Hello young lovers, wherever you are
Fill in the leads for Manon Lescaut, La Rondine and Edgar.
The 160th anniversary of Giacomo Puccini’s birth last Saturday inspired this edition of fantasy football opera.
Your opera house will host a Puccini festival this summer, and you’ve already finished hiring the singers for nine of the composer’s other staged works. All that remains for you to do is to fill in the leads for Manon Lescaut, La Rondine and Edgar.
The Italian energy conglomerate ENI has underwritten much of the sponsorship for this festival and has essentially given you a blank check to hire the best contemporary lead singers, conductors, and directors for all of Puccini’s works.
Another condition: smaller parts need to be performed by young talent coming from Italy’s conservatories and music schools.
Remember: you have a 2,500-capacity auditorium with amazing acoustics. Your house has a world class orchestra and chorus. Your stage is equipped with all the engineering structures to support a broad range of set pieces, including a LePage style machine if needed.
Constraints? Nothing. Just have fun with the casting and try to suggest Italian artists for the secondary roles if possible.
Manon Lescaut
Manon: Carmen Giannattasio
Des Grieux: Piotr Beczala
Lescaut: Luca Salsi
Geronte: Gianluca Buratto
Edmondo: Ilker Arcayürek
Conductor: Riccardo Chailly
La Rondine
Magda: Rosa Feola
Ruggero: Charles Castronovo
Lisette: Aida Garifullina
Prunier: Pavol Breslik
Rambaldo: George Petean
Conductor: Fabio Luisi
I’ll suggest the director for this one: David Livermore.
Edgar
Edgar: Michael Fabiano
Fidelia: Lianna Haroutounian
Tigrana: Anita Rachvelishvili
Frank: Ludovic Tezier
Gualtiero: Ferruccio Furlanetto
Conductor: Antonio Pappano
Christian Ocier
Christian Ocier emerged fully formed one eros-filled evening from the nocturnal thrum of Tristan und Isolde’s Liebesnacht. During the Tag half of his life’s equation, he doubles as a pâtissier and a nanophotonic materials science Ph.D. student, a degree which he will soon complete at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Christian’s serious love for opera was sparked during his mid-teens after listening to Carlo Maria Giulini’s 5-Act Don Carlo. Eventually, his tastes gravitated to the dramas of Wagner, Strauss, Bartok, Janacek and Berg. To him few things make Nacht more transcendent than great performances of Tristan, Die Frau Ohne Schatten or Lulu—the trifecta of operas he adores the most. His tortes, entremets, and entrées honoring great musicians include La Stemme Divine (Nina Stemme), Le Grande Lise (Lise Davidsen), and Ravioli all’Ambrogio Maestri.
-
Topics: fantasy football
