Think you don’t like opera? Let the Cowichan Consort change your mind!
The Cowichan Consort Orchestra and Choir, with director Pippa Williams, presents Opera & Operetta Favourites on Saturday, May 10 at 7:30 p.m. at the Christian Reformed Church, 930 Trunk Rd., Duncan, with special performances by the Queen of Angels School Choir, directed by music teacher Matthew Nace.
With a program featuring composers from Rossini to Gilbert & Sullivan, this concert could easily be subtitled "All the Opera You Didn’t Know You Knew". Verdi’s 'Anvil Chorus' from Il Trovatore has been featured in movies including D2: The Mighty Ducks, Babe: Pig in the City and Bad Santa, and two Marx Brothers films.
The 'Anvil Chorus' was parodied in Gilbert & Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance, an operetta which is also included in this concert with the piece 'I Am The Very Model of A Modern Major General'. This song was featured in the films Never Cry Wolf, Kate & Leopold, and Despicable Me 3, in the television shows Two and a Half Men, Mad About You, How I Met Your Mother, The West Wing; and is mentioned in the musical Hamilton.
Still on Gilbert & Sullivan, the Consort is playing selections from HMS Pinafore, pieces from which have been featured in the films Star Trek: Insurrection and Chariots of Fire, and on the television shows The Simpsons and Animaniacs. Similarly silly, Lortzing’s 'Clog Dance' from his opera Zar und Zimmerman was played in the background on TV’s South Park.
Mascagni’s famous 'Intermezzo' from his opera Cavalleria Rusticana was featured prominently in both Raging Bull and The Godfather Part III, as well as the opera itself having been performed in the cinema several times since the age of silent films.
'The Humming Chorus', from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, was an inspiration for 'Bring Him Home' from Les Misérables, but if you don’t recognize it from that, you may know it from the films Under the Tuscan Sun, Natural Born Killers, or Wind. The musical Miss Saigon was also inspired by Madama Butterfly.
Offenbach’s 'Barcarolle' is arguably the best-known selection in this concert, having been heard in the films Titanic, Life is Beautiful, and Midnight in Paris, to name just a few. The tune was used by Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan, and spent 21 weeks on the UK Singles Chart in 1969 with Welsh singer Donald Peers’s song, 'Please Don’t Go'.
Rounding out the program are selections from Bizet’s Carmen, Verdi’s La Traviata, Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, Lehár’s The Merry Widow, Rossini’s Il Signor Bruschino, and Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin.
"This will be a rousing concert, and even if you think you don’t like opera, you’ll have fun with us," the Consort said in a press release for the show.
Tickets are $20, available from orchestra and choir members, at Volume One Bookstore, and at the door.
