Brooklyn College Presents Weeklong Summer Opera Festival

Maestro Richard Barrett

The National Opera Center, a pilot program at Brooklyn College, will crown its inaugural season this weekend with a program of popular American show tunes, followed in the first week of August by performances of Così Fan Tutti and The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, featuring the forty-piece National Opera Center Orchestra

This week’s series of performances opens on Saturday, July 29, at 7:30 p.m., with An Evening of American Musical Theater, conducted by Dan Gettinger. The presentation will be held in the 500-seat theater at George Gershwin Hall on the Brooklyn College campus.

Other events in the series, which will be held in Whitman Hall, will include:

Così Fan Tutte, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, August 2, and Friday, August 4.

The Magic Flute, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, August 3, and Saturday, August 5.

A Gala Concert of favorite opera selections, featuring singers from the National Opera Center backed by the Sheep Meadow Chamber Orchestra, concludes the week's events at 2 p.m. on Sunday, August 6.

The National Opera Center is dedicated to the training and development of young aspiring operatic performers. Its student body features forty artists from around the world, including Europe, Asia, and South America; its outstanding faculty is made up of internationally recognized figures from the operatic world.

The center’s students participated in an intensive monthlong program that concentrated on all aspects of operatic training, including role preparation, acting, dancing, stage combat, voice lessons, diction and language studies, and operatic coaching culminating in staged performances with a live orchestra.

Conducting for both performances of Così, Mozart’s lighthearted tale of fiancée-swapping love, will be Fiora Contino, a member of the Opera Center’s faculty and one of the most prominent female conductors in the United States. The action of Cosi will be directed by Eric Einhorn, cofounder of Pittsburgh’s Klasikos Theatre.

The National Opera Center’s artistic director, Richard Barrett, will conduct the two performances of The Magic Flute, a lively multileveled fantasy from the master composer’s high-flying imagination. Joachim Schamberger will direct the action onstage.

Ticket prices for the week’s events are $25 and 20, with tickets for students and seniors discounted to $15. For more information, call (718) 951-5000, extension 1420, or call the Brooklyn Center box office, (718) 951-4500.