GTMF ’26 concludes with opera highlights – JH News&Guide
As has become customary, the Grand Teton Music Festival will send its 65th season out on a song.
While renovations at the Festival’s 50-year-old Walk Hall in Teton Village prohibit the elaborate semi-staged opera productions of years past, Music Director Sir Donald Runnicles nevertheless will uphold tradition. A “Night at the Opera,” performed in the Jackson Hole High School auditorium, features guest soprano Eleni Calenos and tenor Daniel Luis Espinal performing highlights from Verdi’s “La traviata” and Puccini’s “La bohème.”
“I wanted to bring audiences back into the wonderful world of Italian opera,” Runnicles said earlier this summer. “We’ve spent recent seasons exploring German repertoire, and it felt like the right moment to return to Puccini and the composers who shaped that tradition.”
Concerts will begin with Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony No. 4. Like his “Scottish” Symphony No. 3, it was inspired by his 1829-31 European travels. Begun while in Italy, he finished it in Berlin in 1833 (while also working on his Symphony No. 5) and conducted its premiere that May.
While the work may not sound overtly Italian to contemporary ears, it offers Mendelssohn’s impressions of his time in the Mediterranean country, with a joyful, rousing opening that perhaps expresses his own excitement. The slow second movement was inspired by a religious procession he saw in Naples, while the final pulls from Roman and Neapolitan dances.
After intermission, the program will continue with scenes from Puccini and Verdi, Runnicles said, “along with selections from the bel canto repertoire chosen to showcase our guest singers. And, perhaps, it also serves as a lovely reminder of that sound world before we embark on ‘Tosca’ together next summer.”
read the full story