One-Hour Opera
This past season, The Santa Fe Opera's community oriented One-Hour Opera delivered a lively American professional premiere of Nino Rota's The Timid Twosome. While most famous for his film scores, Nino Rota also had an extensive career as a composer of opera, chamber music, and symphonic works. His full-length comedy The Italian Straw Hat had its American premiere at The Santa Fe Opera in 1977. The Timid Twosome (I due timidi) was commissioned by RAI (the Italian equivalent of BBC Radio) and first broadcast in 1950; the stage version premiered two years later.
The majority of performances were at full capacity attendance as audiences enjoyed Rota's score which blended soaring and lyrical melodies with energetic, jaunty musical descriptions of daily life in the courtyard of an Italian apartment house. The nine performances featured six SFO apprentices including, soprano Anya Matanovič, tenor Aaron Pegram, mezzo-soprano Deborah Domanski, tenor Matthew Tuell, baritone John Boehr, and soprano Sarah Hibbard. Kirt Pavitt was the production's music director and Acushla Bastible the stage director.
Plans for 2009's One-Hour-Opera are underway and will be announced in April.