Michael Brosilow
Introduced by Chicago Opera Theater in 2021, these live performance performances featured position debuts for each mezzos, Barton as Carmen and Blythe as Don José. Whereas neither singer has since revisited these roles, Blythe herself, lest we not neglect, was a Carmen almost twenty years earlier than this tenor flip.
Blythe has embraced her low notes of late, supplementing a restricted staged opera profession and a extra strong administrative profession because the Creative Director of the Bard Faculty Graduate Vocal Arts Program with gender- and genre-bending drag performances as Blythely Oratonio.
Barton is an particularly outspoken advocate for queer visibility in opera, showing coutured within the Bisexual Delight flag on the Final Evening of the Proms in 2019. “I take a look at inventory characters like Carmen as tremendous queer,” Barton mused in a 2019 interview with Slate. “For me, she’s not essentially straight. After I flirt with the viewers as Carmen, I actually am flirting with each particular person on the market as a result of I believe that’s who she is. I believe she’s pansexual on some stage.” She’s going to seem within the San Francisco Opera 2025 Delight Live performance later this month.
The parterre field staff needs you a cheerful, festive, and proud Delight Month!
Bizet: Carmen, “C’est toi?… C’est moi” (Chicago 2021)
Jamie Barton
Stephanie Blythe
Conductor: Lidiya Yankovskaya
Chicago Opera Theater
18 September 2021
In-house
