The opera was composed just after Puccici’s most famous, Madama Butterfly, commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera, and premiered in New York in 1910. The premier starred Enrico Caruso and Emmy Destin, for who the leading roles of Dick Johnson and Minnie were written.
If you think an opera set in a saloon stocked with gold miners, dancing girls, sheriffs, posses and rustlers is an incongruity, think of the Divine Sarah (Bernhardt) star of the French stage, who toured the U.S. nine times between 1880 and 1918. She performed plays like La Dame aux Camélias and Cyrano de Bergerac, sometimes in tents and saloons to crowds of cowpokes.
And if 19th century setters could long for high culture now and then, so should you. The Girl of the Golden West is an easy entry into the world of opera, the Italian lyrics translated in superscript so you know whether to laugh or cry.
Now, on the occasion of its centennial, all-American diva Deborah Voigt sings the title role of Minnie, starring opposite Marcello Giordani.
Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West screens January 8 at 12 noon in the James Devin Moncus Theater in HD. Admission is $8 for children, $12 for members, $16 for non-members and $14 for seniors and students. That’s a bargain folks. Call 337 233-7060 or go to the AcA’s website for more information.
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
Is it a crime for citizens to photograph, video, or take notes of a police officer in the line of duty, or a right protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? Locally, such activity, as witnessed recently, will at the very least result in a night spent behind bars.
At Thursday's State of the Economy luncheon, LEDA President and CEO Gregg Gothreaux said PXP has already quietly hired 180 people for its Broussard expansion.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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