If you know me, you know I do love the opera. I love listening to it and I love singing to it. It moves me quite a bit. I love traditional operas as well as the more modern short operas, which are what I just went to go see and photograph.
In Austin, there is a program called “spotlight on opera” and they perform operas. They bring opera to the community and it is a wonderful program. I found out about it because one of my clients/friends, June Julian, is a fabulous opera singer and she is in this lovely, talented group of opera singers. The producer, Cindy Sadler has a long resume and is doing a great job for this program here in Austin.
If you love opera or if you don’t know anything about opera, go and check them out.. they love what they do and the entire cast is a big bag of talent. I enjoyed watching and listening to every single one of them. I had the pleasure of doing a quick photo of the whole cast and they were so much fun.
The four operas this month are short operas. Some are funny, some are dramatic. I stole the descriptions from June Julian’s post.
The Telephone by Gian Carlo Menotti is a one-act comic opera which debuted as a double-bill with The Medium in 1947. Ben would love to propose to Lucy, but he has a rival who is always calling for her attention and who she always answers — her telephone! Ben has only one hour before he has to leave to catch a train – 
The Medium (also by Menotti), which premiered in 1946, is a dark cautionary tale centering around Madame Flora (“Baba”), who poses as a medium with the help of her naïve daughter, Monica, and Toby, the mute and simple servant who adores her. During a séance, Baba feels a ‘cold hand’ tightening about her throat. Though she suspects it might have been Toby, a lingering fear consumes her and she becomes increasingly hysterical. Unconvinced by her attempts to confess her trickery, her clients protest, “It might well be you thought you were cheating all the while, but you were not!” Alone with her memories and fear, Baba is once again visited by ghosts … with cataclysmic results.
A Hand of Bridge, composed by Samuel Barber with libretti by Menotti, premiered in Spoleto, Italy in 1959, and is perhaps the shortest opera that is performed regularly. Lasting approximately 10 minutes, the story line consists of two couples gathered for their evening bridge game. As the play progresses, each sings an aria expressing their true thoughts: Sally is thinking about which new hat to buy; her husband, Bill, wonders whether Sally knows about his lover Cymbeline; Geraldine, ignored both by her husband David and her former lover Bill, worries about her dying mother; and David, bitter about his dead-end job, daydreams about what his life would be like if he were as rich as his boss.
Trouble in Tahiti by Leonard Bernstein, written in 1952, is a one act opera with seven scenes. The story takes place in an affluent American suburb and gives the audience a glimpse into the life of a husband and wife, Sam and Dinah, two desperately unhappy people who are both longing for love yet unable to communicate. Dinah is completely disenchanted with Sam, and Sam is more interested in his career and hobbies than in his family.
