“There are a lot of people in our audience who wait for our rare opera, so there’s a lot of excitement. “So as part of our season, we try to do something… that you can’t see someplace else, that’s off the beaten track. The venue attracts many opera-goers from around the country as well as internationally, he explained. We’d like people to know this work better and make it more popular.” I think if people took the time to hear it and see it, (they would love it) which is why we’re doing it again after 30 years. There’s a limit to the number of operas in the repertory. The aria she sings is performed more often in concert by itself and has become more well-known than the opera as a whole, he said.įor example, it was recently used in a scene in the second season of the Starz science-fiction series, “Counterpart.”Īnd the opera itself is performed in Italy and Europe with “a little bit more frequency (than in the U.S.).” “But I think she did the aria beautifully in the movie.” “My recollection of the movie is the singer, Wilhelmenia Wiggins Hernandez, was a very good singer, probably a tad light for the role, not the right kind of voice to sing the whole role,” Mr. Soprano Stephanie Sundine, who played Wally then, is now the director for this production. Russell said.Ĭostume design is by Howard Tsvi Kaplan. Now, 31 years after its first performance, Sarasota Opera is putting on another production of “La Wally,” the third ever in the nation, Mr.
(The first time was 80 years prior, in 1909, at the Metropolitan Opera.) It was only the second time the opera was performed in the U.S. “I remember… waiting off-stage for my entrance right after the aria, and being bathed in tears because it’s so sad and melancholy,” he recalls.
He was in the chorus when Sarasota Opera put on a production of “La Wally” in 1989. “But I didn’t learn about the work until I came here to perform.” “I heard the aria and fell in love with it,” he said.
He wasn’t familiar with “La Wally,” but loved art movies. Richard Russell, executive director of Sarasota Opera, recalls seeing “Diva” when he was a college student at Indiana University. The aria has also been in the soundtracks of subsequent films, such as “A Single Man” and “Philadelphia.” She is the director for this year’s Sarasota Opera performance.
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