Palm Springs Opera Guild season ends on a high note
Al Jones
Palm Springs Opera Guild, which was held at the O’Donnell Golf Club and expertly produced by
Laurie Baldwin, Opera Guild CEO and
JoAnne Thompson, executive assistant.
The event was set against the beautiful backdrop of the mountains as the setting sun cast large clouds of shade over the audience. The attendees were dressed in Palm Springs casual, the men wearing Panama hats, white slacks and an occasional blazer while women dressed in elegant and fashionable dresses and chapeaus.
Patty Newman observed that “it is wonderful we have reached the point when we can all come together again, continuing to practice social distancing and masks.” Everyone wore masks while socializing unless sitting at socially-distanced tables enjoying champagne, wine, sparkling water and hors d’oeuvres provided by
Imagine you are a young singer, hoping for a career in opera and you ve worked hard enough, been good enough and had enough stamina to reach the finalist stage of a competition where you ll be performing before a theater jammed with opera lovers.
But now instead of facing a live audience at your big moment, you are instead greeted with facsimiles of people: 2D cardboard cutouts filling the seats as you sing two arias in the course of the evening before a panel of judges. The rewards are still the same recognition, prize money, possible accepted into a respected training program but the ambience, well it ll be a bit different.
2 pm ET: NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester presents
Gilbert conducts Prokofiev. Daniil Trifonov joins Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra for Prokofiev’s First Piano Concerto under the leadership of Chief Conductor Alan Gilbert who also leads the orchestra in an account of the composer’s
Classical Symphony. View here.
2 pm ET: The Royal Opera House presents
Puccini’s
Il Trittico.
Il Tabarro, set aboard a barge on the Seine, stars Lucio Gallo as Michele, Eva-Maria Westbroek as Giorgetta, and Aleksandrs Antonenko as Luigi.
Suor Angelica has Ermonela Jaho in the title role of the nun whose familial sacrifice is at the heart of the opera.