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DMMO's 39th Summer Festival Productions Announced

June 24-July 17, 2011

La Bohème (1896) by Giacomo Puccini

The world’s most popular opera! It’s Christmas Eve in Paris, complete with the abandoned revelry of Bohemian life.   The novelist Henri Murger wrote a journal about his youth in Paris in the 1840s and from its pages comes a musical version that Puccini set to beautiful and passionate melody so eloquent in its expression of love won and lost that it hasn’t failed to inspire each succeeding generation.  This is an opera to be seen again and again.

Last seen at DMMO:       Summer Festival 1996 (though it was performed it in the Civic Center in January, 2001)

Don Pasquale (1843) by Gaetano Donizetti

Don Pasquale is the 69th of Donizetti’s 71 operas.  One of the world’s greatest operatic comedies contains a plot as old as time.  The characters and their roles in farce are clearly based on commedia dell’arte types- Italian improvised comedies.  Pasquale is the old bachelor who always has an eye for the young ladies; Malatesta is the Doctor whose attitude and carriage is of profound erudition – but whose wisdom is questionable; Ernesto is the young, passionate and often witless lover and Norina is the willful, vivacious young women caught in the center of the intrigues.  Fashioned for four incredible singers / comic actors and a chorus, the story is durable and timeless, the music is charming, buoyant and as enduring as springtime itself!

Last seen at DMMO:       Summer Festival 1993

Dialogues of the Carmelites (1956) by Francis Poulenc

One of the twentieth century’s most powerful, important and emotionally challenging operas, the piece is based on a play by Georges Bernanos and was premiered at La Scala in Milan.  Set against the terrifying backdrop of the French Revolution, it tells the story about a young woman of nobility who becomes a nun, against the wishes of her father and brother.  Blanche de la Force is deeply afraid of the terror of the world in which she finds herself and joins the convent in an attempt to find refuge where she can live and work without fear.  And then the Revolution begins and nothing is ever the same again.  This is a story about real people but told with some abstractions that reflect the fact that often times what we say to each other is not often exactly what we mean.

As the wheels of the Revolution turn, giants are felled and little people are left behind are left to tremble in the wake.  The opera records the everyday happenings and conversations in Blanche’s life as she watches those around her deal with faith and courage and those events that lead her to her own crisis of faith versus fear.

The final scene stands alone and apart as one of the greatest moments in all musical theatre.

Last seen at DMMO:       Summer Festival 1984

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