Baylor Opera Theater Performs Scenes From Famous Operas Nov. 19

by Richard Veit

The Baylor University Opera Theater will present "An Evening of Opera Scenes" at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday in the Baylor Blackbox Opera Theater, which is located near University Parks Drive, between the Hooper-Schaefer Fine Arts Center and Waco Creek.
Both performances--fully staged and costumed, with piano accompaniment--will be directed by Richard Aslanian, lecturer in music and director of opera at Baylor.
Opening the program will be the second scene from Act I of Otto Nicolai's The Merry Wives of Windsor. This delightful comic opera, based on Shakespeare's play of the same name, was premiered in March 1849, just two months before its composer's premature death.
The sextet from Act II of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Don Giovanni, universally regarded as one of that great Austrian composer's finest works for the stage, will follow. Don Giovanni was first performed in Prague in 1787.
Charles Gounod's five-act opera Faust--inspired by Goethe's famous drama--was first staged in Paris in 1859. Baylor Opera Theater will perform the vocal quartet that appears in Act II.
The program also will feature the finale of Act II of Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow.
These performances are free and open to the public. For more information, call the School of Music at 710-3991.