FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Mark Segal
631-283-2118, ext 22
RENÉE FLEMING STARS IN FILM OF LA TRAVIATA
FROM LONDON’S ROYAL OPERA COMPANY
SOUTHAMPTON, NY 2/17/2011 —As part of Emerging Pictures’ Opera in Cinema series, the Parrish Art Museum is presenting the Royal Opera Company’s 2009 production of Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata on Sunday, February 27, at 2 pm. The production stars the celebrated American soprano Renée Fleming, as well as renowned Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja and the American baritone Thomas Hampson.
One of the most popular operas in the canon, La Traviata was composed in 1853 and based on the play La dame aux camellias by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title means “the fallen woman” and refers to the heroine, Violetta Valery, a courtesan in nineteenth-century France. Pursued by Alfredo Germont, she at first rejects his declaration of love, but by Act II she and Alfredo are sharing a country house near Paris. Their idyll is doomed, however, by the intercession of Alfredo’s father, jealousy, misunderstandings, and ill health, among other dramatic events.
According to Emerging Pictures’ cultural programming curator Christiana Little, “The role of Violetta is widely considered one of the most challenging (if not most feared!) in the soprano repertoire. The score requires a vast range of vocal pyrotechnics from the performer, and also sheer endurance—Violetta is onstage for nearly the entire opera.”
Tickets to La Traviata are $14 for Parrish members, $17 for nonmembers. The running time is 136 minutes.
The Museum's programs are made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, celebrating 50 years of building strong, creative communities in New York State's 62 counties, and the property taxpayers from the Southampton School District and the Tuckahoe Common School District.
About the Parrish Art Museum
The Parrish Art Museum is an American art museum located in Southampton, New York. Founded in 1897, the museum celebrates the artistic legacy of Long Island’s East End, one of America’s most vital creative centers. Since the mid 1950s the Museum has grown from a small village art gallery into an important art museum with a collection of more than 2,600 works of art from the nineteenth century to the present. It includes such contemporary painters and sculptors as John Chamberlain, Chuck Close, Eric Fischl, April Gornik, Elizabeth Peyton, as well as such masters as Dan Flavin, Roy Lichtenstein, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, and Willem de Kooning. The Parrish houses among of the world’s most important collections of works by the preeminent American Impressionist William Merritt Chase and by the groundbreaking post-war American realist painter Fairfield Porter. A vital cultural resource serving a diverse audience, the Parrish organizes and presents changing exhibitions and offers a dynamic schedule of creative and engaging public programs including lectures, films, performances, concerts, and studio classes for all ages. On July 19, 2010, the Parrish broke ground on a new building designed by internationally acclaimed architects Herzog & de Meuron. The 34,500-square-foot facility will triple the Museum’s current exhibition space and allow for the simultaneous presentation of loan exhibitions and installations drawn from the permanent collection.