rA

Entertainment

•

• '•••A:,&,• S.s.•. • • k,A:4,,,,,,.

‘--

Photo by Carol Pratt, courtesy ofWashington Opera

Above, from left to right:
Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier"
(April 15-30), Puccini's "Tosca"
(May 6-14) and Britten's
Peter Grimes" (June 3-11)
comprise the spring opera season.

-4/7

2000

Photo by Marty Sohl, courtesy of San Francisco Opera

BILL CARROLL

Special to the Jewish News

T

he 2000 spring season at the Detroit
Opera House will have a little bit of
everything — the Detroit premieres of
two operas, one a romantic comedy and
the other a modern masterpiece; an old-fashioned
Puccini thriller; a cast featuring a whole mishpacha
(family) ... and even a special day for baseball fans.
That day is Tuesday, April 11, when the Tigers
open their home season with an afternoon game at
the new Comerica Park just across the street from
the Detroit Opera House.
Michigan Opera Theatre will display a "wel-
come to the neighborhood" banner and offer tours
of the opera house to everyone, with singing by
performers in costume and "hot dog" vendors sell-
ing opera season-ticket subscriptions.
While MOT staff members — who have had
the best view of the piece-by-piece construction of
the stadium — will be friendly to their new neigh-
bors, they aren't exactly enthralled with the park-
ing chaos that the 40,000-seat stadium may bring
to the neighborhood.
The first test comes after Tiger fans vacate the

area's precious parking spaces following a day game
Saturday, April 15, and opera fans swoop in for the
traditional opening-night performance of the
spring season at the 2,700-seat elegantly restored
opera house.
Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier, a sexy entan-
glement of lust and chivalry, has six performances,
including Sunday matinees April 16 and 30 at 2
p.m., an hour after Tiger day-game patrons get
first crack at the parking.
There will be six other occasions during the rel-
atively short opera season when performance times
will clash with the 81-game baseball season: They
are all 8 p.m. opera performances that begin an
hour after the ballgame starts.
What could result are various parking-lot entan-
glements — minus the chivalry.
Veteran downtown observers agree the stadium
has brought a shortage of parking spaces to the
area around the burgeoning theater district that
also includes the Fox, State, Gem, Century and
Music Hall theaters.
There are supposed to be about 50,000 parking
spaces within a "10-minute" walk from Comerica
Park, and surveys show that baseball game-bound
vehicles usually carry two to three people — com-

