Fort Worth Opera announces 2012 festival lineup

This year's Fort Worth Opera Festival opens Saturday with The Mikado. And you can already order your season tickets for the 2012 festival.

Two of next year's operas will be regional premieres of recent American works: Jake Heggie's Three Decembers and Mark Adamo's Lysistrata. Rounding out the lineup will be traditional stagings of The Marriage of Figaro and Tosca.

"I think it's really exciting that we're able again to present contemporary works alongside some really great blockbusters," general director Darren Woods said.

Both the newer works are in populist musical styles that should appeal even to conservative opera lovers. Both had premieres by the Houston Grand Opera: Lysistrata in 2005 and Three Decembers, originally titled Last Acts, in 2008.

The former is a playful adaptation of Aristophanes' 411 B.C. play about Greek women withholding sex from their warring husbands. The latter is a tear-jerker about a self-absorbed diva and her dysfunctional relations with her children. Both will be given new productions, and Three Decembers has been considerably revised since its Houston run.

"I loved both those pieces from the beginning," Woods said, "but I knew they had some challenges. Jake has worked on Three Decembers, and it's tighter and more beautiful, and makes more sense."

Woods said Fort Worth's production of Lysistrata will be "much more straightforward, much more pared down" than Houston's. "The ending is a much more intimate moment."

Three Decembers, an intimate chamber opera, will be performed at the 500-seat Scott Theatre. The other operas will be at Bass Hall.

A real draw for Tosca will be the return of soprano Carter Scott, who delivered a world-class performance in the title role of the 2008 festival's Turandot. She also sang in Fort Worth's 2005 Tosca.

"We're doing it in a completely different production this time," Woods said, with Michael Chioldi as Scarpia and Roger Honeywell as Cavaradossi.