea Carroll* as Figaro’s fiancée Susanna, 2010 McCammon winner and baritone Jonathan Beyer* as Count Almaviva, soprano Jan Cornelius* as the Countess, and mezzo-soprano Wallis Giunta* as Cherubino.

Lysistrata

Music and libretto by Mark Adamo + denotes Fort Worth Opera Studio Member ^ denotes Fort Worth Opera Studio AlumnusMay 26 and June 3, 2012
Bass Performance Hall, Fort Worth
In English with projected English translations

Acclaimed American composer Mark Adamo has created in Lysistrata,  an opera that is “at once provocative, hilarious, bawdy and tender” (Houston Chronicle). Based on Aristophanes’ work, this “fantastical riff on the ancient Greek play” (The New York Times) satirizes humanity’s endless legacy of war, not only war between nations, but the war of the sexes.

The opera expands on the original premise (a group of Athenian and Spartan women are tired of the constant warring between their cities, so they band together and refuse to have sex with their men until peace is declared), but despite the comic backdrop, the “brittle antiwar satire becomes a sumptuous love story, poised between comedy and heartbreak,” (New Yorker).

Metroplex favorite and Texas native soprano Ava Pine  takes on the title role, and her lover Nico, the Athenian solder, is sung by tenor Scott Scully. Mezzo-soprano Meaghan Dieter  is Kleonike, the leader of the Athenian women, while her Spartan counterpart, Lampito, is sung by mezzo-soprano Alissa Anderson. Lampito’s husband Leonidas is the Spartan general, sung by bass-baritone Seth Mease Carico . The Athenian couple Myrrhine and Kinesias are sung by soprano Ashley Kerr and baritone Michael Mayes.

Three Decembers.

Music by Jake Heggie and libretto by Gene Scheer * denotes Fort Worth Debut Season
May 13, 18, 20, 26, 31, and June 2, 2012
Scott Theatre, Fort Worth Community Arts Center
In English ␣ Regional premiere

Renowned American composer Jake Heggie, whose opera Dead Man Walking has dominated the opera scene worldwide (including in Fort Worth), chronicles three decades in the lives of a Broadway diva and her adult son and daughter in his second opera, Three Decembers.. Unfolding through Christmas letters, phone calls, and family visits, the story captures their heartbreaking and inspiring struggle to love each other despite conflict and disappointments. Called “a modern masterpiece” (Opera Today) and “sharp and witty and poignant” (Chicago Tribune), the chamber opera is based on the play

Some Christmas Letters by Terrence McNally (the Dead Man Walking librettist), with a libretto by writer Gene Scheer* (also the librettist for Heggie’s opera Moby-Dick).

Soprano Janice Hall returns to sing her first Madeline (the mother). No stranger to contemporary opera, Hall’s performance in Fort Worth Opera’s 2008 Angels in America was hailed as “nothing less than magnificent” (Opera News). Soprano Emily Pulley* and baritone Matthew Worth* make their FWOpera debuts reprising their roles as daughter Bea and son Charlie (sung at Chicago Opera Theatre and Central City Opera, respectively).

TICKETS: Tickets can be purchased by phone or in person at Bass Performance Hall or at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center. Season subscriptions range from $70 to $455 while single tickets range from $18 to $180. Season subscriptions are available now. Single tickets will be available starting September 1, 2011. For more information or tickets, visit www.fwopera.org or call 817.731.0726 or 1.877.396.7372.

ABOUT FORT WORTH OPERA: Fort Worth Opera was founded in 1946 and is the oldest continually performing opera company in Texas, and one of the 14 oldest opera companies in the United States. Under the leadership of General Director Darren Keith Woods since 2001, the company has gained national attention from critics and audiences alike for its artistic quality and willingness to take risks.