Letter from the General Director

As I write, we’re just a few weeks away from the start of our 2023 Summer Festival Season. It’s my favorite time of the year, just before the season begins. There’s a quickening of pace around the office as our remarkable year-round staff prepares for it all to begin—the last-minute details, the arrivals, the final donor calls, selling the remaining few tickets. A new season, a new decade following our 50th, and new opportunities are on the horizon.

Who can resist Carmen? Opera’s most beloved classic returns to our stage for the first time in 16 years featuring an incredible cast. Mezzo-soprano Taylor Raven returns to us to make her role debut as the title character. Read more about her preparations for her first Carmen in this issue. Taylor was with us as Pauline in The Queen of Spades in 2021 and I knew then that she was our next Carmen. She’s joined by an outstanding cast led by the debuts of director Brenna Corner and conductor Kelly Kuo. This is the perfect opera to bring a friend, introduce new audience members or just sit back and enjoy a classic.

In its brief 55-minute one-act format, Bluebeard’s Castle by Béla Bartók finally has its DMMO premiere this season. The time is now primarily because the work provides us fertile ground for collaboration between stage director Kristine McIntyre and international visual image composer and artist Oyoram. Read more about their work within the Bluebeard’s Castle pages. Maestro David Neely and the Festival Orchestra join audience favorite Sara Gartland and debut artist Christian Van Horn, one of today’s most acclaimed bass-baritones, taking on the title role for the first time in this remarkable score.

Over a hundred years after its Chicago debut, Prokofiev’s endlessly inventive opera The Love For Three Oranges continues to delight, puzzle and amuse. Ripe with imagination, comedy, satire and a famous March, this opera at last has its DMMO premiere in a new production led by director Chas Rader-Shieber and designer Jacob A. Climer. Maestro Neely tells me this opera may be the most challenging opera he and the Festival Orchestra have ever attempted! An ensemble cast representing some of the opera world’s most remarkable, rapidly rising professional talents takes the stage in this energetic, hilarious and memorable romp.

Our 2nd Stages Series takes us on the road. From the African American Museum of Iowa in Cedar Rapids to Hope+Elim Church, Mainframe Studios and Grand View University in Des Moines, you will have four opportunities to see Susan Kander and Roberta Gumbel’s moving and powerful one-woman show entitled dwb (driving while black). Also in the series comes an opportunity for summer audiences to experience our long-time partnership with the Iowa National Guard at Camp Dodge. Originally created from interviews with active-duty soldiers and veterans, The Falling and the Rising serves as an ode to American service members, shining a light on their often untold stories. Both operas will feature opportunities to engage further through post-performance talkbacks

Several dates are already sold out or are nearing so for this coming season. Please don’t wait longer to secure your seats. And to those who have followed their ticket purchase with a gift of support—thank you! Thank you for playing your role in making the season happen. I look forward to seeing you this summer!