Opera News & Press

New Orleans opera lovers look forward to a new season in their old home

The New Orleans Opera Association knows how to plan a housewarming party.

The Times Picayune

July 29, 2008

Theodore P. Mahne

The New Orleans Opera Association knows how to plan a housewarming party.

As it prepares for its 2008-09 season, the company is also readying its return to its longtime home: the Theatre of the Performing Arts, which has been shuttered since the levee-failure flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina.

To herald the long-awaited return, the company will present a gala concert featuring legendary tenor Placido Domingo.

"This will truly be our homecoming after Hurricane Katrina," said Robert Lyall, the general and artistic director of the New Orleans Opera. "People love the Theatre for the Performing Arts, and to have an artist of the caliber of Placido to join us is a genuine honor."

The gala concert -- scheduled for Jan. 17, 2009 -- will be the culmination of a week's worth of celebrations trumpeting the reopening of the city's premier performing arts venue, where ongoing restoration efforts are expected to be completed by the end of the year.

"The mayor asked the major performing arts organizations for a week of activities to get the statement across that the arts are contributing greatly to the rebuilding of New Orleans," Lyall said.

The week will begin on Jan. 10 with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra presenting a special concert featuring acclaimed violinist Itzhak Perlman as star soloist. Music Director Carlos Miguel Prieto will conduct. The New Orleans Ballet Association also will participate in the concert, presenting dancers from the San Francisco Ballet and the New York City Ballet.

Other groups will perform throughout the week at the theater, leading up to the Domingo gala. "The week of headline events will have a festival quality to it," Lyall said.

The Domingo gala will feature performances by a variety of leading opera stars, the New Orleans Opera Chorus, and the LPO, under Lyall's baton. Academy Award-nominated actress and New Orleans native Patricia Clarkson will serve as host for the event.

In addition to headlining the gala concert, Domingo will be honored by the City of New Orleans with the dedication of the theater's stage, which will be named after the tenor.

"The city is appropriately noting his historical links to New Orleans" -- Domingo sang several of his most important roles here for the first time -- "as well as the work he did for us post-Katrina," Lyall said. Domingo led a world-renowned cast of singers to New Orleans shortly after the hurricane as a major fundraiser for the New Orleans Opera.

In addition to the gala, the return to the theater will allow the company to re-expand its productions to their full scale. As many area homeowners have used the rebuilding of their homes to introduce upgrades and modernizations, the renovated and restored Theatre of the Performing Arts will be a first-class, state-of-the-art facility, Lyall said.

"The city's approach to the renovation has been to make it a more appealing place," Lyall said. "It will be much more technically complete. A lot of very old production equipment (some lighting systems and backstage rigging were a half-century old) is being replaced.

"Everything is being enhanced," he said. "I believe all the performing arts organizations are excited about getting back."

The first half of the season will continue to be presented at Tulane University's McAlister Auditorium, which has housed the company's productions since the storm.

"We are profoundly grateful to Tulane University for providing us with a temporary home," Lyall said. Without that space, "the company would've been impossibly crippled."

The new season features four productions presented on Friday nights and Sunday afternoon matinees. The change in the company's traditional scheduling is largely a response to audience shifts and development.

"We took a gamble on the institution of the Sunday matinees," Lyall said, "and they have been popular. We've got to get the performances to where the audiences are, factoring in the unique geography of New Orleans and the impact of Katrina."

Matinees have been especially popular with older opera-goers, as well as fans from the north shore, the Gulf Coast and Baton Rouge; Friday nights are prime to lure new and younger audiences. Because of the vocal demands on performers, a Saturday night-Sunday matinee schedule would not work without double-casting roles -- an expense the company is wary of taking on for now.