Posts Categorized: 2011 Season

Go “Verdi” with Wolf Trap

Wolf Trap has been celebrating the relationship between art and nature for years.  And on August 24, we get an infusion of another sort  of  “green” – the “Joe Green (a.k.a. Giuseppe Verdi)” kind. :) The Filene Center hasn’t played host to Verdi for quite a few years – probably since our Falstaff there in

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Homecoming: Alan Held

Alan has probably stayed in touch more than most alums from the first two decades. He and I worked at Washington Opera together post-Wolf Trap, and he returned for a recital with me at The Barns in 2006. He is already here in the DC area, rehearsing Scarpia for the Washington National Opera’s Tosca (which

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Homecoming: Robert Orth

Bob has the honor of single-handedly representing the first decade of the WTOC on our upcoming alumni concert. And I can think of no one more capable:)* We had the amazing good fortune to collaborate with Bob earlier this year when he created the role of Mayor Fazzobaldi in Wolf Trap’s newly commissioned opera, The

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Bel Canto al fresco

(a.k.a. Beautiful Singing in the Great Outdoors). The August 24 Greatest Hits concert will contain some full-blooded verismo and grand opera, but it will also offer elegance and nuance. Lawrence Brownlee will sail the High C’s with Tonio’s aria from La fille du regiment, Tracy Dahl will spin out Bellini’s “Ah non credea”, Stephanie Blythe

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Homecoming: Eric Owens

Eric has been in the opera world news a lot this year, what with his recent Doctor in Wozzeck at Santa Fe, and his Alberich at the Met this spring. He’s wedging in our concert between Santa Fe and a Tanglewood concert with the BSO, and DC-area audiences will get a chance to hear him

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Homecoming: Emily Pulley

Emily and I spent a good deal of time together at WTOC, as I seem to have been assigned to play most of the shows in which she sang. There were Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Fiordiligi in Cosi fan tutte, First Lady in The Magic Flute (that’s a lot of Mozart!) and, most memorably

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Grownup Singing

Every summer, the WTOC presents emerging professional singers, typically in their mid-late 20’s and early 30’s. There are many joys in this, but it means that we don’t often traffic in what some of our alumni call “Big Boy/Big Girl” rep. (Yeah, I’m talking about you, Ms. Goerke, who ditched us to go sing freakin’

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Homecoming: Carl Tanner

Carl is unique among the alumni on the upcoming August 24 concert, for he was a member of an Associate Artist program run for two years in the 1980’s.  That program was an early precursor for our current Studio Artist program, as it was focused on singers at a slightly earlier phase of their careers.

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Homecoming: James Valenti

James sang what was to become one of his signature roles at Wolf Trap in 2004; Rodolfo in La bohème. In another first for the WTOC, that Bohème represented our first cover-to-cover full opera done with the National Symphony Orchestra. When James returns to the Filene Center stage on August 24, he’ll sing the anthem

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Having to Choose

We pulled together 14 alumni of the Wolf Trap Opera Company for the exciting anniversary concert at the Filene Center on August 24, 2011. Opera’s Greatest Hits will cover all 4 decades of the Company’s history and reach across hundreds of years of iconic opera arias and ensembles. As luxurious as this is, my only

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