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Edwards Opera House hosts upcoming events

Edwards Opera House hosts upcoming events

WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) – The Edwards Opera House has events coming up.

Edwards Arts Council chair Kathleen Huber gave us a rundown on 7 News This Morning.

Watch the video above for her interview.

Here’s what’s going on:

– Phil Hurley will perform on Thursday, August 25.

– There’s a Family Comedy Night on Saturday, August 27.

– Dar Williams will perform on Saturday, September 17.

You can buy tickets and find out more at edwardsoperahouse.com. You can also email edwardsoperahouse@gmail.com or call 703-298-9392.

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WATCH NOW: Kenosha Opera Festival hosting public events

WATCH NOW: Kenosha Opera Festival hosting public events

The Kenosha Opera Festival, launched in the fall of 2019, is back in a big way this season, with two operas, a recital and even a night of bawdy songs at a local brewery.

All of that activity continues the mission of the opera festival’s founders, Nicholas Huff and Kaila Bingen, to “unstuff” opera.

“It’s been going great,” Huff said of their efforts to bring opera to the general public.

“We’ve got more ways to move that ball down the court this year,” he said, “including a Kenosha Opera Festival app with games on it.”

The app — developed by Bingen’s husband, Rick, a computer science professor at Carthage College — is free to download and features opera “fun facts” and games. (When we talked, the app was only available on Android systems.)

“We’ll be playing games on the app during intermission of ‘The Barber of Seville’ with the audience,” Huff said. “It makes the opera fun and energized, not snobbish, which is what we’re all about.” As a bonus: There will be prizes awarded during those “Barber” intermission games.

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Fellowship program

The Kenosha Opera Festival features four young members in the troupe’s fellowship program — two singers and a pianist.

“We’re proud that our program is completely free for these college-age students to attend,” Huff said.

The fellowship program includes workshops on singing, of course, but also offers practical guidance on such topics as how to file your taxes if you’re a freelance performer and how to use social media.

The “fellows” will be performing an opera, “Orfeo ed Euridice” (“Orpheus and Euridice”), based on the Greek myth.

In the story, Orpheus is promised that he may enter Hades and retrieve his wife, Euridice, from death on one condition: he may not look back to see if she is there for the entire journey from the underworld back to the land of the living.

The opera, composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck, was first performed in Vienna on Oct. 5, 1762.

The opera is the most popular of Gluck’s works.

“It’s a full-length opera but is a short show,” Bingen said, adding that while the story is based on the classic Greek story “this version isn’t quite so tragic. We can’t leave everyone sad walking out of the theater.”

Note: The opera will be presented in Italian with English supertitles. This is a black-box production, accompanied by piano.

‘Barber of Seville’

This season’s main production is “The Barber of Seville,” Gioachino Rossini’s comedy, which premiered in 1816 and has remained popular ever since.

“It’s one of the most fun operas ever written,” Huff said. “Also, people kind of know this one — from the ‘figaro, figaro, figaro’ singing and some of the familiar arias in it.”

Audiences, he said, “should enjoy it because it is somewhat familar — and it’s just a hoot.”

The cast features this season’s six guest artists — who are coming to Kenosha from New York, Cincinnati, the Chicago area, Florida, Portland, Ore., and even from South Korea.

“We reached out in the opera world and received a lot of interest from all over,” Huff said of casting this year’s production.

The cast, he added, “are all great singers — real bangers.”

This opera — a frantic comedy about, yes, a barber in the city of Seville — features the classic opera plot devices of romantic pursuit, false identities and disguises.

“The show is filled with big personalities,” Bingen said. “All the cast members get to go really big on stage. The vocal fireworks will blow your hair back.”

Note: The opera will be presented in Italian with English supertitles, accompanied by an orchestra.

Guest artist recital

Before they perform on stage in the opera, those guest artists — Heeseung Chae, Max Hosmer, Edith Grossman, Stacey Murdock, Alex Boyd and Janese Pentico — will perform in a Friday night recital at First United Methodist Church, 919 60th St.

“This is a great opportunity to get up close and personal with this group of singers,” Bingen said. “The recital features a fantastic set list, and the church is a wonderful setting for the concert.”

The recital will feature “a teaser” for “The Barber of Seville,” along with songs from musical theater, plus a Mozart set and “Easter eggs” — arias that are routinely cut from operas.

“There will be opera and non-opera pieces, and music from all genres and from all periods,” Huff said.

Overall, the two are happy with the audience response to the opera festival’s productions and other events.

“We’re building up momentum, with everything from our YouTube Channel to our live productions,” Bingen said.

Huff added that our little local opera group is also “becoming more well-known in the opera world. That’s very exciting.”

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Opera Mariposa’s 2022 Benefit + Awareness Event – GlobalNews Events

Opera Mariposa’s 2022 Benefit + Awareness Event - GlobalNews Events

Where
Benefit.OperaMariposa.com

When

Ages
All ages

Join Opera Mariposa’s award-winning artists for their 10th annual Benefit + Awareness event – all month, all online, and all for charity! Enjoy music, videos, artwork, shopping, and an international giveaway with over $3,500 in prizes – all in support of the high-risk chronic illness community and the ME | FM Society of BC. The event honours the International Awareness Month for chronic neuro-immune diseases like Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME, also known as ME/CFS) and Fibromyalgia (FM), and all proceeds up to the fundraising goal will be triple-matched – $10 becomes $30, and $100 becomes $300!