Arizona Opera presents 'The Flying Dutchman'

Richard Wagner is back on the opera scene in Arizona, and you wonder what took so long. It was, after all, Wagner's mammoth tetralogy, "The Ring of the Nibelung" that put our state on the operatic map in the mid 1990s. Under then general manager Glynn Ross, Arizona Opera's name was added to the roster of those rare companies bold enough to stage the largest scale music drama ever penned.

Wagner's return to Arizona Opera this week will not be on so vast a scale.

"Even with two intermissions, "The Flying Dutchman" is only three hours long, which is quite a bit shorter than his other works," notes Arizona Opera's current general director, Joel Revzen.

If that seems impossible, consider: "Gotterdammerung," the last of the "Ring" operas, lasts more than five hours.

"This is also probably Wagner's most accessible opera. It's as close to Verdi in writing style as Wagner ever got. People should find it compelling," Revzen adds.

"The Flying Dutchman," which makes its Arizona Opera debut this weekend, was the first opera in which Wagner demonstrated beyond doubt the knack of bringing out in music the emotions latent in text-the theater composer's essential job, from Monteverdi to Sondheim. Before he wrote "Dutchman," he wrote lesser works that, except for the overture to one of them ("Rienzi"), go virtually unproduced.

As he did with the company's ground breaking production of Handel's "Semele" earlier this season, Revzen will conduct. Though it's not his first time conducting Wagner, it will be his first "Flying Dutchman."

"Strangely enough, I started my Wagner career with 'Parsifal'-not the easiest way to begin," Revzen says.

"Parsifal," Wagner's last opera, is one of the composer's longest and arguably his most sustained. It is to "Dutchman" as a novel is to a short story. To add pressure to the endeavor, Revzen had to lead a production on Wagner's own turf.

"It was Mannheim, Germany. I was thrown into the deep end, since 65 percent of the orchestra for Mannheim is the orchestra for Bayreuth." Bayreuth is home to the theater Wagner himself helped design.

For Arizona's "Flying Dutchman," the orchestra will be the one Revzen has helped to shape and renew over the last three seasons. The cast, doubled as usual on principal roles, includes Elizabeth Byrne and Oksana Krovytska as Senta: and Donnie Ray Albert and Kristopher Irmiter as the Dutchman.

All performances are at Phoenix Symphony Hall downtown at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and at 2 p.m. Sunday. For ticket information log on to www.azopera.com or call (602) 266 7464.

Post Victorian women ponder life in Fountain Hills production
First it was a book, then it was a movie, now it's a play.

That's not the standard order of things as plays generally precede movies adapted from books. But when "Enchanted April," based on a 1923 novel, became a surprise hit movie in 1992, someone got the idea that perhaps this was the old fashioned play of character that the theater has been waiting for.

"Enchanted April," the play by Matthew Barber, is now in production at Fountain Hills Community Theater.

"It's about two English women in the winter and it's raining, raining, raining, so they rent a villa in Tuscany," says producer Steve Macarella.
Before long, the women are joined by two friends. This being 1923, and these being married or widowed ladies, the romance and sexuality otherwise associated with running off to Italy is missing.

That doesn't seem to bother fans of this post Victorian look at women and the changes life brings them.

"These are ordinary housewives," Mancarella says. "One is a socialite, another is an elderly widow who knew Tennyson. They all change throughout the course of the play."

The play is performed Thursday through Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m. at Fountain Hills Community Theater, 11445 N. Saguaro Blvd. n Fountain Hills. For tickets, call (480) 837 9661.

"Raymonda" and other works

Ballet Arizona is known for its innovative contemporary works, many of them made by artistic director/choreographer Ib Andersen. But this week the company spins into the realm of the classics, presenting one of the 19th century's last great ballets, "Raymonda."

The 1898 work will be reexamined as a set of excerpts from Marius Petipa's original choreography, staged by world class coach Olga Evreinoff. Ballet Arizona will perform it, plus other works (including a new one by the prolific Andersen) at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and in two matinees, at 2 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday, at the Orpheum Theatre, 203 W. Adams St. in downtown Phoenix. For tickets, call (602) 381 1096 or go to www.balletaz.org.