Armenian-American soprano Ani Maldjian to star in Festival Opera's

A Midsummer Night's Dream - opening August 9

Former two-time San Francisco Opera Merola Program participant Ani Maldjian will replace Marnie Breckenridge in the role of Tytania in Festival Opera's A Midsummer Night's Dream, opening August 9, 2008.

Breckenridge had been given permission by Festival Opera to bow out so that she could accept an invitation by the Glyndebourne Opera Festival to cover the lead role in the world premiere of Peter Eotvos' Love and Other Demons on August 10 - 30, following a critically-acclaimed turn at English National Opera in the role of Cunegonde for Candide. Maldjian was the Western Regional winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 2005, and a national finalist in 2006. She has participated in Seattle Opera's Young Artist program for the last two years. Maldjian was notified on Monday by Festival Opera that she had the part, leaving her only six days to learn the role prior to arriving in Walnut Creek for the start of rehearsals under director Michael Morgan on Monday.

Festival Opera's production of Benjamin Britten's adaptation of Shakespeare's romantic comedy will also feature countertenor William Sauerland as Oberon, Kurt Krikorian as Puck (spoken), bass Kirk Eichelberger as Bottom, baritone Igor Vieira as Theseus, mezzo-soprano Lauren Groff as Hippolyta, tenor Jorge Garza as Lysander, baritone Nikolas Nackley as Demetrius, mezzo-soprano Jessica Mariko Deardorff as Hermia, and soprano Stacey Cornell as Helena. Set design will be by Peter Crompton and costume design by Susanna Douthit.

Maldjian was not aware she had an exceptional voice until the age of nine, when a choir teacher suggested she consider a singing career. However, she thought it would be in pop music. Instead, Maldjian immediately took to opera upon hearing it for the first time at the California Institute of the Arts, which she entered at 16 and graduated with a B.A. in fine arts at 20. She went on to obtain a M.A. from California State University in Northridge.

Considered one of the country's fast-rising sopranos, she was the toast of Southern California last year for her tour-de-force performance in Russian composer Grigori Frid's one-woman opera, The Diary of Anne Frank, at Long Beach Opera. Among other accolades, Los Angeles Times critic Mark Swed wrote that Frid's "vocal writing fits the words closely and offers a technical and emotional tour de force for a game soprano. [Artistic director] Mitisek found just that soprano in Ani Maldjian. Tuesday at 8 p.m., one might have said she was an emerging artist in the earliest stages of a career. By 9:30, she had emerged…. Her singing was commanding and brilliant, fresh and strong from beginning to end…. Discovering talent like Maldjian's is no easy feat." And John Farrell of the Los Angeles Daily News noted: "She sings Frid's simple, emotional score with elegance and intelligibility. Maldjian brings Frank to life in a performance at once understated and fully realized. It is a star turn."

Benjamin Britten's magical adaptation of the Shakespearean classic has been praised as "marvelously wrought" and filled with "fantastical exuberance" by the New York Times. The haunting score is at once inventive and evocative, and entices the listener deep into the enchantment of a summer's night, where anything can happen in the name of love.

To bring Shakespeare's ethereal world to life, director Michael Morgan, who will also conduct, had Crompton create a set out of fabrics rather than solid objects to represent his vision of the opera as "light to the point of weightlessness. The sensuality of the forest is being portrayed by young dancers. The only heaviness will be in the clumsy but always lovable Rustics (sometimes called the Mechanicals) and their attempt to win favor by their performance of Pyramus and Thisby." Morgan has also garnished the story with a 1960's color scheme. "My hope is that the visual charm will match the lightness and transparency of Britten's most unusual and immediately striking opera score." Morgan has invited accomplished choreographer Mark Foehringer to assist him in staging the popular work. "Mark has a wonderful eye and imagination, as well as a gift for telling a story through motion."

Morgan - who made his debut as an operatic stage director with Festival Opera's 2006 production of Mozart's Don Giovanni - notes that one of the reasons he was attracted to this project is that "it's an opera for any age. The play has a long history of charming audiences, as well as being heavily edited to mute its sometimes overt sensuality. In our more easy-going era, I hope both its charm and sweet sensuality will be appreciated by those who have an eye for it, and that even the youngest viewers will find it enchanting and entertaining."

Festival Opera executive director Helen Sheaff points out that the company was fortunate to include William Sauerland in the cast. "There are so few countertenors today that this will be a rare opportunity to see one in performance. And Britten's opera is one of the most famous countertenor roles, but most companies are limited to using a contralto or female soprano. So this will be a treat for Bay Area opera lovers."

A Midsummer Night's Dream opens on Saturday, August 9, at 8 pm. Three performances follow, on August 12 and 15 at 8 pm, and a Sunday matinee at 2 pm on August 17. All performances will take place at the Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek, CA. Tickets are $36 - $100. Order online at www.LesherArtsCenter.org or call (925) 943-SHOW. For more information, visit www.FestivalOpera.org.

judythpiazza@newsblaze.com

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