Puccini

Mastro Vincent La Selva

and

The New York Grand Opera

Presents

"PUCCINI IN THE PARK"

At New York's Central Park

Free Admission

Festival Includes Fully Staged Productions
at SummerStage of :

Manon Lescaut | Tosca | Le Villi

The renowned conductor Vincent La Selva leads The New York Grand Opera Soloists, Chorus, and Orchestra in an all-Puccini Festival at Central Park's SummerStage (Rumsey Playfield) on three Wednesday evenings in July and August, 2002. On Wednesday evening, July 3, 7:30p.m., Maestro La Selva leads his forces in a production of Puccini's first fully characteristic opera, Manon Lescaut; on Wednesday, July 31, 7:30p.m., he directs Puccini's verismo masterpiece Tosca; and on Wednesday, August 7, 7:30p.m., he conducts a production of Puccini's first opera, the rarely-performed Le Villi. This final performance also features a selection of Puccini orchestral works and the Cavalleria Rusticana Intermezzo by Pietro Mascagni, Puccini's student, friend and colleague, who performed in the orchestra at the premiere of Le Villi in 1884.

Admission to all of these performances is free; no tickets required.

Directions:

SummerStage is located right off the 5th Avenue and 72nd Street entrance to Central Park in New York City.
Enter at 69th and 5th Avenue.
For more information, call 212-245-8837.

Puccini once wrote that "without melody, fresh and poignant, there can be no music." This is the secret of Puccini's worldwide popularity, which has come to rival that of his great predecessor Guiseppe Verdi. Puccini's lyric gift shines through all of his operas - whether they be set in the blood and thunder world of verismo or the fantastical world of early German Romanticism. Maestro Vincent La Selva and New York Grand Opera have chosen a Puccini Festival comprised of three very different examples of Puccini's lyric genius: Manon Lescaut (July 3), the celebrated taut, violent melodrama of love and treachery; which shows Puccini at the peak of his lyric and dramatic powers; Tosca (July 31), Puccini's first fully characteristic work, prized for its melodic impetus, in which love, exile, and tragic death are intertwined; and the rarely-staged Le Villi (August 7), Puccini's first opera, set in the Black Forest of olden times, which tells the story of Roberto, who abandons his bethrothed Anna, only to have Anna die and come back with the Willis, ghosts who prey on faithless lovers, to wreak vengeance on Roberto. The festival marks the first time Manon Lescaut is heard in New York since the Metropolitan Opera's production in February 1990 and the second New York performance of Le Villi since Maestro La Selva conducted its New York debut at the Naumberg Bandshell in 1984.

Vincent La Selva has been a New York music institution for almost fifty years. Founder of the New York Grand Opera Company in 1973, he is unique in the world for presenting fully-staged grand opera productions that are free to the public. Since 1974, Mr. La Selva has chosen New York's Central Park for his productions of grand opera which, have been attended by a total of more than three million people. Most recently, Mr. La Selva completed an unprecedented eight-year cycle of the twenty-eight operas of Verdi. He earned New York City's highest distinction for achievement in the arts, the coveted Handel Medallion. In addition to his opera performances, Maestro La Selva has earned special renown for conducting symphonic scores with a directness, lyricism, and passion that has often evoked the conducting style of the late Arturo Toscanini. Indeed, he was compared favorably to Toscanini by no less an authority than critic B.H. Haggin, who credited La Selva with "what Bernard Shaw has called the highest faculty of a conductor, the magnetic influence under which an orchestra becomes as amenable to the baton as a pianoforte to the fingers."

New York Grand Opera, founded by Vincent La Selva, has given 153 performances of 53 different operas in Central Park for audiences totaling more than 3,000,000 since it made its bow with a performance of "La Boh�me" on May 23, 1973. Its repertoire includes such standards as "Aida," "Rigoletto," "Tosca," as well as such rarities as Leoncavallo's "La Boh�me" and Verdi's "Stiffelio" in their U.S. premieres; the first staged performance in the United States of Verdi's "Giovanna D'Arco," the first staged performances in New York of his "Aroldo" and "J�rusalem", the first New York staged performance in 127 years of his "I Masnadieri," and the first New York performance with orchestra of his earliest opera, "Oberto." In addition to its annual summer series in Central Park for the past 25 years, New York Grand has Opera has played such diverse venues throughout the metropolitan area as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, the Beacon Theatre, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Co-op City, and the Bronx Botanical Gardens.