BRATTLEBORO — The next offering of the Windham Orchestra's resident opera ensemble is Verdi's masterpiece, Il Trovatore.
Performances are set for Friday, Jan. 20, at 7 p.m. and Sunday, Jan. 22, at 2 p.m. at the Latchis Theatre in Brattleboro.
The opera ensemble includes Jenna Rae, Julie Olsson, Cailin Marcel-Manson, Javier Luengo-Garrido, Elizabeth Wohl, and James Anderson. A new friend and star, Ethan Bremner, sings the great tenor role of the Troubadour.
“Sibling rivalry, maternal guilt trips, skullduggery, frustrated and misplaced loves, suicide, anvils, gypsies, a few executions … This is full-on Italian opera,” Windham Orchestra Musical Director Hugh Keelan said in a news release. “The music is one great hit after another, just relentless in its lyrical, passionate generosity. Verdi in fullest flood! These characters, so wicked and flawed, sing some of the most tender music imaginable.”
Keelan notes the opera offers many memorable highlights. “Above all are the arias of longing and love: Manrico racing to save his mother from the stake, the wild gypsy Azucena living her inherited traumas over and over, and the sublimely sad Act IV 'Miserere,'... and the Anvil Chorus!”