Maria de Buenos Aires
By Astor Piazzolla
January 29 & February 4
Maria’s life is the surreal, dreamlike story of the tango. Born in the slums, she is lured by the city lights into nightclubs, cabarets and bordellos. Maria embodies everything that is the tango, totally consumed by passion, yet never destroyed. After her death, Maria becomes a Shadow, a wandering ghost, until she is spectacularly reborn. “I am Maria of Buenos Aires, Maria tango, slum Maria, Maria night, Maria fatal passion, Maria of love, of Buenos Aires, that’s me.” Part spirited dance celebration, part spiritual pilgrimage, Piazzolla’s 1968 operita is an irresistible ode to the tango that thrills to the pulse and rhythm of Latin life. Read More...
The Breasts of Tiresias / Tears of a Knife
By Francis Poulenc / Bohuslav Martinu
March 11 & 17
All expectations are confounded in these two nonsensical comic operas. Written in Paris, during surrealism’s Golden Age, these absurdist delights unfold amid storylines that are as entertaining as they are strange. Poulenc and Martinu’s worlds allow breasts to fly off of women’s bodies over bright, melodious tunes, men to manufacture 40,049 babies in a single day, Satan to fox-trot over a 1920s jazz score and suicides to be undone without bodily consequence. The result will be an evening of spectacular nonsense and fun, where nothing makes sense and the bizarre is the norm. Read More...
Ainadamar
By Osvaldo Golijov
May 19 & 26
Ainadamar, Arabic for “Fountain of Tears,” is a famous well in Granada where Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca was murdered by Fascist forces in 1936. Through the voice of his close friend, actress Margarita Xingu, the story of Lorca’s life and death unfolds in dreamlike episodes. The opera is a gripping reflection on the absurd justifications for political killings. The flamenco and Latin-tinged score illustrates the passion and the undying faith of a people for whom Lorca became a symbol of political and artistic freedom. Read More...
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
By Michael Nyman
June 16 & 24
Based on Dr. Oliver Sacks’ case study of a musician who is losing his ability to recognize everyday objects, minimalist composer Michael Nyman (best known for his award winning soundtrack for The Piano) has written a score which dramatizes the borderlands of the human psyche. Full of compassion, tension and humor, this curious journey into one man’s mind celebrates the power of music to move, to heal, and to haunt us. Read More...
