Arizona Bold Projects
CURRENT PROJECTS
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Arizona Lady by Emmerich Kálmán—a Jewish Hungarian composer who fled WWII to the southwestern United States. This comic operetta follows a European settler who emigrates to the U.S., purchases the fictitious Sunshine Ranch in Tucson, and raises a horse who eventually wins the Kentucky Derby. With music that evokes the greatest golden-age Hollywood film scores, Arizona Opera will be the first major opera house in the U.S. to present this work. |
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Florencia en el Amazonas by the late Mexican composer Daniel Catán. Set on a steamboat sailing down the Amazon River, the opera contains elements of magical realism in the style of Gabriel García Márquez and uses a libretto by Marcela Fuentes-Berain. Premiered in 1996, Florencia was the first Spanish-language opera to be commissioned by a major United States opera house.
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PAST PROJECTS
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Cruzar la Cara de la Luna (To Cross the Face of the Moon) by José “Pepe” Martínez and Leonard Foglia, is the world’s first mariachi opera. The renowned Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán (headed by Sr. Martínez), is known as the World’s Best Mariachi and can be heard on more than 800 recordings. Created by Houston Grand Opera in 2012, the opera is a bi-lingual work that follows three generations of a single family, spanning countries, cultures and customs. |
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Eugene Onegin by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, is an exceptional story of the pursuit of love set against the class struggle in Russia in the early 1820’s. The opera once enjoyed great popularity in the United States, especially following the 1999 film starring Ralph Fiennes and Liv Tyler. This past season, the Metropolitan Opera rekindled public interest in the piece by opening their season with a new production featuring Anna Netrebko and Marius Kwiecien. |
IN DEVELOPMENT
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Riders of the Purple Sage by Craig Bohmler and Steven Mark Kohn. Based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Zane Grey, Riders will be the first world premiere produced by Arizona Opera and the first Western Opera written by an American living in the Western United States. With scenic design by world-renowned artist Ed Mell, the operatic retelling examines the century-old debates surrounding gun control, women’s rights and fundamentalism while focusing on the developing romance of two couples, and the remarkable faith of our heroine, Jane Withersteen. |
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Silent Night by Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell, premiered in 2011 and is based on the historical short-lived spontaneous 1914 Christmas truce between enemy combatants in World War I. Sung in five languages, the piece won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2012, and has gone on to sold-out performances around the country. Arizona Opera brings the original production as seen on the PBS Great Performances national broadcast in December 2013
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Dead Man Walking by Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally. Based on the book by Sister Helen Prejean that later became a feature film starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, this remarkable opera examines the subject matter of capital punishment in the United States without taking a definitive stance on the issue. Following its premiere in 2000, it has enjoyed 41 productions, and has become the most performed new opera of the new century. |