Rob’s Ramblings: A Chorus of Hope

I cannot fathom that my last blog was but a month ago – it feels like we have lived through two lifetimes since then. Nature itself seemed to want us all to slow down and press pause this last weekend. My drive to the office now carves its way through vast white canyons, and the furniture on our balcony is almost completely consumed by snow. The temperature barely ticks into double digits this week before another storm hits the coast this weekend. Beautiful though it is, how we look forward to the summer!

Did that stop our fearless box office from opening single ticket sales on Monday? Of course not – Glimmerglass staff are made of hardier stuff than that, and they barely flinched (thank you Liz, Becky, and the rest of our marketing team!) They have been frantically busy this week and look forward to taking your orders throughout the week. You all seem excited about everything we are producing this summer (with good reason!) although I recommend placing your orders for Happy End soon as it is selling out quickly and capacity is limited. (Don’t worry – there are plenty of opportunities to see it all around the region).

So much else happened this past month. America took over Venezuela and then made a serious play for Greenland. Devastating, heartbreaking news reaches us from Minnesota every day, where furious protests show no sign of abating in a city I proudly called home for half a decade. (Long live the First Amendment!) Our hearts are with our colleagues at Minnesota Opera and with the broader Minnesota community during this time. We stand with Minnesota Opera President & General Director Ryan Taylor and the company as they seek healing and connection through the power of art. Elsewhere, my last message of solidarity with Francesca needs redoubling as she and another indefatigable colleague and mentor, Tim O’Leary, now forge an independent path for Washington National Opera beyond their former home by the Potomac. Closer to home, the Metropolitan Opera announced a tightening of its belt – and as we grapple with our own budgets for future seasons, we know they are not alone in feeling the pinch that all the performing arts are battling to meet. And yet, in terms of the last month’s news, I am still barely scratching the surface.

art is essential

In the face of all this, I understand more clearly every day why the arts are so central and important to our lives. I have always known this to be true on an emotional level, of course, but never before have they felt so critical, even as we are being deprived the space and quiet to enjoy them without overwhelming distraction. As I battled through the daily news cycle, I was also treated to the closing performance of I Puritani at the Met by a great friend and current Glimmerglass Trustee. It felt like the Opera Olympics, with some of America’s finest singers performing superhuman material to an adoring crowd of nearly four thousand people. We had all gathered to watch our fellow humans come together to perform almost unbelievable feats of skill in the service of something transcendental, beautiful, and noble. What a contrast to the rest of the month, and how good it felt to take part in something positive and life-affirming.

I Puritani curtain call – you may recognize Eve Gigliotti, who played Juno in our 2024 La Calisto, on the
far left of the star line-up:

I Puritani is renowned for being among the most outlandishly difficult operas ever written for singers, making frankly insane demands on the human voice. Towards the end of the final ensemble, after an entire opera of sitting in the very uppermost part of his range, the leading tenor is finally called upon to sing the highest note ever written. We traditionally think of a tenor’s high C as being the upper limit to the voice – but this moment calls for a full fourth beyond that. While most tenors skip it or attempt it in falsetto, a rare few are brave enough to reach for it still in their connected chest voice. Larry is frankly superhuman in this respect, as this recording of that moment shows (the high F is at the 5-minute mark).

Even live, after two hours of stratospheric singing, Larry had no problems managing this feat – although he did lie flat on the stage to signal his exhaustion when he came out for his solo bow, which I’m sorry I missed with my camera.

We’ve moved forward in that spirit of enterprise and collaboration with our roaming production of Happy End, and are delighted to announce that our regional collective this year has now expanded to embrace three of our sister companies in the area – alongside Opera Saratoga, Finger Lakes Opera in Rochester and the venerable Seagle Festival (now in its 111th season!) in the Adirondacks have now joined our ranks and will also present the production this May. Watch out for full details and a fantastic
cast in the coming days.

brava, denyce graves

Also this month, the Met celebrated the retirement and final bow of one of Glimmerglass’s most respected family members, the great mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves. She moves on to a new phase of her career as a director, which began right here at Glimmerglass with her 2022 production of Carmen.

Denyce is one of American opera’s most recognizable and beloved figureheads, and we are so proud that she will host this year’s Glimmerglass Gala alongside Artist-in-Residence Kevin Burdette – don’t miss it on April 21!

celebrating an exceptional roster of artists

And of course, we joyously announced our casts for this season – singers both familiar and new to the company, and all of them radiantly special people who are anxious to share their souls with you. And the stories they will tell … well, they will help you process and make sense of this confusing world. Some, I admit, have come to feel very personal: as a proud immigrant living out the American Dream and infinitely privileged to have benefited from it in so many ways, Alan Louis Smith’s Vignettes: Ellis Island is such a positive, hopeful view of the immigrant experience – and one we sorely need right now. And as to Butterfly, which references gunboat diplomacy and its potential human consequences – well, good stories never get old. And then there’s Oklahoma! – a piece as American as apple pie, and just as wholesome right now.

The leading voices of the 2026 Festival!

In a month too packed to describe and as Americans once again stand up and debate their rights and freedoms, the arts have been a bright spot that have kept me going, from the dizzying heights of Bellini’s I Puritani to the guilty pleasures of TV’s Heated Rivalry (we have our own version on stage this summer with the handsome duo Joseph Lattanzi and Colin Aikins in the lead roles of Fellow Travelers). I hope they have been as sustaining for you and we cannot wait to welcome you back to our beautiful campus
in a few short months as part of our Glimmerglass family.