Trouble in Tahiti & Rita
By Seattle Opera Young Artists
Capitol Hill Art Center
1621 12th Avenue
Seattle, WA 98122
Trouble in Tahiti
Music and libretto by Leonard Bernstein
Rita (A Marital Comedy)
Music by Gaetano Donizetti
Libretto by Gustavo Vaëz
Sung In English
Seattle Opera’s Young Artists Program continues its fall series of staged, complete one-act operas, performed in English and accompanied by piano. Don’t miss this chance to listen to America’s most exciting young opera singers, performing great music you might not otherwise hear. This year’s production is a double-bill of operas about marriage.
Trouble in Tahiti
By Leonard Bernstein
This ironic masterpiece concerns a typical suburban American couple who can’t get along with each other and can’t figure out why their life isn’t as perfect as what they see in the movies and commercials all around them. Bernstein (West Side Story, Candide) mixed popular and classical music with comedy and tragedy to create a heartfelt expression of anger, frustration, and yearning. Arguably the greatest American opera yet composed.
Rita
by Gaetano Donizetti
This startlingly modern take on marriage features the delightful music of Donizetti (Lucia di Lammermoor and Don Pasquale.) The farce concerns Rita, a lady innkeeper with two husbands—neither of whom wants her! A charming, rarely performed comic opera in the tradition of The Barber of Seville and The Elixir of Love.