Arts Entertainment w- Tempting Trio 've,Entertainment: qy, Friday, Saturday ours: daT 'I rsday 5:30 - 9:30 rday 5:30-10:30 ids Sunday 12:00-9:30 Sunday brunch from 4.W oOdward Ave. of McNic.hols) etroit 65-0331 &..:"Okty .1.'aiet parking GRAND OPENING Furniture • Eclectic Home Accessories Now Showing Turn-of-the-Century Bronze Sculpture Chinese Rugs Lane Furniture 1930 - 1940's Wakefield Dinette Deco-style Marble Clock Hours: Wed., Thurs., Fri., 11-6 Sat., & Sun., 12-5 MOT's spring opera season offers both well-loved and rarely performed works. BILL CARROLL Special to the Jewish News ichigan Opera Theatre will launch its spring season at the Detroit Opera House Saturday, April 20, with a Verdi masterpiece and conclude in June with a Mozart favorite as it seeks to shake the post-Sept. 11 doldrums that affected many theater companies throughout the country. Ticket sales and charitable donations fell measurably everywhere — then snapped back. MOT's season subscrip- tions, for example, have dropped about 15 percent — with some opera goers reluctant to commit to long-range plans. On the other hand, individual event sales have picked up. MOT founder and General Director David DiChiera won't let the current conditions get him down as things slow- ly return to normal. "In order for MOT to continue to mature and thrive in our fourth decade, we must move forward aggressively, expand our repertoire, create our own artistic vision of the world's great operas and increase our marketing efforts," he asserted. "Our spring season offers something new in this respect for audiences: newly designed productions, works new to our repertory and, of course, the finest artists to bring these works to life." Baritone Mark Delavan is the scheming Iago, and soprano Giuseppina Piunti makes her North American debut as Desdemona A scene from From `Otello' to 'Figaro The spring season con- "The Marriage Giussepe Verdi's Otello, open- tinues May 11-19 with of Figaro," which ing tomorrow and running Leo Delibes' exotic opera will be staged by through April 28, features Lakme, from which the returning Jewish- Russian tenor Vladimir enchanting "Flower Canadian director Duet" and "Bell Song" Galouzine, who will sing the Bernard Uzan. title role for the first time in originate. Internationally North America. famed soprano Sumi Jo Otello tells the tragic tale of returns to MOT for her the governor of Cypress, debut as the beautiful whose ruthless ensign, Iago, fans the Brahmin priestess Lakme. flames of suspicion that Otello's cap- Lakme, which premiered in 1883, tain and Otello's wife, Desdemona, was once very popular on the interna- are lovers. Adapted from tional stage because its exotic setting Shakespeare's Othello, the title charac- in India particularly appealed to ter's passion for justice leads to his Europe's fascination with the East. and Desdemona's destruction. The opera • Tigaro's' Other Half The checkered career of Mozarts favorite librettist. Consignments Considered DIANA LIEBERMAN Copy Editor/Education Writer Vintage with a Vision 3305 Orchard Lake Rd. • Keego Harbor (Next to House of Denmark) Phone: 248-683-2455 Count on us for everything you need to know in your community. 114 4/19 2002 84 Bar/Bat Mitzvah's • Engagements Health • Food • Insight • New Arrivals and much more! T he librettist for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's most revolutionary operas — The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosi Fan Tutti — was a Jewish- born poet, violinist, translator, bookshop owner, gambler, libertine and priest, whose final job was as professor of Italian at Columbia University in New York. Lorenzo da Ponte was born Emanuele Conegliano on March 10, 1749, in a small town north of Venice, where his father was a leather merchant. After his mother died, his father married a Catholic woman and the whole family was baptized by a local bishop, Monsignor Lorenzo da Ponte, whose name the 14-year-old Emanuele adopted. As a young man, da Ponte's skill at languages, including Hebrew, enabled him to become a professor of classics and vice rector of a seminary. He was ordained as a priest in 1773, but his behavior was distinctly unclerical, including numerous relationships with married and unmarried women alike. Da Ponte met Mozart, in Vienna, after he had been exiled from his native country. The Marriage of Figaro, which debuted in 1786, was the pair's first collaboration The choice of text was a controversial one. The original play, by French playwright Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, lam- pooned the politics of the time and showed servants as more capable than their masters. The Lorenzo da Ponte play was viewed as an attack on the aristocracy and can be seen as a foreshadowing of the French Revolution, which began in 1789. 'In the years following Mozart's death, da Ponte, who had been poet of the court theater of the Hapsburg emperor, lost his job and moved to London. In addition to his writ- ing and translating, he ran a used bookshop. He immigrat- ed to the United States with his common-law wife, also Jewish-born, just as he was about to be arrested for debt. They were listed in the ship's log as Mr. And Mrs. Da Ponte, Anglicans. As usual, da Ponte landed on his feet. After running a dis- tillery, grocery store, cartage service, bookstore and rooming house, he was appointed to the faculty of Columbia