Minnesota Opera announced its 2014-2015 season at a press conference on Thursday, February 20. Thick snow fell steadily in the background, but in a stroke of timeliness this was the organization’s first season announcement to also be simulcast online.
The 2014-2015 season features five mainstage operas: Bizet’s Carmen, Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love, Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, Puccini’s La fanciulla del West, and the world premiere of Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell’s The Manchurian Candidate. All of these operas will be presented in their original languages and full scheduling information will be announced in July.
Although casting is not yet complete, the announcements included the names of several principles. Greer Grimsley (the titular character in Minnesota Opera’s recent Macbeth) and several other favorites will return, as will Angela Morettaro and a number of the company’s other former resident artists. Younger opera fans can especially look forward to the Minnesota Opera debut of British soprano Nicole Cabell, whose tour of American opera houses over the last eight years has yet to reach the Twin Cities.
The new opera in the lineup is The Manchurian Candidate, a new work written especially for Minnesota Opera. Puts (the composer) and Campbell (the librettist) previously collaborated on Silent Night, an opera set during the “Christmas truce” during World War I. Silent Night was debuted by Minnesota Opera in 2011, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012, and was broadcast on PBS in 2013. Minnesota Opera recently completed its first workshop for The Manchurian Candidate.
The full press release, including all of the announced casting details, is available online.
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