Classical Connections: Opera in the Park: Joy, Everywhere You Looked

The typical opera outdoors event of summer is usually a fairly predictable, if enjoyable, event: a frothy overture, a few big hits liberally mixed with Broadway tunes, and one hopes that a few of the folks come back to check out the “real thing” in the fall.

But as Opera in the Park celebrated their 10th free event in Garner Park on Saturday, they managed to elevate the tried and true into an event that looked back over their fifty year history, honored their roots and remembered a beloved operatic evangelist, introduced the new General Director, added a couple of major programming treats — and best of all, gave us a generous preview of exactly what we can expect at Overture Hall this coming season.

John Beard of WKOW’s “Wake Up Wisconsin” co-hosted the evening for the 10,000 or so who gathered, most of them armed with the traditional glow sticks, but it was Kathryn Smith, who was literally finishing the second week of her new job as General Director, who drew the greater interest from most observers. Replacing Allan Naplan, who solidified the company’s reputation as a major regional force, Smith inherited a 2011-12 season already in place. Certainly her stage persona indicates that the dedicated staff of Madison Opera should have little trouble working with her, and her track record at the Metropolitan Opera and in Tacoma, Washington bodes well for the future of opera in Madison.

But before a note was played, Mayor Paul Soglin announced the planting of a memorial tree in Garner Park for the departed Ann Stanke. To describe her as the longtime General Director of Madison Opera is to obviously understate her decades-long influence in Madison’s arts scene, before and after her directorship. And of course, it was Stanke and Madison Opera Music Director John DeMain who launched Opera in the Park.

The music began with a celebration of the bel canto style, first with Demain and the Madison Symphony offering an appropriately breezy reading of the overture to Rossini’s Cinderella, which will close the 2011-12 season, followed by mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack in the title character’s aria “Non piu mesta.” Mack, in her Madison Opera debut, has a powerful core to her voice that belies her agility and range, and while the Rossini excerpt should generate a few ticket sales for next April, Mack was even more impressive later in “What a Movie” from Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti, and numbers from Carousel and Oklahoma.

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