TO DAMASCUS
world premiere
A new opera by Walter Braxton
Directed by Joel Bassin
Musical Directors Leilani Fenick and Michael Knowles
with Capitol Opera Richmond
January 18-27, 2018
click here to purchase tix
With Walter Braxton's TO DAMASCUS we're celebrating the Italian Renaissance's discovery of perspective painting and the origins of opera by exploring scale, angle, linearity, depth, dimension, illusion, music, and performance. In our Season of Possibilities we're rejecting traditional ideas and embedded conventions of historicized Opera so we can make an anti-opera for the 21st century.
Style Weekly described Braxton as "one of Richmond's most prolific composers [who] writes music nobody hears." TO DAMASCUS builds on a range of sources including the bible story of Paul's conversion, August Strindberg's THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS, the rivalry between Lorenzo de' Medici's patronage of secular art versus Girolamo Savanarola's bonfire of the vanities and his call for an orthodox religious revival, Thomas Mann's only play FIORENZO, the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, James Marcus Schuyler, Ezra Pound, and the Catholic Mass.
In Firehouse's world premiere production we're asking questions like--
What's opera?
Who is August Strindberg?
Where is Inferno?
How is Gerard Manley Hopkins?
Why is Fiorenza?
What's Existence?
Who is Thomas Mann?
Where is Non-Existence?
Why is Performance?
What is Fiction?
Who is Girolamo Savonarola?
Where is Baggage?
How is Music?
Why is Singing?
What is the Italian Renaissance?
Who is Lorenzo de' Medici?
Where is Audience?
How is Death?
Why are You?
CLICK HERE to download the libretto
Performers
Michele Baez
Elisabeth Dowdy
Michael David Gray
Chase Peak
Imani Thaniel
Musicians
Flute: Susan Davis
Oboe: Jane Kiser
Clarinet: Myrick Crampton
Bassoon: Anthony Cavanaugh
Horn: Roxanne Williams
Trumpet: Aaron Bottoms
Violin 1: Katharine Wooldridge, Marissa Resmini
Violin 2: Heather Ryan, Alanna North
Viola: Brenda Johnson, Justin Williams
Cello: Ned Haskins, Jacquelin Spears
Bass: Ayça Kartari
Production Team
Director - Joel Bassin
Musical Directors - Leilani Fenick + Michael Knowles
Environment Designers - Isabel Layton
Lighting Designer - Bill Miller
Costume Designer - Kathleen O'Connor
Stage Manager - Corrie Yarbrough
Assistant Stage Manager - Taylor Rumbley
Performance Schedule
Thu, 1/18 - 7:30pm (preview)
Fri, 1/19 - 7:30pm (press opening)
Sat, 1/20 - 7:30pm
Sun, 1/21 - 4pm (post-show panel/talkback at 6pm)
Thu, 1/25 - 7:30pm
Fri, 1/26 - 7:30pm
Sat, 1/27 - 7:30pm
Tickets $15 - $40
804.355.2001
click here to purchase tix
