When:
Monday March 3 @ 5:30 p.m
Rsvp: Email events@florentineopera.org to rsvp and for any questions about the event.
Double bill Viva la Mamma! and Il maestro di capella are sure to be a night of roaring laughter! Join us for an opportunity to hear from our stage director, leading bass-baritone, and costume designer about opera satire and the power of illusion.
About Versed
We build operas over the course of a few years! In that time, dozens of creatives work on costuming, lighting effects, historical juxtapositions and casting. For each mainstage production, we offer a Versed experience for the Milwaukee community (and beyond). Come to hear about the work's history, stay to experience a musical demonstration featuring a lead artist and conductor!
Our Versed series takes place as an intimate gathering in our very own Lueders Opera Center in the Riverwest neighborhood. These are FREE and open to the public.
Please RSVP at events@florentineopera.org
Featuring
Jill Ann Ponasik
Director
This is Jill Anna’s 16th season as artistic director of Milwaukee Opera Theatre, and Viva la Mamma is her 5th production with The Florentine. At both organizations, she loves watching audiences and artists connect through opera. Some selected past productions include: Songbird, Cosi?, Cinderella, L’Enfant et les Sortiléges, and Little Mahagonny with the Florentine Opera, Ernest Shackleton Loves Me, Oklahoma!, Ruddigore, Carmina Burana, and Tales of Hoffmann with Skylight Music Theatre, Rusalka, Alcina, Night of the Living Opera, Impossible Operas, Zie Magic Flute, Svadba, A Chorus Line, and Fortuna the Time Bender vs. The Schoolgirls of Doom with Milwaukee Opera Theatre, and The Moors with Renaissance Theatreworks. Jill Anna adores working with young artists and has hosted over 100 Voice Labs for singers of all ages. Obsessively collaborative, Jill Anna has been delighted to develop work with Early Music Now, The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Skylight Music Theatre, Danceworks Performance MKE, Wild Space Dance Company, Milwaukee Chamber Theatre, Quasimondo Physical Theatre, Present Music, Aperi Animam, Chant Claire Choir, Carroll University, University of Wisconsin Parkside and UWM. Despite the 339 miles that separate them, she maintains a special kinship with Nautilus Music-Theater in St Paul, MN. Later this spring, she’s looking forward to directing and producing Camille’s Rainbow (an opera for ages 0-3) with Milwaukee Opera Theatre, and the release of Little Heart Warrior (a short animated opera about 3D bioprinting research, made with the Medical College of Wisconsin and TankThink). When she’s not working on a production, you can find Jill Anna rearing monarch caterpillars on her back porch or visiting a railway museum with her son. She’d like to offer a deeply felt “Grazie mille” to Ronald L. Martinez for his help translating Viva la Mamma. She’d still be working on scene three if he hadn’t come to her aid.
Patrick Carfizzi
Bass-Baritone
In the current season, American bass-baritone Patrick Carfizzi returns to the Metropolitan Opera as Swallow in Peter Grimes and the Sacristan in Tosca. He also returns to Houston Grand Opera as Bartolo in Le Nozze di Figaro and Baili in Werther. Last season marked the twenty-second anniversary of his Metropolitan Opera debut by returning as the Speaker in The Magic Flute, the Sacristan in Tosca, and the Lackey in Ariadne auf Naxos.
Notable past engagements include Cecil in Sir David McVicar’s production of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda (Metropolitan Opera), his role debut as Zeta in Lehár’s The Merry Widow opposite Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson, (Lyric Opera of Chicago), Henry Kissinger in Nixon in China (San Francisco Opera, San Diego Opera and Houston Grand Opera), Paolo in Simon Boccanegra (San Francisco Opera, Metropolitan Opera, and Houston Grand Opera), and Papageno in Die Zauberflöte (Houston Grand Opera and Dallas Opera).
Lynly A. Saunders
Lynly A. Saunders is a costume designer based in Washington, DC and originally hailing from Northern California. Select design work includes: The Barber of Seville (Opera Theatre of St. Louis); Approaching Ali, An American Soldier, Better Gods, Proving Up, Cosi fan Tutte (Washington National Opera); West Side Story, MASS (National Symphony Orchestra); Faust, Cosi fan Tutte, Silent Night (Wolf Trap Opera); Much Ado About Nothing (Chesapeake Shakespeare Company); The Barber of Seville (Glimmerglass Festival); The House with Two Doors; Commedia Romeo and Juliet (Faction of Fools). Upcoming projects include The Rake’s Progress at The Glimmerglass Festival.