Manitoba Opera's 48th season is one that cuts like a knife! 

 

In its 48th season, Manitoba Opera (MO) will be bringing two outstanding works to the stage. Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd - a masterpiece of American repertoire which has won or been nominated for over 60 awards - will open the season November 7, 19, 13, and Puccini’s Tosca - one of opera’s most suspenseful and compelling works - will be presented April 10, 13, 16. Both productions will be presented at the Centennial Concert Hall. For tickets call 204-957-7842 or go to www.mbopera.ca 

These showpieces are unparalleled theatrical experiences. Sweeney Todd is a darkly comic look at poverty and vengeance in Victorian England; Tosca is a first-rate political thriller fueled by jealously, lust, and double crossings. Each features amazing music and arias, edge-of-your-seat stories, sets that will transport you to another time and place - all delivered by a host of incomparable artists from all over North America.A Manitoba First! This will be the first time that a full-scale production of Sweeney Todd will be presented in the province. Manitoba Opera is the only arts organization in the province able to present this work as written with a full orchestra, sets, and costumes.

SWEENEY TODD: A MUSICAL THRILLER Based on the Victorian short story, A String of Pearls, Sondheim’s musical thriller won the 1979 Tony Award for Best Musical, and over the years has won or been nominated for more than 60 other awards. Though Sweeney Todd was born on Broadway, in the years since this tale of a wronged barber who is exiled by a corrupt judge and returns to Dickensian London to quench his thirst for vengeance, has migrated to the world’s leading opera companies. It has been performed by numerous companies including the Royal Opera House, Houston Grand Opera, New York City Opera, San Francisco Opera, and the Lyric Opera of Chicago.The Portland Opera production of Sweeney Todd, which Manitoba Opera is presenting, is based on the highly acclaimed original Broadway production directed by Harold Prince. It will be directed by American stage director and choreographer Albert Sherman, no stranger to the works of Sondheim and a member of the New York City Opera’s directing staff for over 30 seasons.Unquestionably operatic in scope, Sweeney Todd’s powerful music and larger-than-life characters, along with talented singers, a 24-voice chorus, and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra is sure to be a truly remarkable experience and one not to be missed.

TOSCA - Tosca is full-force Puccini. With its gripping political intrigue, passionate drama, soaring music, and heartbreaking arias, Tosca is everything you would expect from an opera. And it all takes place in just one day.Set in revolutionary Napoleonic Rome of 1800, Tosca is the gripping story of a woman determined to get the man she wants and escape from the man she doesn’t. When the treacherous chief of police arrests her lover, Cavaradossi, Tosca is forced to make an agonizing decision: submit to Scarpia’s desires or see her beloved painter die.