Photo Flash: Glimmerglass Festival Opens with PORGY AND BESS

The Glimmerglass Festival opened its 2017 season last night with The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess. Due to popular demand, The Glimmerglass Festival has added a performance to the Festival schedule on Tuesday, August 15, at 8 p.m. in the Alice Busch Opera Theater.

Porgy and Bess follows the community of Catfish Row as they struggle to create and maintain a home for themselves. The production stars bass-baritone Musa Ngqungwana as Porgy, soprano Talise Trevigne as Bess, and baritone Norman Garrett as Crown.

The compelling American classic is directed by Francesca Zambello and choreographed by Eric Sean Fogel. The cast and the Glimmerglass Festival Orchestra are led by John DeMain who has conducted the work more than 350 times including in the seminal 1976 Houston Grand Opera production. Peter J. Davison designed scenery, and costumes are by Paul Tazewell. Lighting is by Mark McCullough, and hair and makeup is by J. Jared Janas and Dave Bova. Fight choreographer is Joe Isenberg, and sound design is by Joel Morain.

The season runs through August 22 and also features new productions of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, Handel'sXerxes and the American premiere of Donizetti's The Siege of Calais, as well as performances of Derrick Wang's one-act comic opera, Scalia/Ginsburg. The Festival is completed by additional concerts, a film screening, cabarets and two world-premieres - the youth opera Robin Hood and the hip-hopera Stomping Grounds. Tickets start at just $26 and youth tickets (ages 6-12) start at $10 when accompanied by an adult.

For more information on the 2017 Glimmerglass Festival and to purchase tickets visit www.glimmerglass.org or call the Box Office at (607) 547-2255.

Photo Credit: Karli Cadel/Carrington Spires/The Glimmerglass Festival