NAU Opera presents a cornucopia of delight for your musical taste buds this weekend as it celebrates the bicentennial of both Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi and the centennial of Benjamin Britten.
“Opera Scenes” takes place at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 16, in Ardrey Auditorium. It will be repeated at 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 24, at the Church of the Red Rocks in Sedona.
The program will showcase the powerful voices of NAU’s female performers by including Act 3, Part 1 of Wagner’s The Ride of the Valkyries, with two concert grand pianos on stage and four pianists playing the instrumental part. NAU Opera sopranos and one baritone also will perform scenes from Wagner’s Lohengrin.
Verdi’s 200th birthday then will be commemorated with a performance from Rigoletto, in which a dramatic murder takes place during a thunderstorm, and two solo scenes follow from Britten’s most famous operas, Peter Grimes and Billy Budd. These excerpts have never been performed in an NAU program.
A duet from Georges Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers rounds out the opera offerings before scenes from Chicago by John Kander and the Glitter and be Gay from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide showcase what the classically trained voices of NAU can do with some of the best works in this genre.
For tickets to all events, call (928) 523-5661, toll free (888) 520-7214, or purchase online at nau.edu/cto.