for having the world’s greatest string sound. Pure delight, but at a cost. As beautiful and comfortable as the amphitheatre is, it should never have been built. What I first imagined to be the sound of wind rustling through pines prove be the unrelenting drone of I-70 magnified by the surrounding moun-tains. Quiet musical passages were greatly offended.

Don’t get me wrong, I still loved the concert. The orchestra’s associate conduc-tor, Bulgarian Rossen Milanov, provided a lesson on how to engage 21st century audi-ences. His introductions were charming, funny and fascinating. The historic perspec-tive he laid out for Ravel’s La Valse took us on a new journey through an old war horse.

The next evening, I went to Beaver Creek Village’s Vilar Center for the Arts, the setting for the Festival’s first of five Chamber Classics. It was a good concert featuring the Miami String Quartet, mother Eugenia Zuckerman on flute and daugh-ter Arianna’s crisp soprano, a fine pianist, Lydia Artymiw and fresh from CC’s Music Festival, violist Toby Appel. They played in service to Schulhoff, Bridge, Schubert, Thompson, Schumann and Bravo Vail’s composer-in-residence Melinda Wagner. But you know what? The combination of quality, intimacy and especially the audience energy of the CC Summer Music Festival sets our local incarnation above anything I’ve ever experienced!

It’s less than two hours from the Springs to the Central City Opera House, a holy

shrine for summertime opera pilgrims. The company’s artistic leadership set out to make their 75th anniversary season one to remember. It was a quadruple pay off (this is a gambling town after all.) Verdi’s La Tra-viata has been an opera’s top ten since its debut in 1853. A superb trio of principals, a lavish production and spot-on stage direc-tion made perhaps its 100,000th perfor-mance newly-born. The stars were Central City veterans: Jennifer Casey Cabot, who tore our hearts out in Hoiby’s Summer and Smoke back in 2002, did more of the same with her beautifully haunting and vocally impeccable Violetta; Chad Shelton, whom the company seems to own, three leads in the past six years after being an apprentice, but his Alfredo was his best yet, offering urgent but expressive tenor ecstasy; Grant Youngblood—no one has been featured more in the last decade than and his glori-ous Germont has aged supremely.

Next came a world premiere—Poet Li Bai by Guo Wenjing, featuring a tour-de-force performance from Chinese baritone Hao Jiang Tian. More scenic cantata than opera, Li Bai was sung in Chinese and generated a surreal portrayal of China’s seminal poet exposing the frailty of the human condition. Wenjing’s brilliant use of the orchestra walked a fine line ranging from traditional Chinese to Romanticism to Expressionism and would have been better served in a concert hall. Massenet’s Cendril-lon (Cinderella) is pure theatre and benefit-ed from the kind of no holds barred creative production that has been the signature accomplishment of Central City during the reign of Artistic Director Pat Pearce.

Menotti was again serendipitously

honored through another biographical work. The company threw its collective heart at The Saint of Bleeker Street and took the audience along for a powerful, beautiful and depressing ride. It was a fine produc-tion championed by operatic great and now stage director Catherine Malfitano.

August was time for the Springs to shine. I toured our new Fine Arts Center a week after opening madness and the day after the announcement that De Marsche Decided to Deleave. So be it. Perhaps a new director will actually embrace this commu-nity and find the means to use this glorious new museum space to magnify the superb work of our regional artists in ways not pos-sible before. Let his legend live on.

Grafted on to our humble hamlet’s mu-seum is now an elegant, spacious and versa-tile addition that feels a bit like we woke up finding the Taj Mahal next door to a down-town McDonalds. This is no architectural wonder like the new Hamilton Wing up at the Denver Art Museum, but what it does for the FAC’s permanent collection, both on the walls of the first floor and with plente-ous of on-site storage, and what it makes possible for touring shows in the palatial mezzanine is incredible. Oddly, there was almost no one in the galleries on that Friday afternoon. Although marketed as Pop and Il-lusion, the Weisman art exhibit, up through Oct. 28, is an exceptional 20th century show with much variety. Don’t miss it!

Speaking of hamlets, how about an overload of Hamlet, made possible by The-atreworks and Tom McElroy’s Studio 802. Murray Ross’s traditional production gave us nothing new and although populated by a talented cast, failed to create any real

theatrical magic. This became perfect fodder for McElroy, who took Heiner Müller’s Hamlet Machine far past its intended 20th century reflective state into new territory thanks to masterful video manipulations and projections. His cast, Ashley Crockett, Beth Clements, Lisa McElroy and Joe Forbeck allowed McElroy’s and Mueller’s dismal vision to produce 70 fascinating minutes of small, black box, expressionist theatre.

But Ross laughed last, along with any-one who dared witness Antonio’s Revenge, a pitch-black gruesome comedy from the pen of Shakespeare’s contemporary Jon Madson. It made this summer’s Shakespeare Festival one to remember. I’ve never seen an effort from Ross that was so thoroughly conceived and executed. I wonder if the director’s and cast’s attention to the possibilities here cost them when time came to mount the one millionth production of Hamlet.

Antonio’s performances were stellar. Best were Michael Cobb’s deliciously twisted portrayal of Duke Piero, Robert Rais’ side spitting fop Bladuro and Khris Lewin’s laughably relentless Antonio. But it was the edgy work from each of the 16 cast mem-bers that made this production truly great.

The season’s exclamation point came courtesy of the Colorado Springs Phil-harmonic in September. Under Mae-stro Smith’s intense and exacting baton, Eisenstein’s silent film masterpiece, Battle-ship Potemkin, was elevated to even greater revolutionary impact by our hard-working Philharmonic through selected movements from Shostakovich symphonies.

Autumn is upon us now. But the images and sensations of this past summer’s artistic journey will be with me forever. s

12 Springs Magazine / October 2007

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