PORTopera’s Young Artist Program to present two comic operas, Mozart’s The Impresario and Donizetti’s The Night Bell

The PORTopera’s Young Artist Program will present two one-act comic operas, Mozart’s The Impresario and Donizetti’s The Night Bell, in six locations June 25 through July 11.

All productions are directed by Ellen Chickering of the University of Southern Maine School of Music and will be accompanied by Music Director Kathleen Scott.

The Impresario was written in 1786 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the same year he composed The Marriage of Figaro. The Impresario is set in the theater manager’s room at the opera house, with the manager juggling the egos of two singers who auditioned for the same role. The rivalry between the two singers causes the impresario to split the character of the opera in two, providing both singers an opportunity to enact the part on the stage simultaneously.

Donizetti’s The Night Bell (“Il Campanello di Notte”) was produced in Naples in 1836. The scene follows the attempts of an unsuccessful lover to prevent his successful rival, an apothecary, from enjoying his wedding night. He succeeds by adorning various disguises, ringing the night bell, and asking for medicine, interrupting any thoughts of romance.

PORTopera’s Young Artist Program was created to support PORTopera’s mission to bring opera to Maine’s communities and to foster operatic talent from Maine and elsewhere. The Young Artist Program is sponsored in part by The Fritz and Lavinia Jensen Foundation and The Robert and Dorothy Goldberg Charitable Foundation.

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