Love is in the Air and A lot of Great Music
News Roundup
We first want to tell you about the wonderful concert opera, The Capulets and the Montagues that Opera San Antonio is presenting this weekend. A concert opera is pretty much what the name implies: an opera sung with musical accompaniment but without sets, costumes and the mass scenes of market places, battles, castles, balls, etc.
The opera that OSA chose for this experimental show is Vincenzo Bellini’s 1830 version of the Romeo and Juliet tale, a less known work that definitely deserves to be included in the operatic canon worldwide. It had its San Antonio premiere Thursday and it will be repeated Saturday, Feb. 15, at the Luella Bennack Music Center on the campus of the University of the Incarnate World.
Lustrous voices, gorgeous melodies and a wonderfully complementary instrumental ensemble led by conductor, and concert-opera expert, Antony Walker, brought the story and the iconic characters to life so effectively that the sets and sword fights were hardly missed. Derived from Italian sources rather than directly from Shakespeare’s play, the familiar narrative of young-love-denied-by-societal-rules is slightly different here, which added another interesting element.
Soprano Rachele Gilmore in the role of Giulietta (Juliet) was probably the brightest star of the evening, who often reached stratospheric coloratura heights and molded the softest passages with delicate clarity, in addition to managing to communicate Juliet’s turbulent emotions as the story progressed toward its tragic end.
But everyone else rose to the occasion, as well, most notably Corrie Stallings as Romeo and Jonas Hacker as Tebaldo. A narrator, Daniel Belcher, who also sang, provided spoken explanations a few times to move things along.
If you love bel canto, which literally means
“beautiful singing,” don’t miss this opportunity. (Feb. 15 at 7:30 p.m.; Luella
Bannack Music Center, University of the Incarnate Word; tickets $45 available
at
www.tobincenter.org/box-office/2020-02/capulets-and-montagues
or at the door. For info call 210-673-7270) Also see feature story on this
site.
Romeo and Juliet are also the protagonists in Ballet San Antonio’s new production choreographed by guest choreographer Edwaard Liang to the glorious music of Sergei Prokofiev, which was written back in 1935 especially for this ballet. We have not seen the show yet but the reviews of Liang’s choreography in other cities have been very positive. The two ballerinas portraying Juliet – Sofie Bertolini and Heather Neff – are the company’s top soloists, who will be paired up with soloist Mayim Stiller and newcomer Lester Gonzalez Ramos, respectively. Each couple will appear in the title roles twice. (Feb. 14 at 7:30 p.m., Feb. 15 at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Feb. 16 at 2 p.m.; Tobin Center for the Performing Arts; tickets $35-$114, www.tobincenter.org or call 210-223-8624, also at box office. Some discounts ae available) See feature story on this site.
Camerata San Antonio is marking the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth this Sunday with a recital of the composer’s violin sonatas #2, #5 (“Spring”) and #9 (“Kreutzer”) at the University of the Incarnate Word’s Luella Bennack Music Center. All three are written for violin and piano and will be performed by pianist Viktor Valkov and violinist Matthew Zerweck. Feb. 16 at 3 p.m.; tickets$20 for adults, $8 for students with ID; call 210-492-9519, www.cameratasa.org
There’s always something interesting and often unique at the Carver Community Cultural Center and that’s true for this weekend as well. Called A Capella Live, the Saturday night show will showcase four of the nation’s greatest a capella groups: Filharmonic, an L.A. ensemble of Filipino-American youngsters that appeared in the movie Pitch Perfect 2 and were also featured on the NBC series The Sing Off. Committed, a group of six male vocalists who are students at Oakwood University in Huntsville, Alabama and the winners of the Sing Off second season. Blake Lewis who appeared on American Idol. And a group of four women calling themselves Women of the World – and representing four countries: Japan, India, Italy and the USA – who will dazzle with songs from around the world, performed in the original languages. (8 p.m. Feb. 15, Carver Community Cultural Center, 226 N. Hackberry St.; $30 through ticketmaster.com or at the door. For info call 210-207-2234)
San Antonio theater stages are always
alive with multiple productions of plays, comedies and musicals. This time, we
would like to draw your attention to the Overtime Theater, a small,
super-active thespian powerhouse that produces a lot of original material by
local authors. This time, however, they are tackling Twelfth Night
– yes, Shakespeare – directed by Emily Fitzgerald, who is usually directing her
own original works. The production is described as “contemporary and
metatheatrical” focusing on “the performances, music, characters, humor and
especially the language, all of which is his (Shakespeare’s)”
( Feb. 15, 21, 22, 28, 29, and March 6-7 at 8 p.m.; Feb. 23 at 3 p.m. and
March 1 at 7 p.m.; The Overtime Theater, 5409 Bandera Rd. 78238; tickets $15,
with discounts for seniors, students, teachers & military; theovertimetheater@gmail.com or call 210-577-7562. Also, through Brown Paper Tickets
at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4261075
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