BY KAREN BOSSICK
Opera fans will get another two-fer Saturday.
Wake up with “Carmen.” Then spend the evening with superstar tenor Michael Fabiano.
“Carmen” starts at 10:55 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 2, at the Big Wood 4 Metropolitan Theatres in Hailey.
The Fabiano concert starts at 7:30 p.m. at the Argyros Performing Arts Center. A pre-concert Diva Party and Concert will be held prior to that at 6 p.m.
Tickets for both the Diva Party and the Argyros concert are $175, available online at www.sunvalleyopera.com or by calling 208-726-0991. Tickets to the Argyros concert are $55 and $75, available at www.theargyros.org or by calling the ticket office at 208-721-8947.
Fabiano, 34, comes to Sun Valley from the Lyric Opera of Chicago where he performed Rodolfo in Puccini’s “LaBoheme.”
He came to the attention of the opera world a decade earlier when he won the 2007 Metropolitan Opera National Councils Auditions and, later, the 2014 Beverly Sills Artist Award and Richard Tucker Award.
In 2015 he made headlines when he replaced an ailing tenor to perform Edgardo in “Lucia de Lammermoor” at the Metropolitan Opera with only seven hours notice.
When he debuted as Lensky in Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” at the Royal Opera, the London “Sunday Times” reviewer wrote: “I can’t think of a Lensky at Covent Garden who has held the audience so spellbound in 40 years of Onegin-going…”
When he’s not singing, he’s passing on the love of singing to young’uns. He started Art Smart, the first program of its kind, bringing professionally taught voice lessons to 12 students every week free of charge.
Mezzo-soprano Clementine Margaine, meanwhile, will reprise her portrayal of opera’s ultimate seductress when the Metropolitan Opera presents Georges Bizet’s popular opera Saturday morning.
The opera will start at 10:55 a.m., Saturday, Feb. 2 at the Big Wood 4 Metropolitan Theatres in Hailey and will run three hours and 30 minutes. Tickets are $16, and students will be admitted free as part of Sun Valley Opera’s educational outreach.
“Carmen” was first performed by the Opera-Comique in Paris in 1875. Its breaking of conventions as it told the story of Don Jose, a naïve soldier who is seduced by the wiles of the fiery gypsy Carmen, shocked the audience.
It since has become one of the most frequently performed operas there is, with its “Habanera” and “Toreador Song” among the best known of all operatic arias.
Tenor Roberto Alagna will star as Don Jose. Omer Meir Wellber and Louis Langree will share conducting duties.