Opera Season Highlights from Wise Music Classical

Opera Season Highlights from Wise Music Classical
© Marta Syrko, Courtesy of Dutch National Opera

“We aspire to a culture which is both local and global. It must belong to and be inclusive of all those within its community. At the same time, it must embrace a diverse but connected world. Opera is an international language, and its stories reflect the values of freedom and tolerance.”

-World Opera Day

 

Opera Season Highlights from Wise Music Classical

 

To celebrate World Opera Day on October 25, we invite you to explore Wise Music Classical’s opera highlights of the 2022-23 season. With premieres of daring new work and new arrangements of operas from across the centuries, our composers and their collaborators continue to innovate, shock, and delight audiences around the world. 

 

Berlin Alexanderplatz | Vivan and Ketan Bhatti

Berlin Alexanderplatz is an interdisciplinary work combining opera, drama and dance, commissioned by the Theater Bielefeld. The orchestral instruments mimic electronic synthesizers and delay effects, and speech is broken down into different components, from operatic singing to naturalistic text.

Theater Bielefeld - World Premiere

September 4 

 

The Listeners | Missy Mazzoli & Royce Vavrek

The Listeners examines the lengths to which Americans are willing to go in order to find a sense of place and purpose, and the way in which charismatic leaders can exploit these needs to their own ends. Based on an original story by Jordan Tannahill, the plot is inspired by an actual phenomenon called “the global hum,” a low-pitched sound that people around the world claim to hear.

Norwegian National Opera - World Premiere

September 24 to October 9, 2022

 

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk | Dmitri Shostakovich & Alexander Preys

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is an infamous opera by Dmitri Shostakovich, banned by Stalin after its premiere and now considered a classic of the 20th Century. The libretto is jointly written by Alexander Preys and the composer, based on an engrossing novella by Nikolai Leskov.

Metropolitan Opera

September 29 to October 21, 2022

 

A Room of One’s Own | Outi Tarkianen & Francis Hüsers and Virginia Woolf

A Room of One's Own is based on Virginia Woolf’s classic 1928 essay of the same name, with a libretto by the German opera director, dramaturg, and librettist Francis Hüsers. The opera seeks to answer the question of why, from one century to another, women are cast as shadows across the stage in the arts and history.

Theater Hagen

October 14, 2022

 

Innocence | Kaija Saariaho & Sofi Oksanen

Innocence is a contemporary tragedy made radiant through its powerful music and the intermingling of words from different languages. Kaija Saariaho’s latest opera is the result of a meeting between this great composer and another Finnish artist, the novelist Sofi Oksanen, who is unrivalled in her ability to force today’s reality to confront the past.

Finnish National Opera

October 21 to November 24, 2022

Royal Opera House

April 17 to May 4, 2023

 

El último sueño de Frida y Diego | Gabriela Lena Frank & Nilo Cruz

El último sueño de Frida y Diego is a fictional story, inspired by the lives of the two Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. The opera is the first from composer Gabriela Lena Frank, with a libretto by longtime collaborator and Pulitzer-winning playwright Nilo Cruz.

San Diego Opera

October 29 to November 6, 2022 - World Premiere

San Francisco Opera

June 13 to June 30, 2023

 

Buddha Passion | Tan Dun

This powerful piece represents the first Passion inspired by Buddhism rather than Christianity. Stirred by the city of Dunhuang and its ancient caves, Tan Dun has created a powerful score that captures the Buddha’s teachings of love, forgiveness, sacrifice, and salvation.

Seattle Symphony

November 3, 2022, to January 13, 2023

London Philharmonic Orchestra - UK Premiere

January 22, 2023

 

X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X | Anthony Davis & Thulani Davis, story by Christopher Davis.

X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X sketches the galvanic life and career of minister and human rights activist Malcolm X, in a series of fast-moving vignettes. This vital American opera is characterized by its dark palette, shifting rhythmic patterns, and poignant lyricism, as well as its wide range of influences from classical, popular, and non-Western musics.

Opera Omaha

November 4 and 6, 2022 

 

Angel’s Bone | Du Yun & Royce Vavrek

Angel's Bone melds chamber music, theatre, punk rock, opera, cabaret, and electronics, exploring the dark effects and motivations behind modern-day slavery and the trafficking industry. The opera is the winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Music.

Re:Naissance - Canadian Premiere

November 24 to 27, 2022

Staatstheater Augsburg - World Premiere of new expanded orchestration

April 2 to May 14, 2023

 

Song from the Uproar | Missy Mazzoli & Royce Vavrek

Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904) was an explorer, nomad, journalist, novelist, passionate romantic, Sufi, and one of the most unique and unusual women of her era. Song from the Uproar uses texts inspired by her writing to immerse the audience in the surreal landscapes of Isabelle's life; she describes the death of her family, the thrill of her arrival in Africa, her tentative joy at falling in love, the elation of self-discovery and the mystery of death.

Croatian National Theater

November 27 and 28, 2022

 

In Our Daughter’s Eyes | Du Yun & Michael Joseph McQuilken

Told through the perspective of a new father, In Our Daughter's Eyes shows the journey of the protagonist as he wrestles with truly becoming a man of whom his daughter would be proud. He imparts passages from the journal he keeps — a gift for his unborn daughter — as the moments of this journey unfold before him.

Prototype Festival

January 5 to 15, 2023

 

Marnie | Nico Muhly & Nicholas Wright

Set in late 1950s England, Winston Graham’s novel was immortalised by the Hitchcock movie, which, despite its changes to a number of features of the original, restored in Nico Muhly’s opera, is the prism through which we inevitably see the action. 

Theater Freiburg - German Premiere

January 14 to Febuary 3, 2023

 

Oryx and Crake | Søren Nils Eichberg & Hannah Dübgen

Margaret Atwood's story of the only human survivor on Earth is told through flashbacks, through which the audience must deduce what drama lead to the apocalypse. This operatic adaptation combines intelligent, dark humor with  melancholic, dystopian loneliness. Its futuristic yet archaic intensity underpins a passionate love triangle.

Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden - World Premiere

February 18 to April 21, 2023

 

Breaking the Waves | Missy Mazzoli & Royce Vavrek

Inspired by the Cannes-winning film by Lars Von Trier, this opera by Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek received the 2017 international Opera award for best creation. In Breaking the Waves, faith and love lead its heroine Bess into a sacrifice against the tide of common morality.

Bremerhaven - German Premiere

May 6 to May 25, 2023

Opéra Comique - French Premiere

May 28 to May 31, 2023

 

Everest | Joby Talbot & Gene Scheer

Based on a true story, Talbot’s opera has a contemporary setting, but an eternal theme: the limits of human courage, and the unbreakable power of nature.

BBC Symphony Orchestra

June 23, 2023

 

Orfeo | Nico Muhly & Alessandro Striggio the Younger

Legendary lovers Orfeo and Euridice face death and separation in Nico Muhly’s new orchestration of Monteverdi’s seminal opera. 

Santa Fe Opera - World Premiere

July 29 to August 24, 2023

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