SHE LOVES ME to Open at Opera Saratoga This Summer

Opera Saratoga will present an intimate production of Bock, Harnick and Masteroff's jewel-box musical She Loves Me. Famous for tunes like "Vanilla Ice Cream," "She Loves Me" and "It's Been Grand Knowing You," this sweet story focuses on two employees in a Budapest parfumerie who are sworn enemies during the day but unsuspecting lonely hearts penpals at night.

The musical is the third adaptation of the 1937 play Parfumerie by Hungarian playwright Miklós László, following the 1940 film The Shop Around the Corner and the 1949 musical version In the Good Old Summertime. (It surfaced again as 1998's You've Got Mail). The plot revolves around Budapest shop employees Georg and Amalia, who, despite being consistently at odds with each other at work, are unaware that each is the other's secret pen pal met through lonely-hearts ads.

The musical premiered on Broadway in 1963 and ran for 301 performances, was produced in the West End in 1964, and received award-winning revivals on each side of the Atlantic in the 1990s (as well as numerous regional productions). Although the original Broadway run was not a financial success, She Loves Me slowly became a cult classic, and the massively successful 2016 Broadway revival became the first Broadway show ever to be live-streamed.

Opera Saratoga's production features guest artist Jarrett Porter as Georg Nowack, and festival artists Christine Taylor Price as Amalia Balash, Kate Morton as Ilona Ritter, and returning baritone Shavon Lloyd as Steven Kodaly. Making his Opera Saratoga debut is acclaimed tenor Peter Kazaras, featured here as Mr. Maraczek. Other cast members include Michael Segura, Jack O'Leary, Wagner Mauricio Pastor, Fantine Douilly, Sung-yeun Kim, Chuanyuan Liu, and Danny Lugo.