The Sacramento Opera is using the 2010-11 season to refocus and redefine itself.
The new season, the company's 30th, is driven by the theme "Love Makes You Crazy." That focus will see the company branch out with two new works, Handel's baroque masterpiece "Orlando" and Stephen Paulus' noir-tinged "The Postman Always Rings Twice." It will revisit Mozart's "The Magic Flute" as its third production.
"We want to start changing the way we produce opera," said Timm Rolek, artistic director of the Sacramento Opera. "We want a more unified approach. So, we're looking at broad themes for the operas we'll produce the next four or five years."
Rolek said that the company wants to move away from a seemingly scatter-shot approach to programming. The new focus is also borne of the changing demographics and preferences of the opera audience.
The realization that new patrons do not have the same attachment to the established operatic repertoire is not lost on Rolek.
"The assumptions that people have been making about the bankability of certain repertoire are not panning out anymore," Rolek said.
"For me, this is a liberating experience," he said. "If 'Carmen' does not sell like it did 10 years ago – why do it again?"
The Sacramento Opera's willingness to explore new works does not mean it will abandon the established repertoire, said Rod Gideons, the company's executive director. The warhorses of the repertoire still will be a focus.
However, Gideons said, "I don't believe that regurgitating those works year after year will move the company forward. What we want to do is introduce our audiences to the wide repertoire out there written by Mozart, Bellini, Donizetti and others."
The company opens its season on Nov. 19 and 21 with Handel's "Orlando." That three-act work, based on the epic poem "Orlando furioso" by Lodovico Ariosto, will see the company performing a baroque work for the first time.
"The baroque is a significant part of the operatic repertoire we've never delved into," said Rolek. "And because Northern California is a hotbed of early music performance … it made sense for us to stretch ourselves in that direction."
The programming of baroque works, which call for smaller orchestras, allows the company to save production costs. For "Orlando," the orchestra will perform onstage and not in the pit. This will allow the stage to extend out over the orchestra pit area in the Community Center Theater.
"Because this is our first foray into the baroque we want to give the public as close an experience as they can get," Rolek said.
A bedrock work of the operatic repertoire, Mozart's "The Magic Flute," continues the season with performances Feb. 25 and 27, 2011. The company will also offer an afternoon family-friendly production of the opera on Feb. 26.
The production will be sung in English and will be modeled after the two-hour Julie Taymor production that the Metropolitan Opera produced in 2006, Rolek said.
"All of the big arias will be there, and it keeps the magical side of the story intact," said Rolek.
The season closes with Paulus' 1982 opera "The Postman Always Rings Twice," which gets a two-show run on May 6 and 8, 2011.
Originally commissioned by the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, "Postman" is a strongly theatrical work with a libretto by Colin Graham, based on James M. Cain's dark and sordid novel of the same name.
"It's written in film-noirish style, and has a lot of jazz influences in it" Rolek said. "If you know the music of Andre Previn, you'll know the particular style of this piece."
The company, which is operating on a $1.3 million budget this season, will eliminate its third shows, which were given on Tuesday evenings.
For Gideons, offering three shows in a 2,400-seat house is an onerous task for any regional opera company and not a prudent financial move for the company.
The company will debut computer-animated projections in its productions of "Magic Flute" and "Orlando," and it will roll out a new film and vocal performance series as a lead-up to its operas. The venue for that series has yet to be picked.
All of the operas will be performed at the Community Center Theater. Subscription tickets go on sale today, with single tickets on sale Aug. 1.
