Until then, productions will be performed outdoors or in unconventional locations. The season opens on May 15th with a concert performance of Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” with Goerke as Santuzza. It is presented at the Meadow Brook Amphitheater in Rochester Hills, Michigan, under the direction of Music Director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Jader Bignamini.
In September, Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson’s opera “Blue” will receive a new production by Kaneza Schaal after its premiere at the Glimmerglass Festival in 2019 via a family in Harlem who find their way around the American Black experience. Daniela Candillari will conduct. The location and timing have not yet been determined, but the following production, which will be staged by Sharon, will be “Bliss,” Ragnar Kjartansson’s marathon performance piece that covers the same three minutes of Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” for 12 hours “plays.
Michigan Opera Theater will return indoors on February 26 for Robert Xavier Rodríguez and Migdalia Cruz’s “Frida,” conducted by Suzanne Mallare Acton, the company’s assistant music director. It will be a revival of Jose Maria Condemi’s 2015 production performed at the Music Hall in downtown Detroit.
Then, on April 2, the company will return to its theater, the Detroit Opera House, to produce Sharon’s production of “La Bohème,” directed by Vimbayi Kaziboni. Sharon has already discussed the concept in interviews: he will present the four acts of Puccini’s opera in reverse order.
“The reverse order means that we start with death and end with love and hope,” he said. “We will all come from a place of death – at least I hope this will be after Covid. And I love that this thing that everyone hears, the first thing that’s been in the theater in two years, is something they’ve never heard before. “
“X” in a newly revised score by Davis will end the season in May under the baton of Kazem Abdullah. Musicologist Ryan Ebright wrote for The New Yorker after Davis won the Pulitzer Prize for Music last year. He noted that the opera had only received one full revival at the Oakland Opera Theater in 2006. The San Francisco Opera once suggested staging “X” as part of his inner-city park performances, Davis countered by asking if they would do Philip Glass’ “Einstein on the Beach” in a park.
“I was trying to make it clear to them,” Davis told Ebright, “that it is time America saw black art as what is done in the playground, or what is basically the social part of culture. “
