October has been a busy month for classical fans in Washington, and it just keeps getting better. We still have one more week before the Washington National Opera and the National Symphony Orchestra return from their breaks. Both groups are busy, of course: WNO is preparing their final fall production, the much anticipated new production of Porgy and Bess, and the NSO has been on a tour of California and Nevada. For more concert options besides those we mention here, see our complete schedule at Ionarts.
OPERA NOT PROHIBITED:
>> Last week’s main event in classical Washington was Renée Fleming and a live performance of the Daphne she recorded. This week, we are most excited about the concert by Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli this Wednesday (October 26, 8 p.m.) in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. She has just released a new CD called Opera Proibita, a critically acclaimed program of rare arias by Handel, Scarlatti, and Caldara, created in the city of Rome during a papal ban of opera in the early 18th century. La Bartoli is making a much longer tour of cities this fall, unfortunately not with the marvelous orchestra on the recording. Washington Performing Arts Society is responsible for bringing her to Washington, and as I write this post there are tickets remaining only in the $90 to $105 range.
>> The other major event is the premiere of Washington National Opera’s new production of George Gershwin’s glorious American opera Porgy and Bess on Saturday (October 29, 7 p.m.) in the Kennedy Center Opera House. You may think you know this opera because so many of its tunes are familiar as jazz standards, like “Summertime,” “A Woman Is a Sometime Thing,” “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’,” and “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” to name only a few. Those songs are part of an incredibly complex and rewarding whole, and you should not miss the chance to hear it live. The staging by Francesca Zambello should be good, judging by her excellent work on Billy Budd, which we saw last season. For an important local connection to Gershwin’s opera, go visit the Todd Duncan Residence (1600 T St. NW). Not only did Todd Duncan, a former professor of voice at Howard, create the role of Porgy, he and Gershwin convinced the National Theatre to drop its segregated seating policy — sadly, only temporarily — for the first performances here in Washington in 1935. The WNO production continues from November 2 to 19, with a free broadcast of the November 6 performance to be shown live on a giant video screen near the Capitol on the National Mall on Sunday, November 6 at 2 p.m. That event is free, and we fully expect some of you DCists to show up for it.
