(PRINCETON, NJ) -- Westminster Opera Theatre will present one-act operas by Ravel and Puccini on Friday, December 2 and Saturday, December 3 at 7:30pm in the Robert L. Annis Playhouse on the campus of Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton. Maurice Ravel’s L’enfant et les Sortilèges will be sung in French and Giacomo Puccini’s Suor Angelica will be sung in Italian, both with English supertitles and chamber orchestra. William Hobbs is musical director for the production and Irina Gachechiladze is stage director and choreographer.
In Ravel's comic masterpiece, with a libretto by Colette, a young child learns how dependent he is on his environment after breaking everything in his room during a temper tantrum and suddenly everything comes to life! In Puccini's tragic story of Angelica, a rich girl forced into a convent after bearing a child out of wedlock, is grief stricken by a horrifying truth.
Tickets are $25 for adults and $20 for students and seniors. They can be purchased online at www.rider.edu/arts or by calling 609-921-2663.
Westminster Opera Theatre has been praised for its innovative productions of a wide range of operas. Participants in the program have gone on to perform in opera houses around the world. Recent seasons have included La Clemenza di Tito, The Dialogues of the Carmelites, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Così fan tutte, Der Schauspieldirektor, Gianni Schicchi, Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Il mondo della luna and I Capuleti e i Montecchi.
Westminster Choir College faculty member Williams Hobbs works at many of the world’s major opera houses as conductor and coach. These include the Opéra National de Paris, the Salzburg Festival, San Francisco Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, Seattle Opera, Washington Opera and the Opéra de Monte-Carlo. He has assisted conductors Claudio Abbado, Sir Charles Mackerras, Jiří Bělohlávek, Jiří Kout, Marco Armiliato and many others, and worked closely with singers such as Renée Fleming, Susan Graham, Frederica von Stade, Sonia Ganassi, Placido Domingo, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Sam Ramey and Kurt Moll. Mr. Hobbs has devoted a large portion of his career to working with young singers. He was on the faculty of the Aspen Opera Theater Center of the Aspen Music Festival for six years, and he has been on the faculty of the CoOPERAtive Program at Westminster Choir College since 2008. He was on the coaching staff of the Juilliard School of Music for many years and was invited by the National Theater of Tokyo to serve as visiting master coach.
Irina Gachechiladze is a New York-based stage and opera director and choreographer. Her New York City productions include The Seagull at TheatreLab; The Breadbaker’s Apprentice, Nicholas and Alexandra, and High Above the City with Amios at the Kraine Theatre; and the upcoming world premiere of Boris Akunin’s Hamlet. A Version for Theatre at St. Clement’s. Her international productions include Mozart’s Don Giovanni for the National Armenian Opera in Yerevan; Eugene Onegin, after the novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin for Marjanishvili Theater, Tbilisi, Georgia; and Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Telephone for Salon Opera, London. A native of the Republic of Georgia, she holds a master’s degree in stage directing from the Russian Academy of Performing Arts (GITIS, Moscow). She is a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab in New York, and she also has extensive film and visual arts credits. Her films An Apple and Stigma received awards at the Kinoshok Film Festival in Anapa, Russia.
Westminster Choir College of Rider University is located at 101 Walnut Lane in Princeton. Learn more at www.rider.edu/wcc.
PHOTO: William Hobbs is the music director for Westminster Opera Theatre’s production of Maurice Ravel’s L’enfant et les Sortilèges and Giacomo Puccini’s Suor Angelica on Friday, December 2 and Saturday December 3 at 7:30 p.m. in the Robert L. Annis Playhouse on the campus of Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton. Learn more at www.rider.edu/wcc.