University of Florida Performing Arts

Sponsored by Shands HealthCare.  

There will be a pre-performance discussion at 6:45 p.m. led by Dr. Tony Offerle.

Click here to see a video preview of The Opera Show.

Click here to read an interview with Mitch Sebastian, the creator, director and choreographer for The Opera Show.

Did you know…  

THE OPERA SHOW premiered in England in the summer of 2008.  It was created by an eclectic team of theatre artists, stylists, designers and classical musicians and features a high-caliber performing company of four vocalists, five dancers and eight musicians. 

The show is presented in three acts, each with its own distinct visual and musical personality. The show is anchored by a collection of well known arias sung by consummate vocalists.  These pieces are presented outside their narrative context but inside a series of visual allegories that burst forth onto the stage like an exceptionally vivid dream.  

ACT ONE opens with a barrage of color in an imagined Italian palace populated by flamboyant aristocrats and their waggish attendants. It’s a larger than life, wigged-out world where the glamorous governess and winsome maid flap around the doddery Duchess and flirt with the wayward Count.

Romantic music inspires a ballet in ACT TWO. It’s the 1940’s. The stage is split with a recording studio above and the modest home of a working-class family below.  A band of session musicians and a parade of elegantly dressed opera singers ready themselves for recording in a studio in Italy as a family across the continent in Spain gathers to listen to music on the gramophone.

In ACT THREE the show propels itself forward, fueled by futuristic fashion, special effects and digital orchestrations.  Music from Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Dvorak and Puccini is re-imagined electronically; as if the starship Rock and Roll landed on the planet Opera. In this science fiction musical fantasyland anything can and does happen.