AN AFTERNOON OF ARIAS AND SONGS
WITH JAKE HEGGIE AND SUZANNA GUZMAN
Sunday October 3, 2010 at 2:30 PM
Neurosciences Institute Auditorium
10640 John Jay Hopkins Drive / San Diego, CA 92121
Q and A with Jake Heggie and Suzanna Guzman
If you’ve always been afraid of opera (or worse, hate it!), after attending this event the likelihood is you’ll never run away from it again (if you haven’t already begun to love it). At this opera-appreciation concert, two internationally renowned personalities in the world of opera and song today, composer Jake Heggie and mezzo-soprano Suzanna Guzman, took the audience inside the art form – from inspiration to exposition (or from the writing to the singing)- in an ENJOYABLE concert format that both educates and entertains.
Among the pieces Suzanna Guzman sang were arias from Heggie’s operas Dead Man Walking (which is well on its way to perhaps becoming the world’s most performed American opera after Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess) and Three Decembers as well as one of his folk song arrangements and a selection from his song-cycle Paper Wings.
Jake Heggie provided the piano accompaniment to the arias and songs and played the prelude to his latest opera, Moby Dick, which recently world-premiered to unanimous acclaim at the season opening of the new Dallas Opera House, and will come to San Diego and San Francisco in the 2012 international season. It will also be staged by Calgary Opera and the State Opera of South Australia.
The program featured informative and delightful commentaries by the artists.
View pdf of the CONCERT PROGRAM.
Below, watch a VIDEO clip of Jake Heggie introducing his latest opera Moby Dick which world-premiered to unanimous acclaim at Dallas Opera in April 2010. Co-produced with San Diego Opera, the epic work based on Herman Melville’s masterpiece comes to San Diego in February 2012 for its West Coast premiere.
And below is a VIDEO clip of Jake and Suzanna’s encore number:
