We were fortunate enough to receive a grant from Opera America which assisted us in conducting several events in support of Tulsa Opera’s production of Dead Man Walking. Sister Helen Prejean’s visit the week before opening night was undoubtedly an evening all who were present will never forget. Her lecture opened our minds to differing opinions and perspectives, a perfect prelude to attending the performance on Saturday evening.

For those who weren’t fortunate enough to attend this lecture, our friends at the University of Tulsa School of Law captured it on video. We hope you will take the time to watch the lecture and also take a few moments to reflect on your own thoughts.

Tulsa Opera is pleased to announce our upcoming season and we hope you will join us for another year of outstanding productions. Purchase season subscriptions online or by calling the Tulsa Opera ticket office at 918-587-4811.

The Daughter of the Regiment

Score by Gaetano Donizetti
Libretto by Julies-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Jean-Francois-Alfred Bayard

A rambunctious tomboy raised by a group of soldiers is forced to assume the airs of nobility in order to marry an aristocrat.  With plot twists that will leave you laughing out loud, there is still hope that she will marry her peasant sweetheart.  Tulsa’s own Sarah Coburn will be joined by tenor Gregory Schmidt in this romantic comedy of good spirits and vocal fireworks.  Peter Strummer returns as Suplice and Tara Faircloth directs Tulsa Opera’s season opener.

Sung in French with English supertitles

October 13/19/21, 2012

The Most Happy Fella

By Frank Loesser

From the composer of Guys and Doll, this original 1956 production has been termed as “one of the most ambitiously operatic works ever written for Broadway.”  An aging Italian vineyard owner proposes to a young waitress by mail, but leery of revealing his age sends her a picture of his handsome ranch foreman.  Celebrated baritone Metropolitan Opera baritone and current associate professor of voice at the University of Oklahoma, Kim Josephson stars as Tony; soprano Katrina Thurman, an Oklahoma native recently acclaimed for her performances with Lyrique en mer, Shreveport Opera and Sacramento Opera, portrays his beloved Rosabella.  Dorothy Danner directs this Tulsa Opera premiere.

Sung in English

February 23, March 1/3, 2013

Aida

By Giuseppe Verdi

Referred to as the grandest of grand opera, Aida was the production that opened the new Performing Arts Center 35 years ago and the first outdoor opera performed at Skelly Stadium in 1933.   In a story of love during wartime, Aida, the enslaved Ethiopian princess, and Radames, leader of the Egyptian army, long to be united forever.  But someone else wants Radames, too: the daughter of the Pharaoh!  In the title role, rising star soprano Amber Wagner, who recently made a triumphant debut in Wagner’s Lohengrin at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, makes her Tulsa Opera debut.  Singers from the Tulsa Oratorio Chorus and dancers from Tulsa Ballet II join forces with Tulsa Opera for this spectacular production celebrating 200 years from the birth of Giuseppe Verdi.

Sung in Italian with English supertitles.

April 20, 26 and 28, 2012

People often cry at the opera.  It is almost a cliché.  “Bring a hankie” is standard admonition to anyone on their way to their first Madama Buterfly or La Boheme.  However, the tears of those who watched the film version of “Dead Man Walking” at the Circle Cinema last Tuesday night were different.  There is nothing sentimental, melodramatic or “touching” about a story that deals with the brutal taking of two young lives, the grief of parents burying their children, the terror of a man who knows exactly when and how he is going to die, and one woman’s struggle to gain redemption for a man whose actions cannot be undone.

The experience of watching Dead Man Walking the opera is even more intense.  It’s harder to watch this story unfold in front of your eyes, unfiltered by a lens and a screen.  You feel as naked and helpless as the murdered teenagers, as devastated and outraged as the parents, as terrified of the lethal injection as the murderer and as overwhelmed as the woman who tries to heal and redeem.  You break down and cry, and hang on to the music for comfort.

Dead Man Walking is hard to watch, and it’s hard to perform.  The cast has to take frequent breaks in rehearsals and can repeat scenes only so many times in one session.  This is the kind of theatre that hollows you out to make room for empathy and understanding.  Not many of our audience will leave the theatre whistling the tunes, but most will find themselves re-visiting the story and the music in their minds and sharing their thoughts with friends and relatives for days and weeks after the performance.

Here at the Tulsa Opera offices, things are getting very busy very quickly as we gear up for the Oklahoma premiere of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, an opera we have spent several years planning. We have partnered with a number of local organizations to help connect you to the opera in different ways. We have planned an art show (at Living Arts of Tulsa), a screening of the Academy Award winning film (at Circle Cinema), a lecture by Sister Helen Prejean, and a special Inside the Composer’s Studio live interview with Jake Heggie. All of the details for each event is available at www.tulsaopera.com/events

A few months ago, we published some information about Sister Helen Prejean as we were getting ready for this show. Just today, the staging rehearsals have begun and it struck us that as a piece of theatre, this opera is quite masterful. Jake Heggie is quite a talented composer, but you may not have heard of him, so let’s get to know him just a little bit.

Jake Heggie, Composer & Pianist

Jake Heggie is the American composer of the operas Moby-Dick (libretto: Gene Scheer), Dead Man Walking (libretto: Terrence McNally), Three Decembers (libretto: Scheer), The End of the Affair (libretto: Heather McDonald), To Hell and Back (libretto: Scheer), and the stage works For a Look or a Touch (libretto: Scheer) and At the Statue of Venus (libretto: McNally). He has also composed more than 200 art songs, as well as orchestral, choral and chamber music. His recent recording of songs and duets, PASSING BY: Songs by Jake Heggie, (AVIE), features performances by Isabel Bayrakdarian, Zheng Cao, Joyce DiDonato, Susan Graham, Paul Groves, Keith Phares, and Frederica von Stade.

Heggie is the 2010-11 guest artist-in-residence at the University of North Texas at Denton, where he will compose his first symphony, based on several Ahab monologues from the novel Moby-Dick. The “Ahab” Symphony will receive its premiere in 2012 with tenor Richard Croft as soloist. Other current projects include song commissions from Carnegie Hall (for Joyce DiDonato), San Francisco Performances (for DiDonato and the Alexander String Quartet), The Dallas Opera (for baritone Nathan Gunn), and Houston Grand Opera (to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks); as well as a one-act opera for chorus for the John Alexander Singers and the Pacific Chorale, and a new version of For a Look or a Touch that features the 200-voice Seattle Men’s Chorus.

Heggie’s operas have been performed to tremendous acclaim internationally in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Ireland, Austria, South Africa and by more than a dozen American opera companies, including: San Francisco Opera, New York City Opera, Houston Grand Opera, The Dallas Opera, Seattle Opera, Ft. Worth Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Austin Lyric Opera and Madison Opera. Dead Man Walking has been performed nearly 150 times since its San Francisco premiere in 2000, making it one of the most performed new American operas. Moby-Dick received its 2010 world premiere at The Dallas Opera and was co-commissioned by Dallas with four other companies: San Francisco Opera, San Diego Opera, Calgary Opera and the State Opera of South Australia.

The composer’s numerous songs and cycles, including The Deepest Desire, Statuesque, Here & Gone, Rise & Fall, Songs & Sonnets to Ophelia, Facing Forward/Looking Back, Friendly Persuasions, and Songs to the Moon, are featured in recitals around the world by some of the world’s most beloved and celebrated singers. Among those who regularly champion Heggie’s works are sopranos Emily Albrink, Isabel Bayrakdarian, Kristin Clayton, Nicolle Foland, Audra McDonald, Emily Pulley, Talise Trevigne, Kiri Te Kanawa; mezzos Zheng Cao, Joyce Castle, Catherine Cook, Joyce DiDonato, Susan Graham, Kristine Jepson, Frederica von Stade; Broadway soprano Patti LuPone; tenors Stephen Costello, Paul Groves, Ben Heppner, Nicholas Phan; and baritones Philip Cutlip, Daniel Okulitch, Keith Phares, Morgan Smith and Bryn Terfel.

Heggie is an ardent champion of writers. Most of his operas and stage works feature libretti written by either Terrence McNally or Gene Scheer; while sources for song texts and poetry have also included Maya Angelou, Charlene Baldridge, Raymond Carver, Emily Dickinson, John Hall, A.E. Housman, Vachel Lindsay, Philip Littell, Armistead Maupin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sister Helen Prejean, Gini Savage, Vincent Van Gogh, Frederica von Stade, and Eugenia Zukerman, to name a few. The composer has a close association with the conductor Patrick Summers, who has led the world premieres of all the composer’s major operas; and the director Leonard Foglia, who has directed the premieres of Moby-Dick, Three Decembers, and The End of the Affair, as well as the United States national tour of Dead Man Walking.

Recordings of Heggie’s compositions include PASSING BY: Songs by Jake Heggie (Avie), Dead Man Walking (Erato), Three Decembers (Albany), Flesh and Stone (Americus), To Hell and Back (Magnatune), The Faces of Love (RCA Red Seal), The Deepest Desire (Eloquentia), and For a Look or a Touch (Naxos). Heggie was the recipient of a 2005/2006 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and has been composer-in-residence for the San Francisco Opera, Eos Orchestra, and Vail Valley Music Festival. As a coach and teacher, he has given classes at universities throughout the United States and at summer festivals such as SongFest in Malibu and the Steans Institute at Ravinia. Jake Heggie lives in San Francisco. www.jakeheggie.com.

Courtesy of The Official Website of Jake Heggie
© 2010 Bent Pen Music, Inc.