Opening with “Sweeney Todd,” a masterful trinity of suspense, drama and dark humor, the company looks outside the box of traditional opera to broaden its audience.
This season, while celebrating 40 years of great artistic standards and brilliant performances, Virginia Opera is thrusting themselves into the future. The company’s focus: exploring the question, what is the future of opera?
This season redefines Virginia Opera as an authority that appreciates tradition and classic works, but also welcomes more contemporary influences and new generations of audiences. “We want to encourage our audience to open their minds and their ears,” said Adam Turner, the principal conductor and artistic adviser at Virginia Opera.
“A lot of people are looking for things that are culturally rewarding in this digital, social media-obsessed world. They’re looking for ways to escape these reflective devices and embrace something bigger than themselves. Opera serves as just that. It’s one of the most difficult, but interesting, forms of performance art because it incorporates everything—music, dance, vocals, costumes and set design.”
The opera’s First of Firsts Initiative is an artistic commitment to presenting a work that Virginia Opera has never performed—a trend Turner is seeing happen on the international scene as well. This season, paralleling that initiative, the company is opening the season with “Sweeney Todd,” the 1979 musical thriller with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler.
“’Sweeney Todd’ was a selection we felt blurs the lines between opera and musical theater,” says Turner. “People have always thought of it as solely musical, but its dark subject matter and modernist composition style make it a fitting piece to be performed in an opera house.”
Sondheim’s original wordsmithery of this captivating story, combined with a talented cast, has Turner hoping the production will leave seasoned fans pleasantly surprised and new audiences wanting more. Says Turner, “It’ll be a fitting opportunity for our seasoned opera goers to experience something fresh and new and what basically is becoming the trend internationally.” –Erika Primdahl
(October 2014)
