Mark Gresham | 14 FEB 2023
On this bright Valentine’s Day morning, The Atlanta Opera lovingly announced its operatic offerings for the 2023-24 season.
EarRelevant’s publisher and principal writer Mark Gresham recently talked with Tomer Zvulun about the new season’s productions and the state of The Atlanta Opera as he prepares for his 11th season as the company’s General and Artistic Director.
The Q&A below is drawn from that conversation and is edited for length and clarity. At its end we offer the complete list of The Atlanta Opera’s 2023-24 productions with dates and locations.
Mark Gresham: You’ve described The Atlanta Opera’s upcoming 2023-24 season as “cinematic.” Tell us about that.
Tomer Zvulun: We’ve always been interested in the combination of cinema and opera. Our productions have often been referred to as cinematic. And I think it’s a choice. It’s something that is deeply ingrained in me as a director, but also now in the company. So this whole season is this homage to film and is influenced by film.
MG: So that’s the overall theme?
TZ: Very much so. Especially if you look at the fall season that starts with The Shining, it’s going to be opening The Alliance Theatre season and our season, followed by Frankenstein, a new opera film that we will perform at the Cobb Energy Center in repertoire with Rigoletto. That is our fall season.
Our winter-spring season takes us away from horror films but still within the world of mythology and fairy tales. We’re doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the second installment of the Ring cycle, Die Walküre, and a production of La bohème that is highly influenced by late 19th-century French photographers. And so it’s a cohesive cinematic season.
MG: The Atlanta Opera is doing Das Rheingold to close the current season, and we have Die Walküre, the second episode of the Ring cycle, in the 2023-24 production list. Do I get the impression that maybe you’re going to do one per year?
TZ: I started this initiative working toward a Ring cycle in 2013 when I took over the company, and in 2018 we decided to launch the first two operas, and I’ve always held the position when asked if we’re doing the full Ring, I always said, no, we’re not planning to do the full Ring, we’re first going to do the first two installments, that’s Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, and we will see how it plays in Atlanta and whether Atlanta wants a Ring cycle or not.
And I still don’t have a complete answer for you as to whether or not we will do the full Ring. However, I can tell you that as we approach Rheingold, it becomes clear that ticket sales and philanthropic support for Wagner’s operas are tremendous. We are selling out Rheingold.
There’s a particular Wagnerian thirst for pieces from the Ring cycle, and the fact that this is the first installment of a Ring cycle in [Atlanta] is a big deal. Many people from out of state are buying tickets and coming to Atlanta.
MG: Give us an overview of each of these six 2023-24 productions.
TZ: The Shining opens the season both for us and the Alliance Theatre, where we are performing it. It’s in a new production created by an outstanding team at San Francisco Opera. The director, Brian Stauffenberg, will premiere this new production in San Francisco in June this year. Then, we will be the second stop of this tour of The Shining here at the Alliance Theatre. It’s a beautiful new piece that is catapulting the popularity of the Stephen King novel and of course the Stanley Kubrick film. It’s a top-rated opera, and we’re thrilled to open the season with it.
We will then follow with two pieces in repertoire. One is a big production of Rigoletto that is a co-production with Houston and Dallas. It will feature the Atlanta Opera debut of the well-known Georgian bass-baritone George Gasnidze, who sang it at the Met and Vienna Staatsoper and most recently in Dallas, the return of soprano Jasmine Habersham and the debut of a superb tenor named Won Whi Choi. It’s my production that was done in Texas in Houston and Dallas.
We will also do a Discoveries version of Frankenstein, the 1931 film by director James Well with Boris Karloff, but with new music by Michael Shapiro, who wrote operatic and orchestral music to accompany the film. That will happen on October 28 in anticipation of Halloween.
Then, in the winter, we will kick off January with the return of this production of La bohème we did here in 2015 with a wonderful new cast. A tenor named Long Long will perform the Rudolfo role, which he just sang at Glyndebourne Festival. Zachary Nelson and Madison Leonard are in it too, under the baton of Jonathan Brandani, the new music director at Calgary Opera.
For the first time in 44 years of history, the Atlanta Opera will perform Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is a production directed by Chas Rader-Shieber, and it’s a phenomenal cast that includes countertenor Iestyn Davies and Liv Redpath, both making their Atlanta Opera debuts, the baritone Luke Sutliff from Houston Grand Opera, and the return of Kevin Burdette as Bottom.
Then we close the season with Die Walküre, and it’s a wonderful opportunity to bring back Greer Grimsley, who is coming for the first time to sing Wotan in Rheingold this season. He’s returning for Wotan in Die Walküre, and two noted Atlanta Opera debuts: Viktor Antipoenko as Seigmund and Wendy Bryn Harmer is Brünnhilde. So it’s a massive season. Very exciting.
MG: What does this new season mark for you in terms of the company’s growth and progress?
TZ: There are always three things.
Number one is that there’s a very cohesive direction for the company in terms of themes, style, attention to theatricality, and cinematic quality of the production. So that’s a continuation. I would also say it’s decade number two. It will be my 11th season, so we’re starting a new decade.
The second point is that from a financial standpoint, the company has grown, and our ability to do things has changed. When I arrived here, we did three productions a year with a budget of $5 million. That had deficits of $1.5 million a year. That was the situation back then. Next season, the budget is $14 million, and the budget for each season has now been balanced for seven years in a row.
Opera America divides opera companies into categories. And I never really cared about that because I think quality doesn’t always have to do with expenses, but for some people, that is an essential quantifiable point. In the way that Opera America divides it, Tier Two companies are between $3 million and $15 million annual budgets, and Tier One companies are above $15 million. The Atlanta Opera has always been a Tier Two company on the lower level of Tier Two companies, $5 million back in the day.
Now, we’re at the very top of Tier Two, and we’re doing everything we can next season not to move into Tier One. We’re actually going, “Hold on a second. We don’t need to go there yet. We don’t want to go there yet.” But that’s where the company is heading. And as soon as we hit that $15 million mark, which is likely to be in 2024-25, Then we belong to the top tier of maybe 10 companies in North America, and we will be on the level of San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, and Seattle.
While for me, it’s not that important financially because I believe in quality and cost structure. For the community here, it’s essential to realize that they have an opera company on that level. And I think Atlantans want to have a top-tier symphony, a top-tier museum, a top-tier theater company, and a top-tier opera company.
The third point is that audiences are flocking to see our shows. That’s an essential point: Cabaret and shows that are outside of the box, like our Big Tent series and Paris on Ponce series that we’ve done with Maria de Buenos Aires, are the shows that people are attracted to. There is a streak of innovation to which people in Atlanta responded. So yes, there’s the mainstage operatic productions. But what people are genuinely embracing here in this community is innovation. That’s why the film studio is a major part of our operations. That’s why the Discoveries Series is so popular, and that’s where the company will continue to move toward.
MG: Then it’s not only a matter of growth and quantity; it’s a matter of constant refinement and development of quality.
TZ: It is, but it’s also how you structure the repertoire. The quality of the shows attracts different levels of talent here. Not every opera company in America can do an installment of the Ring cycle. Greer Grimsley will not come to Atlanta for a Tosca. He’s coming to Atlanta to play Wotan. I have staff members that I could never dream about attracting, extraordinary people with special skills, from Seattle Opera, from Dallas Opera, from the MET who want to do a special kind of work; the mission of the company is doing these kinds of work so that we attract top talent and pay them well but also do unusual repertoire that will bring them.
MG: Sometimes, different is better.
TZ: Most of the time, if you try to repeat what other people do, you won’t be original. I think we’re trying to be who we are.
MG: With originality, you wind up leading rather than just following others.
TZ: They can copy us, and they actually do. It’s fascinating. This weekend, I’m taking my board of directors to Texas. We open our production of Rhinegold there in Dallas before we bring it to Atlanta. The next day we’re going to San Antonio, where they’re doing the Maria de Buenos Aires that we’ve done here in an alternative venue. Two shows born at the Atlanta opera are now exported to other companies just last weekend, and The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs made its Canadian premiere in Calgary Opera. And so our productions are everywhere around the globe, giving us a different branding, a certain concentric attraction to many people.
MG: Collaboration as a vehicle for innovation?
TZ: Small collaboration with a core team is definitely a vehicle for innovation. There’s also the danger, if you’re working with too many companies, that your collaboration will be stilted and hampered by too many cooks.
MG: Lowest common denominator to satisfy everyone.
TZ: Right. Sometimes there are too many opinions if you are doing a co-production of five different companies. It’s very important that for us moving forward, now that we’re most stable financially, we prefer to initiate productions here and then send them elsewhere and still benefit financially from it but not have to be accountable for so many opinions and thoughts of others.
MG: That works for me a lot because Atlanta, for all of the arts, should be a point of creative origin and recognized as such and also be an arts destination. In other words, people should be flying here to see the Atlanta Opera.
TZ: Absolutely, and they can. Atlanta is a huge hub, and getting here is easy. That’s why we’re doing Wagner, and that’s why we see this uptake of people from out of town coming to see Rhinegold.
MG: Would you say there is a significant travel audience coming to see Atlanta Opera productions?
TZ: Absolutely. We always knew about Wagnerites, Wagner fanatics who travel the globe to see a Ring cycle. When I worked at Seattle Opera, that was obvious. You see that in Dallas right now. They’re opening tomorrow, and tickets are selling like hotcakes., Now, tickets are going for $700. It’s like Hamilton there. And I think you see the same thing in Atlanta. We are selling more tickets for Rhinegold than for Candide.
MG: And then there’s also the connectivity with top-talent artists who want to come to Atlanta to perform.
TZ: They do because of the quality of the productions, because they know that our film studio will stream their shows so they can reach a wide range of audiences all over the world, and because we hopefully treat them well, we pay them well — you know, that’s important.
MG: There’s the singing, of course, but so much more involved: the acting, stage direction, the production values, and you observably try to get a balance of all of these elements.
TZ: It has to be balanced because opera is a multidisciplinary art form. An opera company must focus on more than just one discipline. It has to be all balanced. The orchestra has to rise to a certain level; the conducting has to rise to a certain level; the marketing team, the development team, the production team, the prop people, and the finance people. There are so many disciplines in an opera company, and you cannot have one department better at the expense of other essential elements. Opera is about amazing singing, it’s about a great orchestra, it’s about outstanding production elements, it’s about artistic teams that can bring visions to life, and it’s about marketing people that can sell it. We’re trying to grow in all those departments, and talent is number one. ■
The Atlanta Opera’s 2023-24 Season:
- The Shining
September 15 – October 1, 2023
Alliance Theatre
Composer: Paul Moravec
Libretto: Mark Campbell
Based on the novel by Stephen King
Director: Brian Staufenbiel
Wendy Torrance: Kearstin Piper Brown/Kelly Kaduce
Dick Hallorann: Aubrey Allcock - Frankenstein
October 28, 2023
Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre
Composer: Michael Shapiro
Conductor: Michael Shapiro
Director: Michael Shapiro
Frankenstein (1931 film) by director James Whale - Rigoletto
November 4-12, 2023
Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre
Composer: Giuseppe Verdi
Libretto: Francesco Maria Piave
Conductor: Roberto Kalb
Director: Tomer Zvulun
Rigoletto: George Gagnidze
Gilda: Jasmine Habersham
The Duke: Won Whi Choi - La Bohème
January 20-28, 2024
Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre
Composer: Giacomo Puccini
Libretto: Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa
Conductor: Jonathan Brandani
Director: Tomer Zvulun
Rodolfo: Long Long
Marcello: Zachary Nelson
Musetta: Madison Leonard
Colline: Christian Simmons - A Midsummer Night’s Dream
March 2-10, 2024
Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre
Composer: Benjamin Britten
Libretto: Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears
Conductor: Louis Lohraseb
Oberon: Iestyn Davies
Tytania: Liv Redpath
Demetrious: Luke Sutliff
Lysander: Kameron Lopreore
Helena: Susanne Burgess
Puck: Meg Marino
Bottom: Kevin Burdette - Die Walküre
April 27 – May 5, 2024
Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre
Composer/Librettist: Richard Wagner
Conductor: Arthur Fagen
Director: Tomer Zvulun
Wotan: Greer Grimsley
Seigmund: Viktor Antipenko
Brunnhilde: Wendy Bryn Harmer
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- The Atlanta Opera: atlantaopera.org
- Tomer Zvulun: tomerzvulun.com
Read more by Mark Gresham.