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A unique partnership for Celebración Latina - A Mariachi Fiesta will find OLV collaborating with the College of Southern Nevada's Award-winning Mariachi Plata for a festive presentation of traditional music and Zarzuela (Spanish operetta), mingled with unique recent lyric theatre compositions, and operatic tributes to beloved stars like Placido Domingo, Montserrat Caballe, and Jose Carreras.
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¡Una colaboración única para Celebración latina - una fiesta de mariachi! Ópera Las Vegas estará colaborando con el Mariachi Plata del College of Southern Nevada para una presentación de música tradicional mexicana y zarzuela (ópera ligera española), mezclados con composiciones recientes de teatro lírico, y tributos operísticos a las amadas estrellas de la ópera como Plácido Domingo, Montserrat Caballé, y José Carreras.
Help us reach our goal! Up to $25k of your contributions will be matched dollar-for-dollar through 31 December, 2023!
In honor of Opera Las Vegas’ landmark Twenty-fifth Anniversary Season, Sustaining Trustees Chris and Anita Murray have generously pledged a $25,000 matching donation, a dynamic springboard for the company to launch its “Twenty-five for Twenty-five” campaign.
They will match all donations received by 31 December 2023, up to $25,000. So, in order to sustain our company and to keep producing the top-quality performances and educational programming you love, we are reaching out to all our supportive friends, old and new, to help us double the Murray’s donation into a $50,000 gift.
Opera Las Vegas is pleased to continue its partnership with the Las Vegas Philharmonic during the 2023-2024 season.
Las Vegas audiences will be able to hear the incredible musicians from the Philharmonic performing this season in the pit for OLV’s productions of Behold the Man and La Bohème.
We look forward to welcoming audiences to these performances and encourage everyone to also attend the full season of the Philharmonic.
The Opera Las Vegas Youth Chorus was founded in 2017 in collaboration with Thurman White Academy under the direction of Athena Mertes, and made their first appearances in the touring fairy tale opera, John Davies' Pinocchio.
In the fall of that year, they were the animals on the ark in Benjamin Britten's Noah's Flood, with full orchestra. Since then, more fairy tale opera tours ensued to entertain young families with opera-inspired stories like Three Little Pigs, Jack and the Beanstalk, and The Bremen Town Musicians. The group twice participated in Humperdinck's classic, Hansel and Gretel, and were on stage with Metropolitan Opera stars in 2022 Main Stage production of Puccini's Tosca.
In this Twenty-fifth Anniversary Season, the 32-voice Youth Chorus' busy schedule will include the World Premiere of Behold the Man, Voices Raised for Vets, Holiday on Broadway, Celebración Latina, The Billy Goats Gruff, and Puccini's La bohème.
Opera Las Vegas is committed to equity and diversity.
Opera Las Vegas receives glowing review from Operawire for world premiere of Behold the Man
“'Behold the Man' is an engaging opera. It outlines the ever-developing story of Borja’s near fall and eventual rise to fame with a rare combination of excitement and forgiveness. Along with an easy-to-follow synopsis, Cecilia Giménez is a relatable lead character and her heart of gold makes for an interesting character development that supports a comic opera’s happy ending. What often happens in new operatic works is the temptation to overemphasize a story in order to prove a point instead of letting it be more open to interpretation. This is where 'Behold the Man' excels. It does not push. In fact, what Paul Fowler and Andrew Flack emphasize the most is the innocent simplicity of humanity – the essence of human will.
In addition to focusing on a good story, Fowler and Flack chose Opera Las Vegas for their world premiere. This is also a very good thing. Vegas itself is a small city full of lights and entertainment that knows how to capture its audiences. General director Jim Sohre welcomed the audience and described how delighted he was to feature 'Behold the Man' as its 25th season opener. Audience members were all smiles as he spoke because he could not stop smiling. There was definitely something special in the air. Music director and principal conductor Joshua Horsch led the members of Las Vegas’ Philharmonic, chorus and youth chorus. His energy and attention to Paul Fowler’s musical references were spot on from the start."
Her incomplete efforts to save the Ecce Homo (Behold the man) painting – which had been painted on one of the church’s inner walls by the artist Elías García Martínez nine decades earlier – met with local, national and international derision. As well as being attacked as “the worst restoration in history”, Giménez’s handiwork soon acquired the less than flattering nickname of “Monkey Christ” because of its vaguely simian aspect.
The incident immediately caught the sympathetic eye of Andrew Flack, a US public relations expert.
“When I saw her face in the newspaper, I just thought, ‘Oh my goodness! She didn’t mean to do this’,” Flack said. “I saw her distress and I saw her innocence. This is a woman of the community. She’d lived in this town her whole life – she was married in that church, her children were christened in that church – so she would never do anything that was hurtful. But she did this and it was a good deed gone wrong.”
Fascinated and determined to help, Flack opted for an unusual show of solidarity."
BROADWAY WORLD: BEHOLD THE MAN Comes to the Horn Theatre
An elderly woman in Borja, Spain, attempts the restoration of a little-known fresco. Discovered before she can finish, the image is posted online and goes viral. Shamed on social media and shunned by her neighbors, she falls into despair. But soon curious tourists begin to arrive, restoring her place in the community, and reversing the fortunes of the tottering town.
On September 30th and October 1st, Opera Las Vegas will kick off its 25th anniversary season with the world premiere of "Behold The Man," a contemporary comic opera based on the true 2012 story of Cecilia Giménez's botched restoration of the "Ecce Homo" fresco in Borja, Spain.
Welcome & Congratulations from Carolyn G. Goodman, Mayor of Las Vegas
Dear Attendees:
As Mayor of the great City of Las Vegas, I welcome you to the 25th Anniversary Season of one of our City’s cultural jewels, Opera Las Vegas.
When tenor Mark Thomsen, educator Paul Kreider, and soprano Gloria Marinacci Allen founded the company in 1999, little might they have imagined during its modest beginnings that a quarter of a century later, Opera Las Vegas would be our Silver State’s widely admired professional company member in the New York-based National Center, Opera America.
The steady developmental journey of Opera Las Vegas included concerts, recitals, classes, and of course, a healthy dose of popular classics like Carmen, Madame Butterfly, Don Giovanni, and Tosca. Last season’s closing performances of Verdi’s La Traviata sold out before opening night.
Popular, classic titles are augmented as well by frequent West Coast staged premieres of recent operatic works from acclaimed national creators. A comprehensive schedule of outreach events effectively engages novices and aficionados alike as audiences are drawn to the beauty and power of the art form.
The current season starts off with great anticipation for the company’s first World Premiere, composer Paul Fowler and librettists Andrew Flack’s comic opera, Behold the Man. The 2023-2024 schedule comes to a close next June with Puccini’s immortal masterpiece, La bohème. In between, you can enjoy a diverse mixture of stage shows, concerts, events – many of which are free of charge.
We are very proud of Opera Las Vegas, and all it has brought to our City. I offer heartfelt congratulations on the remarkable landmark anniversary, and I look forward eagerly to what is in store for the “next twenty-five.”
Again, congratulations on this momentous occasion!
