55th Season 2010-2011

Music by Henry Purcell - Manuel de Falla
Libretto by Nahum Tate - Carlos Fernandez Shaw

Fri, May 20, 2011 at 8:00 PM
Sun, May 22, 2011 at 2:00 PM
Sat, May 28, 2011 at 8:00 PM
Sun, May 29, 2011 at 2:00 PM

All performances at the Lucie Stern Theatre
1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto, California

Preview with piano on Thursday, May 12, 2011, 8:00 p.m.
at the Palo Alto Art Center - 1313 Newell Rd. at Embarcadero, Palo Alto

conductor José Luis Moscovich   director Attila Berés   World Premiere: London 1689 - Nice, April 1, 1913

Sung in English, with English titles

Synopsis:

Two very different stories of love forsaken are featured as a pair in this production.  In Henry Purcell’s English baroque masterpiece, Dido and Aeneas, Trojan hero Aeneas courts Dido, the Queen of Carthage. Then, tricked by evil witches, he abandons Dido and she dies of grief.  In Manuel de Falla’s La vida breve, Salud, a gypsy girl in Granada, is courted by Paco, a handsome young man from a rich famiiy. Eventually, she discovers that he is getting married to a woman of his own social class. She confronts him at the wedding, he pretends not to know her and she literally dies at his feet. The powerful score includes memorable choral and flamenco dance  sections and the best orchestrations ever of Spanish music.