Opera in the Ozarks Welcomes Top Singers from Across Nation

Plus Special Broadway Cabaret in Fayetteville on July 13

Opera in the Ozarks, the summer music festival and prominent opera training program, proudly presents its 2023 Summer Season, including dozens of exciting performances and musical events across NWA. The season continues through July 21 with mainstage performances at Inspiration Point, 16311 Hwy. 62 West, five miles west of Eureka Springs.

The season features a talented cast of singers and professional musicians from across the nation. Together, under the direction of Artistic Director Thomas Cockrell, they will perform 22 fully staged and costumed opera performances, including three Sunday matinees in July.

“Our singers, orchestra, and staff come from all over the world to bring these operas to our unique corner of the Ozarks,” says Nancy Preis, Opera in the Ozarks General Director. Now in its 72nd season, 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

“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 explains. “And 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.”

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 travelling quack Dr. Dulcamara arrives with the solution: a love potion which works wonders!

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. Orpheus and Eurydice, though married to each other, are amicably living separate lives, each blissfully occupied with a new lover.

And in Copland's only full-length opera, The Tender Land tells a coming-of-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.

The three mainstage productions are performed on a rotating basis, with evening shows at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday matinees at 3 p.m., as follows:

Elixir of Love – July 1, 5, 9, 12, 15, 21

Orpheus in the Underworld – July 2, 6, 8, 14, 19

The Tender Land – July 3, 7, 11, 16, 20

Beyond the mainstage performances in Eureka Springs, audiences will also enjoy the always exciting Broadway Cabaret in Fayetteville on July 13 at Mount Sequoyah (7pm), which will include heavy hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar. This special cabaret performance will feature a variety of popular songs from Broadway shows, performed by members of the Opera in the Ozarks company.

Single tickets to mainstage opera performances range in price from $25 to $30 depending on seat selection. Tickets for the Fayetteville cabaret are $50. Tickets may be purchased online at opera.org, or by calling the box office at (479) 253-8595