Metropolitan Opera Director and Emmy Award- winning Bruce Donnell Returns to direct his second Livermore Valley Opera
LIVERMORE, CALIF. — Strong women who get what they want, self-aggrandizing pompous men who stand in their way and hilarious comedy all around is the basic premise of Gioachino Rossini’s The Italian Girl in Algiers, Livermore Valley Opera’s production opening on March 12th at the Bankhead Theater. The Tri-Valley’s own professional opera company will present Rossini’s first masterpiece that combines comedy and tragedy set off by his brilliant music. The opera is a delightful and amusing music box of an opera that will please everyone, and LVO’s music director Alex Katsman has assembled a cast that is young, vibrant and full of life. LVO offers four performances over two weekends. Details are as follows:
An Italian Girl in Algiers
March 12, 2016; 7:30pm, Opening night
March 13, 2016; 2pm
March 19, 2016; 7:30pm
March 20, 2016; 2pm
Opening Night Gala celebration dinner at Uncle Yu’s at the Vineyard, 4:00pm. Separate ticket purchase required.
Gioachino Rossini was a master at writing operas that combined elements of both comic (buffa) and tragic (seria) stories. First performed in 1813 when Rossini was just 21, this opera reflects his youth, vibrancy and playfulness. The opera is wacky and hilarious in a style resembling Laurel and Hardy skits, yet sparkles with great music and modern characters. But it also has a serious undertone which pokes fun at authority figures, inept lovers, and unfaithful husbands, while making the heroine, Isabella, the clear winner in a battle of the sexes.
Metropolitan Opera and Emmy Award-winning director Bruce Donnell returns to direct his second production for LVO. Donnell directed LVO’s Cinderella (March 2014) which The Independent described as “fun from beginning to end,” and observed that “Bruce Donnell’s vast experience directing opera productions at major houses all over the world is evident in this production.”
“We are delighted to once again have Bruce Donnell as Stage Director,” says Jim Schmidt, LVO President. “Audiences loved Mr. Donnell’s presentation of Cinderella with its comical flare, and we expect the same for The Italian Girl in Algiers, another excellent Rossini comedic opera.”
Also returning are several of the principal opera singers who appeared in Cinderella which received rave reviews. Bass-baritone Bojan Knežević, who “display[ed] boisterous comic flair” as Don Magnifico, Cinderella’s despicable stepfather, is Italian Girl’s Mustafa and promises an equally hilarious performance. Tenor Marco Stefani, a Pleasanton native who now resides in Italy, is returning to LVO to sing the role of Isabella’s lover Lindoro. Stefani who performed the role of Cinderella’s Prince Ramiero, with his “sweet-sounding tenor voice” and “impressive agility” will again thrill Bankhead audiences. Baritone Daniel Cilli and soprano Emma McNairy who performed great comedic roles in Cinderella with impressive singing will bring to life their characters of Taddeo and Elvira.
Making her LVO debut is mezzo-soprano Kristen Choi in the lead role of Isabella. Hailed for her “beautiful, dusky, and expressive” voice with a “commanding presence”, Choi is bursting onto the opera scene with full force.
“We are very excited to have Kristen join our stellar cast,” says Alexander Katsman, LVO’s Music and Artistic Director. “I’ve been following her progress since the time she studied at the San Francisco Conservatory where she earned a Masters of Music degree. I have always wanted to find a major role for her at LVO.”
Ms Choi, a California native, was one of three winners in the October 2015 district Metropolitan Opera National Council auditions in San Diego. During the 2013-14 season she was an Emerging Artist with Virginia Opera, and she has performed as an Apprentice Artist with the Sarasota Opera. In the Bay Area, Ms. Choi has performed with both Opera Parallèle and West Bay Opera.
“Rossini’s brilliant music which is marked by slowly building crescendos with incredible energy, melodies you will be humming for days, combined with poignant passages of truly masterful music is an opera you will not want to miss,” adds Katsman.
Opera Week Special Events
Opening Night Gala at Uncle Yu’s at the Vineyard
Gala ticket includes appetizers, a three-course dinner paired with Crooked Vine & Stony Ridge wines, followed by a dessert reception in the Bankhead Theater lobby. The welcome reception of wine and appetizers begins at 4:00 pm and seating at 4:30 pm at Uncle Yu’s, conveniently located one-half block from the theater. Guests will have a chance to meet the Stage Director Bruce Donnell and Alexander Katsman, LVO’s Artistic Director and Music Conductor.
Gala Tickets are $90, and are available through Bankhead Theater box office. Raffle tickets will be sold for a chance to win a gift certificate from Neiman Marcus. Proceeds from the evening allow LVO to continue its mission of bringing quality opera to the Tri-Valley and beyond.
Pre-opera talk; artist reception
Included in the ticket price is a pre-opera talk providing insights to the featured opera, held one hour prior to curtain.
LVO’s traditional artist reception is held in the lobby immediately following each performance.
Performance & Box Office Location:
Bankhead Theater
2400 First Street, Livermore, CA 94550
Bankhead Ticket Office: 925-373-6800
www.livermoreperformingarts.com
Ticket Pricing
Adults $39-$89. Students 18 years and younger $10 off on all days, all seating sections. Student ID required. Opening night Gala tickets are a separate ticket purchase of $90.
Free OperaLIVE! events at local libraries
Continuing with its commitment of making opera more accessible to the community, Livermore Valley Opera will showcase talented opera singers who will appear in The Italian Girl in Algiers in free OperaLIVE! events in the Tri-Valley. Details are as follows:
- Sunday, February 28, 2:00 p.m. at the Pleasanton Library
400 Old Bernal Ave. in downtown Pleasanton
Sponsored by Friends of Pleasanton Library
- Sunday, March 6, 2:00 p.m. at the Livermore Library
Civic Center location at 1188 S. Livermore Ave
Sponsored by Friends of the Livermore Library
Artistic Talents
Kristen Choi
Kristen Choi, mezzo soprano, is excited to make her LVO opera debut this season in The Italian Girl in Algiers. Recent roles include Suzuki in Madama Butterfly (Opera San Antonio), Paquette in Candide (Glimmerglass Opera Festival), Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro (Sarasota Opera), and Lady Thiang in The King and I (The Marriott Theatre). She also won the Metropolitan Opera National Council District of San Diego and was the recipient of an encouragement award in the Western Region. Ms. Choi holds a Master’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and is a native to Los Angeles, CA.
Marco Stefani
Italian-American tenor Marco Stefani was most recently heard at the Festival della Valle d’Itria alongside tenor Michael Spyres in Mayr’s Medea in Corinto conducted by Fabio Luisi, principal conductor of the Metropolitan Opera. He made his debut with Livermore Valley Opera as Don Ramiro in Rossini’s Cinderella (La Cenerentola), a role which he has performed at Townsend Opera and at the Salzburg Festival as a member of the Young Singers Project. Other notable appearances for the Pleasanton native include his debut at the Rossini Opera Festival in Il viaggio a Reims and at the San Francisco Opera in the world premiere of Mark Adamo’s The Gospel of Mary Magdalene. Mr. Stefani is a recipient of the prestigious career grant from the Sullivan Foundation and is a winner of the Marilyn Horne Song Competition and Palm Beach Opera Competition. He is an alumnus of Indiana University and the University of the Pacific.
Bojan Knežević
Knežević has received critical acclaim for his many operatic portrayals in opera houses in America and in Europe. Mr. Knežević sang a heralded Wozzeck (“The cast was top-notch, led by Bojan Knežević in a knowing and musically focused performance in the title role” – San Francisco Chronicle) for San Francisco’s Ensemble Parallèle as well as Salome, Werther, Le Nozze di Figaro, Madama Butterfly and Cyrano with the San Francisco Opera. He began his operatic career singing in all the major opera companies in the former Yugoslavia, including Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana. Mr. Knežević’s association with San Francisco Opera started in 1992, where he participated in the Merola Program (1992-94), Western Opera Theater national tours (1992-94) and as a 1995 Adler Fellow.
Emma McNairy
Lauded by the San Francisco Chronicle for “a virtuosic display as Zerbinetta,”and by the Contra Costa Times as being “a particular standout…acrobatic, sensuously flirtatious…” in West Edge Opera’s Ariadne auf Naxos, soprano Emma McNairy is enjoying a blossoming international career. As a 2013 Voice Fellow at Marilyn Horne’s Music Academy of the West, Ms. McNairy was noted by the Santa Barbara News-Press for her “lithely gifted and luminous-toned soprano”, in selections from Vaughan Williams’ Blake Songs in the summer’s Vocal Chamber Music Concert. She sang the title role in Rossini’s rarely performed Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra with West Edge Opera and with Livermore Valley Opera singing Clorinda in Cinderella (La Cenerentola).
Daniel Cilli
During recent seasons baritone Daniel Cilli performed the title role Carlo Gesualdo in the premiere reading of Gesualdo: Prince of Madness by Dante DeSilva a graphic opera commissioned by Opera Parallèle, Marco in Gianni Schicchi at Sacramento Opera, and Captain Corcoran in a concert of H.M.S. Pinafore with Music in the Mountains Festival. While a principal baritone 2006-2010 at Opera San Jose, Mr. Cilli performed the roles of Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro, Guglielmo in Cosí fan tutte, Papageno in Die Zauberflöte, Mercutio in Roméo et Juliette, Dandini in La Cenerentola, and Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia. He holds vocal performance degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music and Stetson University, and has also studied Lieder at the Franz Schubert Institute of Baden bei Wien, Austria.
Conductor Alexander Katsman
Mr. Katsman is the Artistic and Music Director for Livermore Valley Opera. An alumnus of the San Francisco Opera’s Merola Opera Program, Mr. Katsman received his M.M. from St. Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory and his B.M. cum laude from Mussorgsky College of Music in St. Petersburg, Russia. Since his arrival in the United States, Alexander has been sought after as a conductor and collaborative pianist. He has conducted for Opera San Jose, West Bay Opera, Martinez Opera, Bayshore Lyric Opera, Berkeley West Edge Opera, Oakland Lyric Opera, Solo Opera, San Francisco Lyric Opera, Diablo Light Opera, Opera Academy of California, Peninsula Teen Opera and also at Cal State University East Bay and Diablo Valley College. His conducting credits include over 60 opera, operetta, and musical theater productions, among them are Don Giovanni, La Traviata, Un ballo in maschera, Madama Butterfly, La Bohème, Der Rosenkavalier, and Faust.
Stage Director Bruce Donnell
A stage director with over 20 years directing with the New York Metropolitan Opera, Bruce Donnell studied at Friedelind Wagner’s Master Classes in Bayreuth in 1965 before joining the staff of the San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program and spending a summer as an apprentice technician at the Santa Fe Opera. His work at the Metropolitan includes Die Frau ohne Schatten with Birgit Nilsson, La Gioconda, Die Meistersinger, Parsifal, Arabella, Don Giovanni, La Fille du Regiment and Fidelio, among many others. Winner of two Emmy Awards, his television credits from the Metropolitan include Lucia di Lammermoor with Joan Sutherland and Alfredo Kraus, Der Rosenkavalier with Kiri Te Kanawa and Tatiana Troyanos, Billy Budd and the Aida that marked Leontyne Price’s farewell to opera.
About LVO
Livermore Valley Opera was founded in 1992, and presents fully-staged operas at Livermore’s Bankhead Theater in the spring and fall. This new theater features excellent lines of sight and acoustics, helping the opera to attract talented singers and stage directors for their performances.
In 2011, the company was granted full status as a Professional Company Member of Opera America, the national organization dedicated to this unique art form. LVO combines the talents of professional musicians, stage directors, principal singers, and designers with the dedication and practical abilities of volunteers filling such critical roles as board members, chorus, stage crew, and set builders to reach our artistic goals.
Livermore Valley Opera is a regional opera company and a 501(c) 3 non-profit charitable arts organization. For more information, visit www.livermorevalleyopera.com.
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