So, what I’m saying is, I got this here gig coming up in January, now. I mentioned in an earlier entry here on ye olde metroblogge how the good opera-loving folk of Huntsville Alabama (don’t forget, it’s home to the space center and was settled by a number of European transplants in the years following the space center’s being built there…) want me to sing a couple of operas in April of next year-that was shameless self-promotion and I should be flogged. (Not literally, The Chamber is closed…)

But this here little opera is right here in Atlanta, and will be produced by a company that’s been mounting great works on the boards since the early 80’s. I’m not talking about the Atlanta Opera, which is a B house, one tier nationally just below the Metropolitan, with substantial yearly budgets and internationally known singers, but Capitol City Opera. Capitol City’s raison d’etre is at least twofold; one reason being they wanted to provide a place for Atlanta-based opera singers to learn and perform new roles, the other reason for them existing historically has been to mount great operatic works in ENGLISH.

Opera is not by default in Italian, y’all. Since the 1600’s there have been operas written with english as the native language, starting with Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell, but it really wasn’t until the 20th century that operas written in English got some legs and became major works in their own right. (A good example for someone who really loves grand Italian Opera but is curious about similar fare written with English as the native language might be the opera Peter Grimes.)

Capitol City does both operas written in English and good english translations of other works. The one I’m taking principal tenor duties in (I may be double-cast with another local tenor, so we don’t all get plum tuckered out from such extensive singifyin’) is Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte.

It’s typical Mozart; a rather silly Lorenzo da Ponte libretto graced by pure, perfect, scintillant music.

I write a metroblog entry about it not even because I’m tickled to get to do it, though I certainly am, but because I believe so strongly in supporting such arts in Atlanta. The ASO is a strong organization, but still deserves good patronage for it’s part in bringing Atlanta international prominence-there are numerous internationally acclaimed recordings of great works by the ASO. The Atlanta Opera does, in some respects, some of the best productions of major operas in their original languages you will ever see.

There is much to commend Atlanta, if you only look for it. If some dude who babbles here on the metroblog (me) gets you to check any of it out, even though he was just tooting his own horn about being in a show, it’s still worth being perceived negatively as the tooter to make sure you know what’s available to you in such a sprawling and sometimes confusing city.

Without the arts, great cities become mere hives of humanity.

Perhaps they are hives either way…and if that’s true, then what hives always need are the bees that come in heavy with pollen and do their funky little dance that tells the rest of the bees where the best flowers are.