WHAT'S ON – Opera
South African College of Music
Songs My Mother Taught Me
Don Giovanni
SONGS MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME
Opera Fundraiser
Tuesday 16 July at 19:30 (Concert Hall)
Angelo Gobbato, born in Milan, Italy, in July 1943, arrived in Cape Town with his family in 1950. His passion for opera led to a distinguished career as singer, stage director and teacher.
Join him for his 70th birthday celebration, as he presents a programme of personal and national reminiscences performing songs taken from the popular Italian repertoire which he learned at his mother's and grandmother's knees and which he used to perform as a child at various Italian functions (accompanied by his father on the piano accordion) well before beginning his serious operatic studies.
The songs, roughly spanning a period from 1900 to 1960, will be presented accompanied by narrative and visual material reflecting the changing styles and major events of that period.
Albert Horne accompanies on the piano.
Price: R120. All income received from this concert will go towards the funding of a bursary to be given to an operatic student with particular talents for comic acting.
Book online through Computicket.
UCT Opera School, in collaboration with Cape Town Opera, presents
DON GIOVANNI (Mozart)
21–24 August at 19:30 (Theatre)
With the UCT Symphony Orchestra
CTO and the UCT Opera School continue their exploration of Mozart's mature operas with a theatrically daring take on his thrilling Don Juan adaptation.
“In Italy, 640, in Germany, 231, in France, 100 and in Turkey, 91. But in Spain – there are already 1003.”
With 2065 names in his little black book, Don Giovanni can lay fair claim to the title of the world's greatest seducer. But, one night in Seville, literature's most famous sex addict goes too far – and must face supernatural retribution for his crimes.
Don Giovanni has inspired obsessive admiration ever since it was created – Flaubert believed that, along with Hamlet and the sea, it was one of “the three finest things God ever made” – and the greatest singers of every generation long to put their stamp on its memorable characters. Yet Mozart had a young cast in mind when he penned the opera, and Don Giovanni springs off the page with a visceral authenticity when performed by energetic twenty-somethings.
Matthew Wild and Kamal Khan return as director and conductor to create a new production of the opera, which Wild promises will be young, raw and startling.
Dates and Times: Tuesday–Friday at 19:30, Saturday at 18:00
Prices: R175 and R125
Discounts (only available at Computicket outlets):
Block bookings of 8 or more less 10%
Scholars, students and senior citizens less 50% on the day of performance
Book online through Computicket.