A MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIRMAN

UPCOMING THIS SEASON

Dear Friends, spaceWelcome to Maria de Buenos Aires. space OPERA San Antonio is now in its ninth year. Each year we do two full-scale productions of classic grand opera in the Tobin Center, complete with traditional sets and full orchestra. This season we did Pagliacci (The Clowns) in October, and will do Romeo and Juliet in April. Tonight we offer a different experiment, a smaller-scale production in an intimate venue, a venue configured not like a stage production but like a dissolute cabaret, with the audience included in the performance. space The music of Maria de Buenos Aires, written in 1968, is the tango music of the great 20th-century tango master Astor Piazzolla. The opera uses all the passion, intensity, and suppressed pain of the tango to tell a story of debauchery and devastation in a Buenos Aires which is also hell. space This is a work that includes things the great 19th-century opera certainly never had popular music, non-traditional instruments like the bandoneon, and surrealism. space Thank you for joining us to bring to San Antonio something contemporary and experimental. Get ready for something different! And please come back for the beautiful music and classic story of Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet on March 30th and April 1st.

Sincerely,

Blair Labatt Chairman, OPERA San Antonio