PÂQUES À LA SAMARITAINE. WASHINGTON NATIONAL OPERA PRESENTS 'SONGBIRD'

FÊTEZ PÂQUES EN DOUCEUR(S) À LA SAMARITAINE

A l’occasion de Pâques, découvrez notre offre gourmande et chocolatée chez Pierre Hermé, Ernest, Pasticceria Simona…

Sous l’impulsion du chef Hermé, l’œuf en chocolat devient une œuvre d’art à croquer. Beau et gourmand !

AND ALSO,

WASHINGTON NATIONAL OPERA

New jazz–infused adaptation of

Offenbach’s La Périchole

Starring Isabel Leonard

and Ramin Karimloo in his operatic debut

 Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater

March 9–23

(WASHINGTON)—Washington National Opera (WNO) presents Songbird, a new adaptation of Jacques Offenbach’s operetta La Périchole. Isabel Leonard, one of America’s leading mezzo-sopranos (Carmen, 2021–2022) will partner with Broadway leading man Ramin Karimloo (Funny Girl) in a uniquely American version of the uplifting love story.

Struggling singers and lovers Songbird and Piquillo have come to Prohibition–era New Orleans during Mardi Gras where American, French, and Spanish cultures are melded together to try their luck. But the licentious mayor Don Andrès preys on their poverty and arranges a sham marriage so he can have Songbird as his mistress. Can they overcome the corrupting power of Don Andrès and his scheming cronies to find happiness?

In adapting La Périchole for a contemporary audience, director Eric Sean Fogel, arranger/orchestrator and conductor James Lowe, and librettist Kelley Rourke find inspiration from Offenbach’s boleros and seguidillas in a new jazz–infused arrangement. Lowe’s reimagined orchestration delivers a distinctly New Orleans sound through use of instrumentation that typifies the bands of that era: piano, bass, drums, banjo, trumpet and cornet, clarinet, trombone, and sousaphone. The libretto also juxtaposes English and French in a Big Easy fashion.

Songbird was first staged at the 2021 Glimmerglass Festival in an outdoor setting due to COVID-19. The WNO production expands on that production with a reconfigured set by James F. Rotondo III and is performed in the Eisenhower Theater (1,161 seats). The cast is joined by a nine-piece on-stage band in a tight 75-minute performance. The intimacy of the Eisenhower gives the audience the feeling of sitting through a jazz set in a speakeasy.

Isabel Leonard, whose Carmen showed “smoldering display of her control and finesse” (The Washington Post), returns to play Songbird. Tony Award®–nominated Broadway star Ramin Karimloo plays Piquillo. Young American baritone and the winner of the 2020 Glyndebourne Opera Cup, Edward Nelson, plays Don Andrès. The rest of the cast includes several Cafritz Young Artists, WNO’s renowned young artist training program.

Songbird

Adaptation by Eric Sean Fogel, James Lowe, and Kelley Rourke

Musical arrangement and Orchestration by James Lowe

English lyrics and book by Kelley Rourke

Based on La Périchole by Jacques Offenbach, Henri Meilhac, and Ludovic Halévy

Commissioned by The Glimmerglass Festival, 2021

 

https://www.kennedy-center.org/news-room/press-release-landing-page/songbird/