Kansas City Lyric Opera’s new season is alive with ‘The Sound of Music’

For more than a year, the Lyric Opera of Kansas City has been playing catchup after the pandemic, mounting shows that had been previously scheduled but then canceled. The Lyric has just announced its 2023-2024 season, and it’s a brand new slate, and those who love the classics will be very happy.

The season starts with the ever-popular duo “Cavalleria Rusticana” and “Pagliacci,” followed by two other crowd-pleasers, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The Sound of Music” and Charles Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette.” The season will conclude in epic fashion with “Journey to Valhalla,” a program of excerpts from Richard Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen.”

After fulfilling its pandemic obligations, Deborah Sandler, the Lyric’s CEO and general manager, says she wanted the company to present a season of favorites.

“I wanted to give the audience some core repertoire,” she said.

These operas may be core repertoire, but they haven’t been performed in Kansas City in decades. And “The Sound of Music” and “Journey to Valhalla” are completely new to the Lyric Opera. “Cavalleria Rusticana” and “Pagliacci,” or “CavPag,” as it’s known to opera mavens, hasn’t been on the Lyric stage in 24 years.

“I think the music in Cav Pag is phenomenal,” Sandler said. “‘A lot of people know the music, but are not aware of it. You know, like from ‘Pagliacci,’ ‘Laugh, clown, laugh,’ but he’s dying inside. ‘Cavalleria’ and ‘Pagliacci’ were the beginning of the verismo period. When we get to verismo, it’s aggressive, it’s not passive-aggressive. These two operas have a lot to do with how killing numbs us to further killing. Unfortunately, we are dealing with this today in our world.”

One show next season which might make some opera fans do a double-take is Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s “The Sound of Music.”

“Some people might want to quibble about ‘The Sound of Music,’ but the Rodgers and Hammerstein songbook is classic,” Sandler said. “The music is beautiful, and when you give it the benefit of a large orchestra, it really sounds phenomenal. In a Broadway house, you have a very small band in the pit. When it’s orchestrated for a large group of instrumentalists, it sounds very different. It’s very lush and it’s very full.”

And the story of the von Trapp family fleeing Nazi-occupied Austria has all the drama of grand opera.

“It has many different storylines at the same time,” Sandler said. “You’re dealing with an impending war. You’re dealing with one family’s attempt to survive and not abandon their values.”

“Roméo et Juliette” is Gounod’s take on the Shakespearean tragedy. It’s a classic 19th century French opera, but it hasn’t been performed by the Lyric in 20 years.

“It’s a timeless story,” Sandler said. “One of the things that is so phenomenal about the score are the four duets that are magnificent. There will be beautiful singing with a beautiful set, and the music is just unbelievable. We don’t do that much French opera, so this is very special.”

The season will end with “Journey to Valhalla,” a semi-staged concert of greatest hits from Wagner’s Ring Cycle, four operas that add up to about 13 hours.

Music critic Donald Tovey wrote derisively of listeners who “enjoy the bleeding chunks of butcher’s meat chopped from Wagner’s operas” rather than the complete works. But let’s get real, who has time to spend a week in the theater soaking up Wagner’s genius? And then there’s the prohibitive cost of mounting all of the operas.

“As a company, we are not big enough to tackle the Ring Cycle, or even one of the operas from the Ring Cycle,” Sandler said. “However, we can bring beautiful playing and beautiful singing and we can share Wagner with our audiences. You’re starting to see more and more Wagner being done, but it’s being broken down into smaller pieces.”

“Amahl and the Night Visitors” will be given a rest from their wearying journey to Bethlehem. Although the Christmas opera, which the Lyric has presented for the past three holiday seasons, is not on the schedule, Sandler expects it to return in the future.

“We built ‘Amahl’ to bring it back, and we also plan to take it on tour,” she said.

Sandler says the Lyric is planning to do another family opera next year, but not during the holiday season. She says the Lyric is currently commissioning the opera. And there are other things in the works, as well.

“Stay tuned, we’ll have a full roster of community engagement events,” Sandler said. “We’ll have a lot of education events, continuing our intentional desire to get all of Kansas City to know about opera. There’s a lot more to come.”

Lyric Opera’s 2023-24 season:

“Cavalleria Rusticana” by Pietro Mascagni and “Pagliacci” by Ruggero Leoncavallo. 7:30 p.m. Sept. 23 & 29 and 2 p.m.Oct. 1.

“The Sound of Music” by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. 7:30 p.m. Nov. 4, 8 and 10 and 2 p.m. Nov. Nov. 11 and 12.

“Roméo et Juliette” by Charles Gounod. 7:30 p.m. March 9 and 15 and 2 p.m. March 17, 2024.

“Journey to Valhalla” based on Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle. 7:30 p.m. May 3 and 2 p.m. May 5, 2024.

All performances at Muriel Kauffman Theatre, Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. 816-471-7344 or kcopera.org.

Spire Chamber Ensemble — ‘Transcendent’

“Transcendent” is the very appropriate name the Spire Chamber Ensemble has given to a concert of music by William Byrd. Ben Spalding will lead the group in Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices and other English choral works March 18 at Visitation Catholic Church and March 19 at St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Parish.

The concert will commemorate the 400th anniversary of the death of Byrd, a composer who wrote for both the Church of England and the then-outlawed Roman Catholic Church. Byrd, a crypto- Catholic, kept his faith under wraps, and managed to write gorgeous choral music for both faiths. The Mass for Four Voices is considered one of his masterpieces.

The concert will also include music by Thomas Tallis, Benjamin Britten, Cecilia McDowell, James MacMillan, and Ken Burton.

7:30 p.m. March 18 at Visitation Catholic Church, 5141 Main St., and 2 p.m. March 19 at St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Parish, 14251 Nall Ave., Overland Park. $10-$25. spirechamberensemble.org.

Te Deum — Vespers

Those looking for Lenten calm and reflection should consider Vespers, being presented by Te Deum led my Matthew Christopher Shepard on March 12 at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church. The concert will be an entirely chanted vespers service. There is a growing appreciation for ancient liturgies, and Te Deum is to be commended for its commitment to keeping Gregorian chant a living tradition.

5 p.m. March 12, St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, 1307 Holmes St. Free. te-deum.org.

You can reach Patrick Neas at patrickneas@kcartsbeat.com and follow his Facebook page, KC Arts Beat, at www.facebook.com/kcartsbeat.