Deborah Voigt as Salome

Opera, the extravagant art, tends to flourish in times of financial excess, meaning that the ongoing financial crisis has caused considerable collateral damage to this most expensive art form. In response to the crisis, Washington National Opera drastically cut down and altered the current season, including the regrettable postponement of its American Ring Cycle. While lamentable, the decision was fiscally wise, proven surely by the plight of Los Angeles Opera, which recently went ahead with its Ring cycle only to find itself begging the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to give it a $14 million loan to cover costs.

While the WNO’s decision made financial sense, it has made for a somewhat lackluster season (with a revival of Porgy and Bess and yet another Marriage of Figaro still to come), although it certainly had its high points and, quite ironically, the unexpectedly good conclusion to the Ring cycle.

The bad news is that the cutbacks will be worse for the 2010-2011 season, but the good news is that the season will not consist only of overheard mediocrities. Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera will open the season, including the return of the wildly popular and free live simulcast of opening night to Nationals Park. Ballo is not exactly a rarity, but it has not been on the company’s roster since 2002, the casting is promising (Salvatore Licitra and Iréne Theorin in the leads), and a new production will set the action in Sweden, where it was intended in Eugène Scribe’s play and by Verdi, until censors forced him to recast the action in (of all places) Boston. Strauss’s shocking Salome was last staged at WNO in the same season as Ballo, and this time it will feature soprano Deborah Voigt in the title role, which she sang in Washington in 2007 but in a concert version with the National Symphony Orchestra. Heinz Fricke will reportedly be recovered from major heart surgery by then, but we hope that a suitable cover conductor will have been arranged. Best of all there will be a production of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride, with soprano Patricia Racette in the title role and Plácido Domingo as Oreste. This includes some notable firsts, the company’s first attempt at this or any other opera by Gluck (they are all gorgeous), Racette’s debut in the role, and while Domingo has apparently sung this role before, who knows how much longer we will have the chance to see him on the stage?