Nabucco by Verdi

Saturday night, November 18, I took my wife and mother to see NABUCCO, an opera by Verdi. It is a new production staged by the Dallas Opera, here in Texas at the Music Hall at Fair Park. It was an awesome production! The sets were designed, not by normal set designers, but rather by contemporary installation artists Frances Bagley and Tom Orr. They were beautiful, unexpected, and well conceived. The two standout performers were Zeljko Lucic of Serbia as Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar) and Anna Shafajinskaia of Ukraine and Canada as Abigaille (slave thought to be the king's daughter). They both turned in superlative performances not just in their arias, but also in their ensemble pieces. The staging by James Robinson in his Dallas debut was effective and affecting. His use of the unit set pieces in creative ways leant an air of timeless surrealism to the staging. I was thrilled (literally) by the scene in Act III by the banks of the Euphrates River. The metallic step units, used throughout the play, were arranged end on end and complimented with metal rods 3 to 5 meters in length set to represent reeds on the river bank. The chorus were dressed all in grey with heads and faces covered- heads down. At first they appeared part of the set, until they began to move and sing "Va', pensierro" a yearning of the Isrealites for their homeland from exile. I finally began breathing a few minutes later.

For both my wife and my mother, it was their first live opera- they were dazzled. I have never had season itckets before, nor seats as well placed (center front balcony). The next production is THE BARBER OF SEVILLE by Rossini in December. This is the "Golden Anniversary" for the Dallas Opera. http://www.dallasopera.org