Arizona Opera Announces Book Club for 2015/16 Season
Kick off your summer reading with the Arizona Opera Book Club. Arizona Opera's Book Club is a wonderful way to meet fellow audience members, discuss, learn, and connect. With free events throughout the year, members will participate in guest lecturers, author interviews, discussions, film screenings, and more.
"As people escape to the beach or the mountains they can add these fascinating books to their reading list and prepare for the Opera season kicking off in the fall. " stated Joshua Borths, Arizona Opera's Education and Outreach Manager. Borths has selected five books to correspond to the opera productions slated for the 2015/16 Season. Prior to each production, Arizona Opera will host official Book Club events related to the works.
"We hope this program will deepen the experience for our audiences when they attend our performances in the coming season. We've selected titles to offer a greater understanding of the time periods, cultures, history and themes that brought forth these operas. Plus they are all page turners!"
Readers who wish to purchase the novels can receive a discount through Antigone Books in Tucson, or through Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix and in Tempe.
On September 16 at 6:00 p.m., Arizona Opera Book Club will have its first kick-off party at Antigone Books where participants can come to the bookstore, mingle, listen to Arizona Opera singers present selections from the season and hear a preview of the books and events for the club. Arizona Opera Book Club then moves to Phoenix on September 17 at Changing Hands Bookstore at 6:30pm.
Click here fore more information on Arizona Opera Book Club, and to sign up.
The 2015/16 Arizona Opera Book Club
In partnership with Antigone Books in Tucson and Changing Hands Bookstore.
Lazy B: Growing up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest
by Sandra Day O’Connor and H. Alan Day
This engaging memoir by former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and her brother, Alan, explores their childhoods spent on the Lazy B. ranch in Arizona and how these experiences shaped them.
Love in the Time of Cholera
by Gabriel García Márquez
This classic novel was an inspiration for Daniel Catán’s masterpiece, Florencia en el Amazonas. This novel transports you to the Caribbean in the early 20th century where love, life and death seem to mingle in one collective memory.
Carmen
by Prosper Mérimée
This beautiful novella, published in 1845, concerns a mysterious Gypsy and her obsessive lover. This novella became a sensation and went on to inspire Bizet’s famous (and infamous) opera of the same name.
Mozart’s Women: His family, His Friends, His Music
by Jane Glover
Don Giovanni is an opera about the womanizer’s influence on women. This celebrated non-fiction book explores the influence of the women of Mozart’s life and how they shaped the detailed and triumphant heroines of his operas.
The Merry Wives of Windsor
by William Shakespeare
End the season with Shakespeare’s delightful comedy. Sir John Falstaff was Queen Elizabeth’s favorite Shakespearean character and inspired Verdi’s final opera.
Arizona Opera 2015/16 Season
Arizona Lady
by Emmerich Kálmán
Tucson: October 10 and 11, 2015 at Tucson Music Hall
Phoenix: October 16, 17 and 18, 2015 at Symphony Hall
Florencia en el Amazonas
by Daniel Catán
Phoenix: November 13, 14 and 15, 2015 at Symphony Hall
Tucson: November 21 and 22, 2015 at Tucson Music Hall
Carmen
by Georges Bizet
Tucson: January 30 and 31, 2016 at Tucson Music Hall
Phoenix: February 5, 6 and 7, 2016 at Symphony Hall
Don Giovanni
by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Phoenix: February 26, 27 and 28, 2016 at Symphony Hall
Tucson: March 5 and 6, 2016 at Tucson Music Hall
Falstaff
by Giuseppe Verdi
Phoenix: April 1, 2 and 3, 2016 at Symphony Hall
Tucson: April 9and 10, 2016 at Tucson Music Hall
Season Tickets for the Arizona Opera Season are on sale now with full and mini packages available. Visit www.azopera.org or call 602-266-7464 (Phx) or (520) 293-4336 (Tuc) for more information.
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About Arizona Opera
Arizona Opera, now in its 44th season, is our state's only professional opera company that produces fully-staged opera performances, concerts, in-school touring productions, educational and outreach programs that reach over 70,000 school-children and adults annually. Since its inception, Arizona Opera has produced over 180 fully-staged operas and concerts. The company's artistic history is rich with a blend of opera's traditional repertoire featuring baroque, bel canto, and verismo works, turn-of-the-century masterpieces, operettas, and American operas. Arizona Opera has also presented Wagner's complete Ring Cycle twice, a feat that has been accomplished in North America by only five other companies. Founded in 1971, Arizona Opera is among only a handful of companies in the United States that regularly performs in more than one city.
The 2015/16 Arizona Opera Season is presented by CopperPoint Mutial Insurance.