When COVID-19 challenged performing arts organizations to find new ways to present their work, Minnesota Opera successfully shifted to online productions. For its 2022-23 season, the company will maintain some intimacy, but in person this time.
Yes, there will be grand opera at St. Paul's Ordway Music Theater. But two of the five productions announced Wednesday for the company's 60th anniversary season will take place at its new 224-seat Luminary Arts Center in downtown Minneapolis' North Loop.
"Edward Tulane" — When the pandemic froze the performing arts in March 2020, Minnesota Opera was just days away from premiering this opera by composer Paola Prestini and librettist Mark Campbell. It's based upon "The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane" by Kate DiCamillo, the Minneapolis author who has twice won the Newbery Medal, the highest honor in children's literature.
Stillwater-bred tenor Jack Swanson will make his Minnesota Opera debut in the title role of a china rabbit who falls off an ocean liner and begins a remarkable odyssey. The final commission in the company's 10-year New Works Initiative, it will be presented at the Ordway Oct. 8-16.
"Rinaldo" — It's been almost 30 years since the company presented one of George Frideric Handel's 46 operas. Fans of the composer's "Messiah" will likely warm to the ornamented and emotion-packed style of this baroque gem, based on a Renaissance-era epic poem about love and rescue by Torquato Tasso.
The title role is again sung by an artist with local ties, in this case countertenor Patrick Terry, a University of Minnesota grad who won London's 2019 Handel Singing Competition. Running Nov. 19-Dec. 3, "Rinaldo" will be the first Minnesota Opera production at the Luminary Arts Center — the former Lab Theater, located next to the opera's headquarters.
"The Daughter of the Regiment" — Minnesota Opera has produced several works by classical-era composer Gaetano Donizetti, but never this romantic comedy about a girl adopted and raised by a squadron of French soldiers.
Soprano Vanessa Becerra, who appeared last fall in the company's Latin American showcase "Opera Afuera" at Allianz Field, sings the lead, with tenor David Portillo as her love interest. He sang the title role in Minnesota Opera's excellent 2021 online production of Benjamin Britten's "Albert Herring." It will be onstage at Ordway Center Feb. 4-12 with a set from Fort Worth Opera and costumes from the National Opera in Washington, D.C.
