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In the intimate Newmark Theatre.
You know Ravel’s “Bolero,” now enjoy his two quick-hitting one-act operas!
L’HEURE ESPAGNOLE
The Spanish Hour—This racy little romp will have you giggling. Set in the 18th century, it frolics along the edge of fantasy and farce. Bored with her husband who tends the city’s clocks each week, Concepción finds others to tend to her needs. But this week is different ... much to the audiences’ enjoyment!
L’ENFANT ET LES SORTILÈGES
The Bewitched Child—A young boy is sent to his room without dinner for misbehaving. What does he do? He pitches a fit, tearing up the room, his toys and his books ... all of which spring back to life, phantoms of his own imagination, to torment him! In the end, he learns a very important lesson.
Both operas are sung in French with English translations projected above the stage.
Download the Study Guide (pdf)
Cast
| Featuring the Portland Opera Studio Artists | |
| Conductor | Robert Ainsley |
| Stage Director | Christopher Mattaliano |
L’HEURE ESPAGNOLE
It is clockmaker Torquemada’s day to regulate the municipal clocks – and his wife Concepcion’s day to entertain lovers. When Ramiro, a muleteer, visits the clock shop to have his watch repaired, Concepcion worries that his presence will ruin her rendezvous with her lover, the poet Gonzalve. She devises a plan to keep Ramiro busy, asking him to cart one of two grandfather clocks to her bedroom. When he returns too soon, interrupting her time with Gonzalve, she asks Ramiro to bring the clock back and take the other clock upstairs instead. As he leaves to fetch the clock, Concepcion persuades Gonzalve to hide inside the second clock, which Ramiro then transports to her bedroom. Another suitor, the banker Don Inigo, arrives and, though dismissed by Concepcion, he decides to stay, hiding in the other clock. Concepcion returns, disenchanted with Gonzalve and asks Ramiro to once again swap the clocks. Ramiro reenters with the second clock (and Gonzalve) and dutifully takes the first clock (and Don Inigo) upstairs. Meanwhile, Concepcion tries to send Gonzalve packing, but he resumes his hiding place as Ramiro returns. Ramiro makes one more trip upstairs, this time to bring back the first clock. When he returns, he asks Concepcion if she has any further orders. Weary of her other suitors, she requests the virile muleteer to return to her bedroom – without a clock!
While Ramiro and Concepcion are upstairs, Torquemada returns to find Gonzalve and Don Inigo and succeeds in selling the guilty duo the two clocks. The opera ends with a habanera quintet and a moral taken from the poet Boccaccio.
L’ENFANT ET LES SORTILÈGES
A naughty little boy is in his room, misbehaving. When his mother berates him and leaves him alone with an austere lunch, the boy goes on a destructive rampage. He smashes dishes, destroys wallpaper, torments animals, breaks a grandfather clock, and rips up books. He then collapses exhausted into an armchair, which, along with other domestic items, comes to life and chides him for his bad behavior. The boy is astonished and tormented by the sorcery surrounding him.
Escaping to his beloved garden, he finds the trees and animals there ready to take revenge on him for his past violence towards them. Realizing the pain he has caused, he binds the paw of a wounded squirrel. The animals forgive him and lead him home to his mother.
- Courtesy of New York City Opera
THE MADCAP MAGIC OF RAVEL’S L’HEURE ESPAGNOLE AND L’ENFANT ET LES SORTILÈGES
“In Granada, to pay attention to a married woman is unheard of, while nothing is simpler than to court a young girl. In France it is quite the opposite.”
~~Théophile Gautier~~
Ravel loved clocks. He loved mechanical toys, miniatures, cats, children and storytelling. He loved fine food, fine clothes, long walks in the woods and great literature. He delighted in musical jokes, imitation, and his mother’s native Spain, and while his two small operas cannot capture all of his loves, they do capture the essence of most. They also capture something of the preciseness of the man, his precocious understanding of the child’s world and the bittersweet necessity of growing up. He even laughs at the foolishness of the grown-ups we grow into. These operas reflect his cleverness and his ability to calibrate his music to best support the language of his story. For ultimately, Ravel was a storyteller, and he reveled in the music of words as much as in music itself.
In L’heure espagnole (The Spanish Hour), the words were all important and setting the rhythms of spoken language of primary concern. Ravel intended that the text should be declaimed rather than sung. He elaborated, “Apart from the student, who sings serenades and cavatinas in an exaggerated manner, the other roles, I imagine, will give the impression of being spoken.”
In 1904, Franc-Nohain opened his play L’heure espagnole, at the Odéon, where he enjoyed an enthusiastic following. The Odéon was popular with young poets and playwrights who often premiered their works there for their colleagues. Franc-Nohain was an accomplished satirical poet by the time he was 25, and, at 33, he was considered “an excellent humorist.” His little play was only about half an hour long and simply a warm up act for a full-length play which also addressed adultery. It wasn’t even reviewed by the major publications. But it was very funny, and Ravel was in need of a subject for an opera. He had yet to write an opera, of course, but his rival Debussy had. L’heure espagnole may have felt the perfect choice for Ravel, as it was so far from anything Debussy touched on in his single operatic masterpiece Pelléas et Mélisande that it could not possibly be accused of being derivative.
Like Debussy, however, Ravel did choose to bypass a librettist and set the play directly. He hadn’t much to do to prepare it for setting to music. The play ran a short half hour, and Ravel’s music stretched it to only an hour. There are only a few small cuts and minor revisions to the play in Ravel’s libretto. He wrote the opera quite quickly for him, a notoriously slow composer. The vocal score was prepared in the six months between April and October of 1907, but wasn’t orchestrated until 1910 because the impresario of the Opéra-Comique was concerned that his audiences would not accept an opera based on a play that had been reviewed as a “mildly pornographic vaudeville.” His reticence disappeared, however, when the wife of a cabinet minister gently twisted his arm on the issue. It opened to mixed reviews on May 19, 1911. Some critics (Pierre Lalo, who always seemed to have an axe to grind with regard to Ravel, in particular) found Ravel too clever for his own good and deemed L’heure too cold and calculating to be easily enjoyed. Others reveled in its contradictions, correctly ascertaining that the seeming incompatibility of the text and the score were actually textual jokes, underlining moments musically that were merely colloquies in the play. The real issue was a lack of appreciation for the musical techniques on display, at least as accompaniment to this libretto. Ravel utilized many of the musical tricks of the modern school, and some of these tricks were deemed “not always compatible with the situation,” whereas they now seem colorful, rich and perfectly appropriate to our ears.
For his contemporaries, for instance, Ravel opened his comic opera in an odd way. Whereas one could easily see busy bustling music accompanying the waking of Seville, Ravel opens his piece with dissonance, bitonality and the incessant ticking of clocks. Spanish idioms float throughout the piece, underscoring the muleteer Ramiro’s claims to be related to a matador. Deliberately “funny” sounds are liberally sprinkled throughout the piece, emphasizing Ravel’s claim that he “heard ‘funny’ in order to write the opera. And the score is funny, casting its characters as stereotypes so broad that they seem automatons to the clockwork dynamics of the plot. The lyricism of the all-talk-and-no-action poet Gonzalve, the ponderous biliousness of the elderly banker Don Inigo and the flamenco flash of the final duet with Concepcion and the virile muleteer Ramiro are delicious examples of musical caricature.
But there is a darkness to Ravel’s score, too, that those familiar with the play’s burlesque essence lamented. They accused Ravel of undermining Franc-Nohain’s comedy, making it more serious than was intended. It is equally possible, however, that Ravel merely punctuated issues that were already in Franc-Nohain’s text, but, as performed, were obscured by physical comedy, broadly suggestive jokes and line delivery. Time is a huge issue within the play and the opera, and characters talk about it nonstop. With only words, it might be easy to overlook the broader implications of Torquemada, the cuckolded older husband announcing “…Time does not wait,” or Concepcion’s anxious “Time is pitilessly rationed for us,” to the comedy of the moment. So much in a play depends on the actor’s interpretation of the line. But in an opera, the underscoring can give lie to the character’s actions and reveal the hidden meaning behind the words. Time, Ravel’s music sometimes points out, marches inexorably forward, dragging us all along with it, and we are all obliged to enjoy our hour of freedom since age and obligation will eventually take it from us. There is hope in the message, too, however. After all, everyone will get his chance, his time. As the last line of the opera points out, “There arrives a moment in the pursuit of Love when even the muleteer has his turn.” We just have to be ready to catch it.
If the overall impression of L’heure espagnole is detached amusement, and the characters merely automatons in the workings of the plot, L’enfant et les sortilèges (The Bewitched Child) is something very, very different, belying the accusations of coldness and inhumanity all too often leveled at Ravel’s music. All of the wonders of Ravel, personal and professional, are on tender display in L’enfant. He lavished love on all of the creatures of the nursery—living and nonliving—capturing the language of the cats he loved and the inanimate beauty he admired in an achingly lovely parable of childhood. It so captured the essence of the libretto she wrote for Ravel, that Colette said:
“How can I describe my emotion when, for the first time, I heard the little drum accompanying the shepherds' procession? The moonlight in the garden, the flight of the dragonflies and bats ... ‘Isn't it fun’? Ravel would say. But I could feel a knot of tears tightening in my throat.”
Ravel really “got” children. His friend Marguerite Long once told him, “Maurice, you ought to marry. Nobody understands and loves children as you do.” Certainly the children in his life seconded this opinion. In particular, his skills at weaving tales, his own and others’, was admired, and the favorite place to be was sitting on his knee as he began a story. One of his most ardent admirers was Mimi—the little girl of his friends Cipa and Ida Godebski. Ravel frequently looked after Mimi and her brother Jean and she remembered Ravel most fondly:
“There are few of my childhood memories in which Ravel does not find a place. Of all my parents’ friends I had a predilection for Ravel because he used to tell me stories that I loved. I used to climb on his knee and indefatigably he would begin, ‘Once upon a time …’ “
In L’enfant, Ravel had a perfect vehicle for exploring his imitative music, for setting poetry and for taking a look at growing up through a small child’s eyes. His affinity for the story is understandable. What is a little more surprising is his collaboration with Colette who was, according to her daughter, largely absent from her child’s life.
Colette was a French novelist, most famous to U.S. audiences for writing the novel Gigi. She wrote over 50 novels and myriad short stories, was a notorious music hall performer, a great beauty, an adulteress, a bisexual, and the “greatest woman novelist of France.” In short, she was pretty flashy. Though she would later hold the Legion of Honor and membership in The Belgian Academy of French Language and Literature, at first blush it would seem that Colette and Ravel had little in common and spent much of their acquaintance at arm’s length.
Colette described her initial impressions of Ravel thus:
“Could I say that I really knew him, my illustrious collaborator, the composer of L’enfant et les sortilèges? I first met Maurice Ravel at the house of Mme de Saint Marceaux who used to entertain on Friday evenings after dinner … Perhaps inwardly secretive, Ravel kept himself at a distance and was dry in manner. Apart from listening to his music, which I initially did out of curiosity and then from an attachment to which the slight unease of surprise and the sensual and wicked attraction of a new art added their charms, that was as much as I knew of Maurice Ravel for many years.”
Ravel for his part seems not to have recorded his initial impressions of Colette. One can only imagine what he might have thought of this exhibitionist beauty and extraordinary writer, but it seems that during and after their collaboration they saw much in each other that was comprehensible and recognizable.
Sometime in 1917, Colette was approached by Jacques Rouché to write a libretto for a “fantasy-ballet” for the Paris Opéra. She banged out L’enfant, at this time called Entertainment for My Daughter (Colette had a three-year-old at the time) in a week. Rouché met with her and began to suggest composers.
“He liked my little poem and suggested composers whose names I welcomed as politely as I could. ‘But,’ said Rouché after a silence, ‘suppose I suggested Ravel?’ I burst out of my politeness and expressed my approval without reservation.‘We mustn’t neglect the fact,’ added Rouché, ‘that it could take a long time even if Ravel accepts…’”
It did take a long time. World War I got in the way; Ravel was serving as a truck driver at Verdun. Colette’s libretto was sent and waylaid and had to be sent again. Ravel’s mother’s death sent him into a spiral of despair and his own health was unreliable. He did, however, accept the libretto, but he envisioned it as an opera and asked Colette’s opinion on the meowing sounds of the cats—would it be alright to replace “mouao” with “mouain?” Ravel was a cat lover and his friend Manuel Rosenthal gives us a delicious glimpse into his work on the piece when he tells us, “Ravel spent a lot of time ruffling the fur of his two Siamese cats, the better to notate their purrings.” He then brought in a violinist friend to listen to his cats and imitate them on her violin. In the opera, the cats never speak in a human language, as do the other creatures, animate and inanimate, that populate the opera. They would not deign to.
Ravel had one objection. “I do not have a daughter,” he pointed out to Colette, and so the title was changed from Divertissement pour ma fille to L’Enfant et les sortilèges.
The opera (finally) opened in Monte Carlo on March 21, 1925, and received an “enthusiastic reception.” It became rather more controversial when it arrived at the Opéra-Comique in Paris a year later. The audience became fractious during the cat’s duet (which, as you recall, was entirely meowed), with the Modernists shouting down the critics. It made its way through continental Europe within a couple of years, but had to wait 40 years for its premiere in England’s Sadler’s Wells opera company, and it was not performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York until 1981. Strange for such a beautiful piece of theater.
Though very different operas, L’heure espagnole and L’enfant et les sortilèges both display Ravel’s genius for orchestration, text setting, musical imitation of the world we live in, and humor. In L’heure, Ravel showed us that we are all slaves to time and in L’enfant he showed us the magic and heartbreak of growing up. In both of these operas, Ravel made himself laugh by “hearing funny.” We are lucky that he was talented enough to “hear funny” for us too.
MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937)
“Doesn’t it ever occur to those people that I can be ‘artificial’ by nature?”
~~Maurice Ravel~~
| | Maurice Ravel has often been accused of “coldness,” “affectation,” “reserved-ness,” and, famously, of being a “Swiss watchmaker” by Stravinsky. It seems more charitable (and more accurate) to regard him as entirely his own creation, driven by a desire to control himself, his compositions and his environment as far as was possible, and in the case of the image he projected to the world and his music, he evidently succeeded. Indeed, Ravel lived life rather strenuously on his own terms. He confided to a friend once, “Everyone has their faults; mine is to act only with complete conscience.” He refused the Légion d’ honneur and several other French awards (though he did accept honors from other countries) and refused to join a group of prominent French composers who wanted to ban from performance the works of Austrian and German composers during World War I, forming instead his own musical organization to promote modern works without regard to origin. His appearance of a rarefied dandy was carefully cultivated from his youth and reflects the attention to detail throughout the rest of his life. His home, Belvédère, which housed his collections of mechanical toys, bibelot boxes, miniature plants and bonsai, once again bespeaks a passion for the refined, the small, the perfect, a world at arm’s length—almost as if he viewed the universe backwards through a telescope, the images accurate to the tiniest detail, but distant. It has even been observed that he only visited the countries whose music had influenced his own, after he had written said music, almost as if he didn’t want reality to infringe upon the painstaking completeness of his vision viewed through his lens. Ravel may borrow the sounds of Spain, Arabia, or American jazz, but he remains irrevocably Ravel, and unapologetically French. Ravel is considered “one of the most original and sophisticated musicians of the early 20th century.” His understanding of orchestration, knack for a musical portrayal of ambient sound, and his precision and unique tonal language instantly marked him by his contemporaries as the most influential French composer of his age after the death of Debussy. He established his musical “voice” early in his career, with none of the “journeyman” years of other composers. In some ways, he was anti-establishment, never really succeeding in conservative academic circles, but he revered the past, its forms and composers, and studied assiduously the scores of masters. Early in his career, one can hear the echoes of his study and inspiration. Later those musical mentors become more fully incorporated into his singular voice. Ravel was born on March 7, 1875 in Basque country—that strange region of Spanish influence in the South of France (as well as parts of Spain), whose language and culture were sufficiently exotic to fascinate the young Ravel throughout his life. His mother, Marie, of whom very little is known before the age of 35, was Basque, and sang her first-born son Spanish folk songs, which liberally flavored his future work. Ravel adored her, and she was his primary emotional relationship. Ravel’s father was Swiss, an innovative engineer, a modestly successful inventor and entrepreneur, and a talented amateur musician who appreciated art and music deeply. Despite the family’s tenuous financial situation, Ravel began piano lessons at age 7, and studied counterpoint and harmony concurrently. Ravel’s parents actively supported his musical ambitions. The family moved to Paris during Ravel’s early childhood, where they remained, although they moved about much throughout the city following various business opportunities of his father. Eventually, his little brother Edouard was born, and the family was complete. Theirs was a happy childhood, with both parents deeply involved in their sons’ lives. Their father often took them to factories to look at the machinery, and during the Paris World’s Fair they visited the Galérie des machines. Each boy’s ambitions were quietly nurtured, and as Maurice was auditioning for the Conservatoire, Edouard followed in his father’s footsteps and became an engineer. At 14, Maurice was accepted into the Paris Conservatoire as a piano student. There he was generally recognized as a gifted pianist, but he was not the best student. His first year there was his most successful. After that, he won no piano awards and was forced to leave the school in 1895. At 20 his career as a pianist was over. But, by then, Ravel was much more interested in composition. He wrote several pieces and in 1897 rejoined the Conservatoire as a composer. Here he studied with Fauré, who became both an influential mentor and a close friend. Fauré was an excellent teacher for the young man, being supportive and independent of the more conservative elements of academia. In addition, Ravel benefited from the counterpoint training that he received from Gédalge, whom, along with Fauré, he credited his “technique and musicianship.” During his time at the Conservatoire, he also deepened his lifelong friendship with virtuoso pianist, Ricardo Viñes, whom he had met at age 12. Together they played piano duets, read and discussed literature, and formed a salon of literary, visual and musical artists Viñes called Les Apaches. Together they discussed the musical and artistic issues of fin-de-siècle Paris. Ravel was profoundly influenced by these contacts and thus more than usually a product of his time. One of the requirements of continuing study at the Conservatoire was to win an award. The most coveted of these awards was the Prix de Rome, a prize that provided the winner with a cash award, as well as a year of study in Rome. The award had a long and illustrious history, having been established in the 17th century to help arts students continue their studies. Previous winners in the composer’s category included Hector Berlioz, Ambroise Thomas, Charles Gounod, Georges Bizet, Jules Massenet and Claude Debussy. At the dawn of the 20th century, the prize was beginning to be regarded as a relic of a bygone age, but its importance was still felt, and it enabled the winner to continue study within the Conservatoire. Ravel had made the attempt four previous times in 1900, 1901, 1902 and 1903. The judges’ panel was deeply conservative, and Ravel, who had been slowly establishing himself as a composer in the modern vein, was viewed as a radical. The 1900 undertaking was so unsuccessful that Ravel chose to forget it. 1901 saw him attempt to game the system a bit by writing music not of his own preferred style, but of one calculated to please the judges’ tastes. His Myrrha, a cantata of vaguely Wagnerian harmonics, earned him the Second Grand Prix, but sounded nothing at all like his previous works Shéhérazade, Pavane pour une infante défunte or Jeux d’eau. His near miss for first may have been due to the fact that the winner’s teacher was on the panel of judges. For 1902, his style reverts back to his own, with the beautiful La Nuit for the first round and Alcyone for the finals. No prize. 1903, too, was unsuccessful and he declined to enter. In 1905, though, Ravel was about to turn thirty and age out of the competition. By 1905, Ravel had written some much admired work and was an established presence in musical circles. His name was already uttered with the same reverence as Debussy’s and critics were creating camps supporting their favorite of the two. Ravel had become an important French composer. He again entered the Prix de Rome, but he was eliminated in the first round. His fugue contained parallel 5ths, a no-no of gigantic proportions as every college musician past their freshman theory classes knows. But, as any artist knows, after a certain point, the rules are made to be broken. The judges were adamant: “Monsieur Ravel may take us for windbags if he pleases, but not with impunity will he take us for idiots.” A firestorm of controversy erupted with the general public that a composer of Ravel’s stature should be denied the opportunity to compete. What became known as the Affaire Ravel, fought out very publicly in the press (without Ravel’s participation—he remained coolly above the fray), ended with the resignation of Théodore Dubois who was succeeded as the Conservatoire’s director by Fauré. Ravel avoided the Conservatoire for the rest of his career and solidified his distrust of establishment institutions. His loss of the Prix de Rome was a distinct gain for his musical creativity, however. The next several years were extremely prolific and include Miroirs (1905), Histoires naturelles (1906), Rapsodie espangole (1908) and L’heure espagnole (not performed until 1911), as well as the ballet Daphnis et Chloé. He suffered an emotional blow with the death of his father in 1908, which necessitated that he shoulder additional responsibilities as the head of the family. A year later, he began touring Europe. In 1914, Europe exploded into the “war to end all wars,” World War I. Desperate to serve his country, Ravel longed to become a pilot, but, at the age of 39, he was turned down. His indifferent health was also a contributing factor. Not content to sit idly by, Ravel became a truck driver on the Verdun front. He named his truck Adelaide and related his many adventures with her in letters home. His brother Edouard also joined the war effort and was so traumatized by his experiences that his hair turned white. Ravel, meanwhile, didn’t seem to take the psychic trauma from the war, but his physical body took a toll and his service ended in 1917 with a dreadful case of dysentery, leading to surgery. During his medical leave, he learned of his mother’s final illness and death, and he never recovered emotionally. His creative output was severely limited for several years. He became more reclusive and in 1920 bought a house west of Paris which he named Belvédère. After his move, he refused to buy a car or ever drive again. The year 1924 saw Ravel struggling to finish his second opera, L’enfant et les sortilèges. Going was slow, but he had a deadline and had to finish. “Who can … teach me to work fast?” he moaned to a friend in a letter. Part of his struggle was the perfectionism with which he approached his works. Ravel’s creative process required a long “gestation period” to use his own words. He would plot and plan each work to near completion and then lock himself away to write it down. During the writing down phase he often would see no one, go nowhere and keep at his work slavishly. Ultimately he would produce a virtually clean score that might undergo correction for years. Any correction Ravel decided to make was an improvement on the original. He scored in musical blocks: each family of instruments in an orchestral work would have a piece of music of unique clarity and quality, which could stand independent of the rest of the piece. Such attention to detail took time, and as he aged, it took more and more time. By 1927, he was already exhibiting symptoms of the brain disease which would eventually lead to his death. One neuroscientist even hypothesized that his most famous work, Bolero, is evidence of his brain disease at work. Many biographies suggest that Ravel suffered from Pick’s Disease, which is similar to Alzheimer’s but presents some different symptoms initially. What is known are his symptoms. Starting in 1927, Ravel began to have trouble performing music in public; he would get lost in the music. He began to have trouble writing letters as evidenced by many crossings out, a shaky hand, unclear thoughts. He began to develop aphasia and an odd form of amusia—he could hear and think of music, but he could make nothing of the symbols of a musical score. As the disease progressed, his frustration at having music and musical ideas in his head and being unable to communicate them progressed to fear. His friends and his brother were desperate to try anything to regain their dear “Rara.” In 1937, under considerable pressure from Edouard to “do something,” famed neurosurgeon Clovis Vincent performed an exploratory surgery to look for a tumor. There was none. Soon after, Ravel slipped into a coma and died on December 28, 1937. |
Robert Ainsley - Conductor
Previously at Portland Opera:
The Return of Ulysses, 2006; Albert Herring, 2008; La Calisto, 2009; Trouble in Tahiti, 2010
Robert Ainsley began his musical career at the age of eleven, studying the piano and violin at Durham School, in England. He became a Licentiate of Trinity College of Music, London, in solo piano performance at age 17 and won the National Schools’ Chamber Music Competition twice.
 | Robert Ainsley - Conductor
Previously at Portland Opera: In 1999, he graduated with a degree in Mathematics, and later that year became the senior organ scholar at Christ Church, Greenwich, Connecticut. During his time on the East Coast, he also served as assistant conductor and accompanist of the New Haven Chorale and Greenwich Choral Society. Musical Director of the Marsh Singers, and completed a Master’s degree in solo piano performance at Mannes College of Music, New York City. After serving as Maestro Joseph Colaneri’s assistant in the opera department for a year at Mannes College of Music, Mr. Ainsley joined the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. His two years in the program culminated in his acting as assistant conductor and pianist for Wagner’s Die Walküre with Maestro Valery Gergiev and Plácido Domingo. Mr. Ainsley is now the Principal Coach, Chorus Master and Assistant Conductor for Portland Opera, where his work is already receiving critical acclaim. Opera Magazine said of his work on John Adams’ opera Nixon in China; “Robert Ainsley did a superb job in getting a well-balanced and precise sound from the chorus.” Mr. Ainsley has conducted The Return of Ulysses (2006), Albert Herring (2008) and La Calisto (2009) for Portland Opera. Mr. Ainsley spends his summers continuing to devote his time to the Greenwich Music Festival, of which he is the Co-founder and Principal Conductor. Previous projects with this group include Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (2005) and Orff’s Carmina Burana (2006), Handel’s Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne (2007), and Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses (2008), in addition to his work with other companies such as the Utah Festival Opera. Other recent projects include Ullman’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis with the Greenwich Music Festival (June 2009) and Handel’s Messiah with the Portland Baroque Orchestra (December 2009). |
Christopher Mattaliano - Stage Director
General Director - Portland Opera
Christopher Mattaliano was named Portland Opera’s fifth General Director in July 2003. In this capacity, he is responsible for all artistic, financial, and administrative aspects of the company.
 |
Christopher Mattaliano - Stage DirectorGeneral Director - Portland OperaChristopher Mattaliano was named Portland Opera’s fifth General Director in July, 2003. In this capacity, he is responsible for all artistic, financial, and administrative aspects of the company. |
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Listen to the Music
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Schedule
Apr 1, 2011
Friday 7:30 pm
Friday 7:30 pm
Apr 3, 2011
Sunday 2:00 pm
Sunday 2:00 pm
Apr 7, 2011
Thursday 7:30 pm
Thursday 7:30 pm
Apr 9, 2011
Saturday 7:30 pm
Saturday 7:30 pm