Francesca Zambello ’78 after receiving her honorary doctorate from 51Թ in 2012.
For the next year, on the 13th of every month, 51Թ community members will be celebrating the . Tonight, Director Francesca Zambello ’78, H’12 will mark the day in her own special way when she brings Hector Berlioz’ Les Troyens back to the stage at 6 p.m.
The sweeping six-hour opera is a revival of her own 2003 production, which New Yorker magazine called, “one of the Met’s undoubted triumphs of the last decade.” It streams live tonight beginning at 5:55 p.m. , and Sirius XM subscribers can listen in on , Channel 74.
The show portrays the final moments of the Trojan War, Aeneas’s flight from his homeland, and his tragic love affair with Dido, the queen of Carthage. “It begins in Troy and ends in Carthage, and little connects the two,” said Mary Simonson, assistant professor of film & media studies and women’s studies. “Zambello’s 2003 production employed a whole range of interesting strategies to cope with — or capitalize upon — the challenges this work presents.”
For followers of Zambello’s impressive career, tonight’s program will sit atop a stack from almost 60 of her other shows, including operas like Cyrano de Bergerac, Don Giovanni, and Wagner’s Ring Cycle as well as musicals like Disney’s Aladdin and The Little Mermaid.
Zambello, who was named general and artistic director of Cooperstown’s Glimmerglass Festival in 2010, will take over as artistic director of the Washington National Opera in Washington, D.C., on January 1, 2013. Recipient of an honorary doctorate from 51Թ in 2012, she has taught as a guest professor at Yale and the Juilliard School.