Opera Maine will return to Merrill Auditorium this summer with a production of “The Elixir of Love” by Gaetano Donizetti with full sound and lights. Performance dates are July 28 and July 30, and the opera will be performed without an intermission.
Sarah Tucker stars in Opera Maine’s “The Elixir of Love” at Merrill Auditorium. Courtesy of Opera Maine
Dona D. Vaughn, the company’s artistic director, will direct the cast, and Maestro Isral Gursky will conduct the musicians through the comic opera, which tells a story of the magic of love. Nicolás Alberto Dosman will be chorus master. Tickets cost $39 to $136 and are available through PortTix.
Opera Maine’s Studio Artists will present the 75-minute chamber opera “As One,” a coming-of-age story about identity and true love, July 16 and July 18 at the Westbrook Performing Arts Center. Studio Artist Director Richard Gammon will direct, and Jackson McKinnon will conduct. The Palaver String Quartet will accompany singers Heather Jones and Jack Canfield. It offers a contemporary exploration of a transgender person’s journey, told through two voices.
For details, visit operamaine.org.
Fenix Theatre Company will return with an outdoor production of Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors” at Deering Oaks park in Portland July 8-31, with free performances Thursday, Friday and Saturday, weather permitting. Hannah Cordes will direct.
Fenix had planned to present “Henry IV, Part I,” which the company had begun working on last year before the show was canceled. When artistic director Peter Brown postponed “Henry” until 2022, Cordes suggested “Comedy.”
“I was all for it, as it’s a show that Fenix has never produced and something light and funny feels like the right thing to draw people to the park after a year of being in isolation,” Brown said.
Bring your chair or a blanket and grab a spot by yourself or sit among your friends. For more information, go to fenixtheatre.com
New York-based choreographer Emily Johnson, shown here performing at Socrates Sculpture Park in New York, will perform “Processions Toward, Being Future Being” in Lewiston in July. Photo by Scott Lynch, courtesy of the artist.
The Bates Dance Festival also returns this summer, bringing young dance students to the Bates College campus as well as a mix of virtual and live performances to the streets of Lewiston, July 11-31. Most venues will be outdoors in public space, and most shows are site-specific, said festival director Shoshona Currier.
“There will be virtual events, including a really exciting international collaboration. But to be able to gather together after … so long apart truly feels like a gift. We’ve been planning and hoping for this for over a year,” she said in a press release.
Among the performers is award-winning New York-based choreographer Emily Johnson, who will present “Processions Toward, Being Future Being” in and around Kennedy Park in Lewiston on July 17. The work incorporates Indigenous cultural practices and perspectives and includes a ceremonial fire. Johnson grew up in Alaska and is from the Yup’ik Nation. She is a Bessie Award-winning choreographer, Guggenheim and United States Artists Fellow, and recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Award.
For more information, go to batesdancefestival.org.
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