IMPORTANT TICKET INFORMATION

Picture ID required to pick up tickets and for verification of ticket purchases. Please arrive 30 minutes early to collect your tickets. No refunds or exchanges given. The house is general seating. LATE SEATING WILL NOT BE PERMITTED.

Please call for accessible seating or group rates: 202-687-ARTS

Parking:  Street parking is available or patrons may park (for a fee) in the Leavey Center (entrance on Reservoir Road) or SWQ parking facilities (enter via Canal Road). There is Free on- campus parking on weekends.

All three operas will be presented as part of a 3 production residency featuring Ground  (Sept. 7-9, 2007), Messiah by G.F. Handel (Dec. 7-9, 2007) and David et Jonathas by M.A. Charpentier (May 2-4, 2008). Buy a subscription to all 3 and receive a 15% discount. After the first production, buy 2 for a 10% discount.

GROUND
Music by Merula, Monteverdi, Ferrari, and others
Concept / Creation / Stage Direction: Timothy Nelson
Lighting / Set / Projections Design: Kel Millionie

September 7th - 9th at 8 PM

After the success of its 2006 premiere, AOT remounts “Ground.” This intimate performance piece weaves intoxicating ostinato-bass compositions of the Italian 17th century into the story of a life-cycle for soprano and counter-tenor. With meaning conveyed through gesture, movement and video projections, this innovative theater piece touches the heart with its directness and simplicity. Audiences greeted the 2006 performances with uniform enthusiasm and AOT brings back the same musicians for its 2007 revival and tour. Though strikingly new in its multimedia aesthetic and dramatic perspective, the themes of Ground are eternal and human, and its effect is timeless and heartfelt.

Running time:  2hours, 45minutes   (with 2 intermissions 15minutes, 10 minutes)

MESSIAH
By G.F. Handel
Directed by Timothy Nelson
Musical Co-Direction by Timothy Nelson & Adam Pearl
Ignoti Dei Orchestra

December 7th and 8th at 8 PM; December 9th at 5 PM

At the center piece of this season is America's first staged Messiah. What is unquestionably Handel's masterpiece comes to life upon the stage in a production capturing the essence of the work. The combined forces of AOT, Ignoti Dei Orchestra, and a vibrant and talented young cast come together to explore the human side of Handel's iconic score. Performed by five soloists, Georgetown University’s own Chamber Singers (under the direction of Frederick Binkholder), and in its original 1742 orchestration for strings and trumpet, AOT peers through Messiah to look at the questions of being human at the beginning of the new millennium.The score is electrifying, the libretto a masterpiece of rhetoric construction, and together they are considered by many to be divine. The vibrancy and power of this work exist in its inherent drama. In the spirit of that drama the creative team of AOT meets Handel's Messiah on its own terms, and the staged production is the result of an organic process of allowing the work to speak for itself. Musical sensitivity, dramatic innovation, artistic precision; the cornerstones of AOT are realized in one of the great pillars of western culture.

Running time:  2 hours, 30 minutes   (with one 15 minute intermission)

DAVID ET JONATHAS
By M.A. Charpentier
Directed by Timothy Nelson
Musical Direction by Timothy Nelson
Ignoti Dei Orchestra

May 2nd and 3rd at 8 PM; May 4th at 5 PM

AOT completes its 2007-2008 season with Charpentier's remarkable 1688 opera David et Jonathan.  This work, the largest in the AOT repertoire, is a breathtaking masterpiece of the French baroque and strikingly contemporary in its themes.  Work-shopped in AOT's 2005 young artist program, this production will be the first professional staging of the opera in the Americas.  David et Jonathas explores the relationship between three timeless figures and probes the nature of man's relationship with the universe.  In profoundly beautiful music Charpentier creates a heartbreaking portrayal unlike any of its day.  Of the 2005 workshop the Baltimore Sun said the opera "set to music of immense beauty, couldn't be more straight-to-the-heart...as noble as anything by Wagner, as emotionally wrenching as anything by Puccini."  For this final production of the season, AOT is joined by the enlarged Ignoti Dei orchestra and chorus.

Running time:  2hours, 20minutes   (with 15 intermission)