What do we do around here to get so lucky? Friday night, a 17-year veteran of the Metropolitan opera stage is appearing on the Sebastian River High School stage in Sebastian.
Soprano Yvonne Gonzales Redman joins three Central Florida-based soloists – Sharon Yost, Kyle Jones and Michael John Foster – accompanied by the Space Coast Symphony Orchestra in a concert of Broadway show tunes by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Gonzales sang with Luciano Pavarotti for his 30th anniversary gala (as Giannetta in “L’Elisir d’Amore”); with Placido Domingo in “Parcival”; and with Mirella Freni in “Adrianna Lecouveur” in Freni’s final performances in that role.
Gonzales was the Grand Prize Winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council competition. She has sung at the Sante Fe opera, Los Angeles Opera, Wolf Trap, Minnesota Opera – and now, the Sebastian River High School Performing Arts Center. And tickets are very reasonable: $20 in advance, $25 at the doors. Free to kids 18 and under.
Meanwhile, our own Vero Beach Opera stages its first production of the season in English this weekend. Johann Strauss’ farcical operetta “Die Fledermaus (The Bat)” premiered in 1874 and turns on the timeless theme of alcohol-fueled immorality. The take-away: Don’t leave your friend passed out in the town square, dressed in a bat costume.
With musical direction by Vero Beach Opera’s Bruce Stasyna, who will conduct the Brevard Symphony Orchestra, and stage direction by Russell Franks of Stetson University’s opera department, “Die Fledermaus” features professional opera singers in the principal roles, and a chorus of singers from Stetson as well as the Vero Beach Choral Society. The operetta’s waltzes will feature dancers from Vero’s Royal Ballroom studio. The opera is Sunday at 3 p.m.
While the all-professional cast began its run of “A Chorus Line” at Riverside Theatre, the comedy “Social Security” opened this week at the Vero Beach Theatre Guild. Directed by Mark Wygonik and featuring an all-star cast of Guild veterans, it turns on a simple plot: two middle-age sisters trading off care of their irritable elderly mother who suddenly gets her flirt on when an even more elderly French painter comes on the scene.
“Social Security” runs through Jan. 17 at the Guild. “A Chorus Line” runs at Riverside through Jan. 24.
Sunday, a new national tour of “Ragtime the Musical” makes a one-night stop at Fort Pierce’s Sunrise Theatre. Though it’s a non-equity production, the director and choreographer is Marcia Milgrom Dodge, who staged the show’s 2009 revival on Broadway. The cast includes Florida native Kate Turner in the role of Mother. The performance starts at 7 p.m. Tickets are $59 and $65.