The Dallas Opera 2021-2022 - Madame Butterfly/Flight

When a world premiere is produced by an opera company nowadays, it’s almost too much to hope for that the new work will “take off” and become a runaway hit internationally. Fortunately, that’s exactly what’s happened with Flight , the “airport comedy” by composer Jonathan Dove and librettist April De Angelis that receives its eagerly awaited Dallas Opera premiere this season. Since its debut in 1998 in England at Glyndebourne (the opera festival that commissioned it), Flight has been performed nearly 100 times in 13 productions in Europe, America, and Australia. It’s also been filmed twice and commercially recorded. That’s a terrific track record, richly deserved by an opera that explodes with theatrical flair and musical brilliance. This was the breakout work for Dove, who’d written six operas previously and has written more than 15 since, for both professional and amateur performers, to be performed in opera houses, as well as in every kind of alternative space. Pre-Flight, Dove’s operas were chamber-scale and one-act. Flight , however, is a three-act work, requiring ten vocally, musically, and dramatically exceptional soloists and a full battery of orchestral resources. Dove’s previous experience as an orchestrator (including reducing the score of Wagner’s entire Ring cycle to 18 instruments for England’s Birmingham Opera Company) gave him an extraordinary background by the time he came to Flight , where virtuosity permeates the orchestra’s contribution from start to finish. Dove’s dramatic instincts were developed further when writing incidental music for major theatrical productions in London. With Flight , it also helped hugely that De Angelis— who has an impressive output of 24 plays to her credit—began her career as an actress. Together they’ve created a work that is as deliciously witty as it is rich in humanity. Flight was inspired by Mehran Karimi Nasseri, the Persian refugee who was expelled from Iran but, for a variety of complex reasons still not fully understood, was denied entry anywhere in Europe and, as a result, lived in the departure lounge of Paris’s Charles De Gaulle Airport Introducing Flight , a masterpiece of contemporary opera 18 AN OPERA THAT SOARS By Roger Pines THE DALLAS OPERA | 2021/2022 SEASON