Productions of Non-standard Repertory
The company offers productions in the standard operatic repertory as well as new and rarely staged operas. In 2003, it presented the world premiere of Nicholas and Alexandra, with music composed by Deborah Drattell and text by Nicholas von Hoffman. The 2010–2011 season opened with the world première of Daniel Catán's opera based on the drama film Il Postino (1994) with Domingo as the poet Pablo Neruda, Charles Castronovo in the title role and Grant Gershon conducting.
The company has also frequently turned to the cinema world for directors of its productions. During the 2001–2002 season, it mounted a production of Wagner's Lohengrin, directed by Austrian actor Maximilian Schell and a double bill of Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle and Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, directed by filmmaker William Friedkin. Garry Marshall directed his own adaptation of Jacques Offenbach's La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein in 2005. Friedkin returned to direct Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos in 2004 and, in 2008, the first two parts of Puccini's Il Trittico, Il Tabarro and Suor Angelica, a production that also featured Woody Allen making his operatic debut staging Gianni Schicchi.
Highlights of the last decade have included Kiri Te Kanawa in the title role of Samuel Barber's Vanessa; Leoš Janáček's Jenůfa starring Karita Mattila; Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny starring Anthony Dean Griffey, Audra McDonald and Patti LuPone, Rossini's Il Turco in Italia starring Nino Machaidze Simone Alberghini, Paolo Gavanelli and Thomas Allen, and two works by Benjamin Britten: The Turn of the Screw starring Patricia Racette and Albert Herring starring Alek Shrader in the title role, with Janis Kelly and Christine Brewer sharing the role of Lady Billows.
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