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The Voice of Opera Colorado

Mar27

Turandot 101—Characters and Plot

By: Betsy Schwarm and Angelica DiIorio We close our 40th Anniversary Season with Puccini’s larger-than-life fantastical drama, Turandot, from May 6 to 14.  This opera features some of the most gorgeous arias in the repertoire, including “Nessun dorma.”Before you head...

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Dec19

Die tote Stadt (The Dead City) 101 – Plot

By: Bethany Wood and Angelica DiIorio Korngold’s early twentieth-century masterpiece Die tote Stadt (The Dead City) may not be as familiar as some of the other operas in our 40th Anniversary Season, but it will quickly become one of...

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Oct25

Rigoletto in Pop Culture

By: Jennifer Colgan Some of the best-known opera arias have made their way into movies, commercials, video games, and more, hundreds of years after the composer set their pen to paper. Have you ever wondered what causes some opera...

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Sep20

Rigoletto 101 – Characters and Plot

By: Suzanne Whitney & Bethany Wood The 2022-23 Season marks four decades of songs and stories at Opera Colorado. We are kicking off our 40th Anniversary Season with an Italian classic! Rigoletto is one of the archetypal operas for a...

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Aug23

Cavalleria rusticana 101—Musical Style

By: Betsy Schwarm In 1888, Pietro Mascagni (1863 – 1945) heard of a competition for one-act operas. With four complete operas to his name, the Italian composer was on the verge of submitting one excerpted act of his historical...

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Aug4

Cavalleria rusticana 101 – Characters and Plot

By: Suzanne Whitney & Betsy Schwarm As the American composer Paul Moravec says, “opera is about three things: love, death, and power,” and that could not be more true for Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana. This one-act opera may only be seventy-five...

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Apr8

Carmen 101—Carmen in Pop Culture

By: Angelica DiIorio What do Doritos, The Muppets, and the Olympics all have in common? You would never guess it, but the answer is opera, specifically the “Habanera” from Bizet’s Carmen. You have probably heard the “Habanera” somewhere before,...

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Mar29

Carmen 101 – Characters and Plot

By: Suzanne Whitney & Bethany Wood “Libre elle est née et libre elle mourra!” or “Free she was born and free she will die!” are Carmen’s famous words about herself. Both the character and the music of Bizet’s Carmen...

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Feb10

The Shining 101 – The Creation of an Opera

By: Betsy Schwarm Put the iconic image of a leering, sneering Jack Nicholson out of your mind. Set aside those oft-quoted lines: “Here’s Johnny” and “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.” That’s the film by...

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