Viva la Mamma
If you’re into opera, this week’s calendar of events will make you delirious. If not, there are four other interesting events to put on your bucket list for the weekend.
About those operas: Six shows, two of them double-bills, will hit the boards between now and November 11.
Oberlin Opera Theater is mounting a double bill of comic titles, beginning with Donizetti’s satirical Viva la Mamma and concluding with Poulenc’s outrageous Les Mamelles de Tiresias, with shows on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, November 3, 4, and 5 at 8:00 pm and Sunday, November 6 at 2:00 pm in Oberlin’s Hall Auditorium. Jonathon Field directs, and Raphael Jiménez conducts the Oberlin Orchestra. Tickets available online.
Baldwin Wallace Opera joins hands with Cleveland Opera Theater for a special production of Handel’s Serse conceived and directed by Tim Nelson, who has trimmed the three hour show down to ninety minutes and replaced Handel’s musical narration with poems by Rumi. There are three performances: Friday and Saturday, November 4 and 5 at 8:00 pm in Kulas Hall at BW, and the third at The Arcade in downtown Cleveland on Sunday, November 6 at 8:00 pm. Tickets for the BW shows can be ordered here, and for the Arcade show here.
Kent State Opera Theater gets together with the Kent State Museum’s costume collection for scenes from Mozart’s The Magic Flute and an exhibition of costumes and stage designs from productions all over the world. Director Marla Berg has slimmed the opera down and added a continuity script to be narrated by WCLV’s Bill O’Connell. The show plays in Murphy Auditorium at the KSU Museum on Friday, November 4 at 7:30 pm, Saturday, November 5 at 2:00 pm and 7:30 pm, and Sunday, November 6 at 2:00 pm. You can order tickets online.
Opera Circle Cleveland will present Pietro Mascagni’s Zanetto twice at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus in Slavic Village — on Friday, November 4 at 7:30 pm and Sunday, November 6 at 3:30 pm — before taking the one-act, 50-minute, two-woman show featuring Megan Thompson and Dorota Sobieska on tour to ten more Northeast Ohio venues between November 11 and December 16. All the performances are free. View the complete schedule here.
Mark your calendars for more operas still to come! CIM Opera Theater’s Puccini/Menotti double bill runs from November 9-11. And Opera Western Reserve will put on a single performance of Carmen on November 11 at Stambaugh Auditorium in Youngstown.
David B. Ellis will conduct Earth and Air: String Orchestra in rarely-heard works by Felix Mendelssohn (some written when he was only 14) at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights on Friday, November 4 at 7:30 pm. Featured performers are violinist Solomon Liang and pianist Megan-Geoffrey Prins. The church is located at 2747 Fairmount Blvd., and tickets ($20 or $10 for students) can be purchased at the door.
The Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble will play the first of four concerts at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Saturday, November 5 at 2:00 pm, when Tim Weiss will lead the group in music by Elizabeth Ogonek, Stephen Hartke and James Macmillan, with guest saxophonist Noah Getz. Tickets are available online.
The Cleveland Orchestra will join Beachwood High School Ensembles under the baton of Brett Mitchell to celebrate the renovation of the Beachwood High School Auditorium on Saturday, November 5 at 7:00 pm. There’ll be music by John Williams, Ludwig van Beethoven, Michael Daugherty, and a side-by-side performance of an excerpt from Maurice Ravel’s Bolero. Free tickets will be distributed on the school’s website.
And there will be many flutes onstage at Valley Lutheran Church in Chagrin Falls on Sunday, November 6 at 3:00 pm, when the Erie Waters Flute Ensemble plays a wildly-varied program of music for multiple flutes (plus bottles and bird whistles). Part of the Chagrin Concert Series, the concert is free, but an offering will be gratefully accepted. The church is located at 87 East Orange St.
For details of these and many other events, visit the ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings page.
