The star power of soprano Renee Fleming and Italian crossover sensation Andrea Bocelli, and a resumed Ring Cycle, will help animate Washington National Opera's 2008-2009 season.
The big news, vocally speaking, is the company debut of the sumptuous-voiced, exceptionally popular Fleming, who will sing the title role in a new production of Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia, a gem from the early 19th-century bel canto repertoire. This will be Fleming's first staged performance of the work in the U.S.
A previous encounter with the opera provoked boos when she performed it in 1998 before the notoriously volcanic public at La Scala in Milan, Italy. Elsewhere, of course, the singer tends to be rapturously received, which is likely to happen when she appears at the Kennedy Center in November.
The conductor for Lucrezia Borgia will be Washington National Opera general director Placido Domingo, the preeminent tenor who has sung several times with Fleming - "my dear colleague," he called her in a statement yesterday. Sondra Radvanovsky will alternate with her in the title role. John Pascoe will direct and design.
Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes will receive its first Washington National production (March/April 2009). Domingo, recalling the company's memorable staging of Britten's Billy Budd in 2004, said, "It is natural that we should add what many regard as the composer's finest achievement - especially when we have tenor Christopher Ventris for the difficult and complex title role."
Also in the Grimes cast is the extraordinary soprano Patricia Racette, who had a triumph last season in Janacek's Jenufa.
The company's first attempt at the complete Ring Cycle by Wagner will get back on track next season, after financial pressures caused a year's postponement. The third installment in the cycle, Siegfried, will continue director Francesca Zambello's intriguing, Americanized take on this cornerstone of German opera (May 2009). Company music director Heinz Fricke will conduct. Par Lindskog will sing the title role, with Alan Held as the Wanderer and Gordon Hawkins as Alberich.
Wagnerites will want to note that Gotterdammerung, the final piece in the Ring, will be unveiled in November 2009, when the entire four-opera Cycle will be presented. Held (Wotan/Wanderer), Ventris (Siegmund), Hawkins (Alberich), Anja Kampe (Sieglinde), Ian Storey (Siegfried) and Elizabeth Bishop (Fricka) are among the featured artists.
