Opera in the Ozarks, the summer music festival and prominent opera training program based in Eureka Springs, kicks off its 2023 Summer Season with dozens of exciting opera performances and special musical events across the Northwest Arkansas region.
The opera’s 72nd season begins Friday, June 23, and continues through Friday, July 21, at Opera in the Ozarks’ mountainside venue, Inspiration Point, located at 16311 U.S. Highway 62 West, five miles west of Eureka Springs.
The new season will feature a talented cast of singers along with professional musicians from across the country.
“We have assembled a company of dozens of wonderful singers who will convene on our mountain this summer, and the always wonderful orchestra will be ready to thrill you with their beautiful music making,” said Nancy Preis, general director for Opera in the Ozarks.
Together, under the direction of artistic director Thomas Cockrell, they will perform 22 fully staged and costumed opera performances, including three Sunday matinees.
“Our singers, orchestra and staff come from all over the world to bring these operas to our unique corner of the Ozarks,” Preis said. “Every year they fall in love, both onstage and offstage with the Northwest Arkansas area. You will fall in love too, with the beautiful music and the magic of these operas.”
This year’s “Farm Fresh Opera” repertoire includes three exceptional operas: Donizetti’s Elixir of Love, Copland’s The Tender Land, and Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, plus additional special events at locations throughout Northwest Arkansas.
“Each of the featured operas this season takes place on a farm or in a small town in a rural area, thus the ‘Farm Fresh’ theme,” Preis explained. “In a nod to our location, we have relocated Donizetti’s Elixir of Love to Eureka Springs.
“Orpheus and Eurydice also will live in the same area, although in a different time period. And Copland’s The Tender Land is set in a small Midwestern community, which certainly fits Eureka Springs.”
Originally, Donizetti’s heartwarming comedy Elixir of Love was set in a quaint Italian village, but it could work just about anywhere, and in any time when one could believe in the power of a substance that might incite romance. The setting is Eureka Springs, about 1904, where the poor farm boy Nemorino is besotted with wealthy landowner Adina, who ignores him. The traveling quack Dr. Dulcamara arrives with the solution: a love potion that works wonders!
In Copland’s only full-length opera, The Tender Land tells a comingof- age tale of a young woman on a Midwestern farm in the 1930s, who is caught between the smothering expectations of her family and her dreams of life and love beyond the borders of her rural town.
And in Offenbach’s comic operetta Orpheus in the Underworld, the mythical story of Orpheus is told through irreverent parody and scathing satire, and farcical twists abound. In Offenbach’s version, Orpheus and Eurydice, though married to each other, are amicably living separate lives, each blissfully occupied with a new lover. So, when Eurydice dies, rather than dying tragically she willingly relocates to the Underworld to be with Pluto — the ruler of the Underworld — who in a mortal form was her lover while she was alive. Goaded by Public Opinion, Orpheus attempts to retrieve her from the Underworld, but this time very much against his will.
The three mainstage productions will be staged on a rotating basis throughout the season, with evening performances at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday matinees at 3 p.m., as follows: Elixir of Love – June 23, 28; July 1, 5, 9, 12, 15, 21 The Tender Land – June 24, 29; July 3, 7, 11, 16, 20 Orpheus in the Underworld – June 27, 30; July 2, 6, 8, 14, 19 Beyond the 22 mainstage performances in Eureka Springs, there will also be more than a dozen performances of Cinderella, this year’s children’s outreach production, at venues throughout Northwest Arkansas. In addition, audiences will enjoy the always-exciting Chamber Music concert on Monday, July 17, at Inspiration Point, and not one, but two Broadway Cabarets. One cabaret will be at 7 p.m. Thursday, July 13, at Mount Sequoyah in Fayetteville and will include heavy hors d’oeuvres, and the other will be at 6 p.m. Tuesday, July 18 at the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs and will include dinner (both cabaret venues will have cash bars). These cabaret performances will feature a variety of popular songs from Broadway shows, performed by members of the Opera in the Ozarks company.
Tickets for the 2023 season are on sale now and are moving quickly. Single tickets to main-stage opera performances range in price from $25 to $30 depending on seat selection, with special pricing available for children and students under 18. Tickets for the Fayetteville cabaret performance are $50, or $70 for the dinner-inclusive Eureka Springs cabaret. Tickets for the Chamber Music Concert are $20, also with special pricing available for children and students under 18.
Tickets may be purchased online at opera. org, or by calling the box office at 479-2538595. For more information, including a complete list of performance dates and other details, visit opera.org.
