Houston Grand Opera’s world premiere of Nixon in China in 1987 made political headlines and galvanized the opera world. A dramatization of President Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 visit to China, John Adams’s first opera, with a libretto by Alice Goodman and staging by Peter Sellars, broke new ground with its visceral portrayal of relatively recent world events and its bold departures in musical style and instrumentation. The Houston production was televised on PBS’s Great Performances and recorded the same year; the recording won a Grammy Award in 1988. Since then Nixon in China has been produced worldwide and has become one of the most performed among operas of our time.

In 2004, director James Robinson created a new production for the Opera Theatre of St. Louis that takes a more intimate approach than the original staging, including incorporating 8 mm home movies filmed by the delegation that accompanied Nixon to China. HGO will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the work’s historic world premiere by presenting this reinterpretation, directed by Robinson, who will also direct HGO’s The Abduction from the Seraglio later in 2017.

Leading the cast in the title role will be baritone and HGO Studio alumnus Scott Hendricks, whose “sonorous voice” was noted by the Houston Chronicle in his 2015 portrayal of Sharpless in HGO’s Madame Butterfly. Pat Nixon will be played by Canadian soprano Andriana Chuchman, whose 2014 last-minute replacement of Anna Netrebko in the Metropolitan Opera’s The Elixir of Love was deemed “an assured, sparkling success” by the New York Times. This appearance will mark her HGO debut. Chinese baritone Chen-Ye Yuan, an HGO Studio alumnus who makes his home in China, will play the role of Chou En-lai. Tenor and HGO Studio alumnus Chad Shelton and bass-baritone Patrick Carfizzi, both frequently seen on HGO’s main stage, will portray Mao Tse-tung and Henry Kissinger, respectively. The coloratura role of Chiang Ch’ing will be sung by soprano Erin Morley, who displayed “dramatic flair” (New York Times) as Olympia in the Metropolitan Opera’s 2015 Les contes d’Hoffmann.

Conductor Robert Spano, music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Aspen Music Festival and an active proponent of contemporary composers, will be on the podium. He most recently conducted The Magic Flute at HGO in 2015.

FAUST: Renowned tenor Michael Fabiano makes HGO debut opposite Houston favorite soprano Ana María Martínez with role debut of Luca Pisaroni as Mephistopheles, in acclaimed HGO production (October 28–November 11)

Gounod’s Faust returns to the HGO stage after an absence of nine years in a revival of the “striking, handsome, beautifully lit” (Los Angeles Times) production that Francesca Zambello created for HGO in 1985, with sets and costumes designed by Houston artist Earl Staley.

Two much-anticipated debuts mark this remounting: performing the title role will be highly sought-after tenor Michael Fabiano, who in 2014 became the only singer to win the prestigious Richard Tucker and Beverly Sills awards in the same year; making his role debut as Mephistopheles is Italian bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni, a leading international Mozart interpreter who appeared as Count Almaviva in HGO’s 2011 The Marriage of Figaro, when the Houston Chronicle reported that he “exudes complete authority and magnetism.” Soprano Ana María Martínez (Lynn Wyatt Great Artist 2010–11), a Houston audience favorite, returns to sing Marguerite after acclaimed HGO appearances as Cio-Cio San in Madame Butterfly (2015) and Carmen (2014).

Faust will be directed by Garnett Bruce, who directed Tannhäuser at Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2015 and has revived a number of productions for the company. Italian conductor Antonino Fogliani, who led HGO’s Aida in 2013, will be on the podium.   

HGO brings back Mozart’s comic singspiel The Abduction from the Seraglio in the widely admired staging by James Robinson that the company premiered in 2002 and last presented in 2008. The updating of the Middle Eastern–flavored action from Istanbul to the Orient Express was deemed by Opera News “inventive…a dramatic refocusing that puts Mozart’s wonderfully emotive arias into high relief…also looked wonderful, in Allen Moyer’s cleverly designed sets.” 

The demanding dramatic coloratura role of Konstanze will be performed by Russian soprano and HGO Studio alumna Albina Shagimuratova, who last appeared at HGO as Violetta in La traviata (2012). She has gained international acclaim for her portrayals of the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute, described by the Times of London: “Every note is luminescent, star bright.” Tenor Lawrence Brownlee, acclaimed as part of a “new golden age of bel canto” (New York Times), will sing Belmonte. He portrayed Lindoro in HGO’s 2012 The Italian Girl in Algiers. Making his HGO debut as Osmin will be bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green, noted by the New York Times as “excellent as Osmin…a scene-stealing baritone with a robust voice.” Ukrainian soprano and HGO Studio alumna Uliana Alexyuk returns to the company as Blonde. Her 2014 last-minute portrayal of Gilda in Rigoletto “captured Gilda’s sweetness, ardor, and vulnerability”(Houston Chronicle).

Austrian conductor Thomas Rösner, who led HGO’s 2013 Die Fledermaus, will be in the pit. James Robinson returns to direct.

Donizetti’s ebullient comedy The Elixir of Love sets a celebratory tone as HGO’s season opener. English director Daniel Slater’s staging, created for Opera North in 2001, transfers the cheerfully sentimental story from a rural Italian village to the terrace of a Rivera resort, replete with hot-air balloons. The result has delighted audiences and critics: “deliciously entertaining and unpretentious”(Telegraph, London).     

Singing the naive Nemorino will be tenor Dimitri Pittas, whose performance of the role at Welsh National Opera was deemed “utterly glorious” (Theatre in Wales). He was last seen at HGO as Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor (2011) and Rodolfo in La bohème (2012). Houston soprano Nicole Heaston, whose “warm, supple soprano”(Houston Chronicle) was admired in HGO’s 2015 The Magic Flute, returns to sing Adina. The wily Dr. Dulcamara will be portrayed by bass-baritone Patrick Carfizzi, most recently heard as the Speaker of the Temple in HGO’s 2015 The Magic Flute. 

English conductor Jane Glover, renowned for her interpretations of late Baroque and classical repertoire, will make her much-anticipated HGO debut on the podium as the company’s Lynn Wyatt Great Artist for the 2016–17 season. Daniel Slater will return to direct. He last directed La traviata (2012).

Houston welcomes the Super Bowl in February 2017, and the surrounding logistics have created challenges to the presentation of fully staged opera at the Wortham Theater Center during that period. HGO is delighted to take this opportunity to showcase the company’s outstanding chorus and orchestra in Verdi’s Requiem. 

Widely recognized as one of the most dramatic works written in the form of the Christian liturgy, Verdi’s mighty Requiem premiered in 1874 at Milan’s Church of San Marco with four operatic soloists and the composer on the podium. The occasion was the anniversary of the death of Italian poet and national hero Alessandro Manzoni, to whom Verdi dedicated the work. Subsequent performances often took place in opera houses, and from the beginning critics remarked, some disapprovingly, on the work’s operatic nature. What has never been questioned is the Requiem’s profound spiritual, even cathartic impact, which has caused it to be performed under the most trying of circumstances, such as in a World War II concentration camp, and excerpted on such occasions as the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, and in New York City after the 9/11 tragedy.

HGO will devote the company’s full operatic forces to Verdi’s iconic score, including the HGO Orchestra led by Patrick Summers and the HGO Chorus directed by HGO’s highly respected chorus master Richard Bado, along with four outstanding soloists. 

Angela Meade, whose Norma at the Metropolitan Opera created a critical stir, will make her HGO debut as the soprano soloist. At her Requiem performance at the BBC Proms, her voice was “all gilded evanescence and glow”(The Arts Desk). Sasha Cooke—Magnolia Hawks in HGO’s 2013 Show Boat and noted by the Los Angeles Times for her “standout” performance as Anna in San Francisco Opera’s 2015 Les Troyens—will be the alto soloist. The tenor soloist will be Alexey Dolgov, a hit with Houston audiences in 2015 as both Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly and Cavaradossi in Tosca. The bass soloist will be Peixin Chen, a 2015 HGO Studio alumnus who is singing Dr. Bartolo in HGO’s The Marriage of Figaro this season and performed Sparafucile in Rigoletto at Santa Fe Opera (2015). 

In the mid-1960s, Dominique de Menil, the renowned art collector and a key player in Houston’s contemporary art scene, commissioned the noted American artist Mark Rothko to create a series of paintings and the ideal gallery in which to house them. Mrs. de Menil also envisioned that the resultant Rothko Chapel, which opened in 1971, would serve as a spiritual space for “those of all faiths, or no faith.”

Some Light Emerges is a new chamber opera that is set mostly within the Rothko Chapel and chronicles the direct and tangential intersections of five people across four decades who visit the chapel, as well as the struggles and triumphs of Dominique de Menil in realizing her dream. Through the personal stories of its characters—both moving and humorous—Some Light Emerges reveals how political and spiritual conflicts can be better understood and ultimately resolved through art, while honoring the people who create and support such art. The opera will be presented under the auspices of HGO’s community collaboration and education initiative, HGOco.

Composer Laura Kaminsky’s opera As One (libretto by Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed), premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2014 to critical acclaim and was subsequently produced at Utah State University, Berkeley’s West Edge Opera and D.C.’s Urban Arias. Other companies, including Opera Colorado, will produce the work in 2017. Upcoming works include a Piano Quintet for Ursula Oppens and the Cassatt Quartet (2017) and a third opera with collaborators Campbell and Reed, Today It Rains, commissioned by Opera Parallèle for a 2018–19 season premiere. She is currently composer-in-residence at American Opera Projects and on the faculty at Purchase College Conservatory of Music/SUNY.

Librettist Mark Campbell has written 15 operas and five musicals including Silent Night, which premiered at Minnesota Opera, received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Music, and has been produced by many other American opera companies. Other operas include Later the Same Evening, The Manchurian Candidate, As One, Volpone, and Bastianello/Lucrezia. Campbell has eight new works premiering in the next two years, including major commissions for Minnesota Opera, Opera Philadelphia, and Santa Fe Opera.

Filmmaker/librettist Kimberly Reed’s Prodigal Sons, a “whiplash doc that heralds an exciting talent” (SF Weekly), premiered at Telluride Film Festival, has been shown at 100+ festivals and broadcast worldwide, and garnered 14 awards including the FIPRESCI Prize. She is also working on Dark Money, a documentary about campaign finance reform. A New York Foundation for the Arts fellow, she has had residencies at Yaddo, Hermitage Artist Retreat, and Squaw Valley Community of Writers. She has made several national television and radio appearances and is one of Filmmaker magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.”