Westminster Opera Theater Presents Second U.S. Staged Performance of G.F. Handel's "Oreste"

Westminster Opera Theater will present the second staged performance in the United States of G. F. Handel’s opera “Oreste” on Tuesday, March 6 through Friday, March 9 at 8 p.m. in the Playhouse on the Westminster campus in Princeton.

Music director Daniel Beckwith and stage director Marc Verzatt have set the production in feudal Japan – a concept originated by Buck Linton, the production’s set designer and technical director.

“This setting is appropriate for the Handel opera,” says Verzatt. “I can see the highly stylized movement that was traditional in Baroque opera being transformed into movement suggestive of the Noh and Kabuki theater. The spareness of line, the power of a single gesture very much underline and intensify the words and music.”

This will be Beckwith’s second staged production of “Oreste” in the United States. In 2003, he conducted the first staged production at the Juilliard School in New York. Head of opera studies at Westminster, he is well known as a specialist in Baroque opera.

“Classical Singer” magazine’s 2006 Stage Director of the Year, Marc Verzatt has directed opera, operetta and musical theater throughout the United States and Europe. He is also a member of the faculty at Yale University, where he teaches acting in the graduate program and directs an opera scenes workshop.

“Oreste” is drawn from Euripides’ play, “Iphigenia in Tauris,” and it details the reuniting of Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon, King of Greece, with her brother Orestes following the end of the Trojan War. The opera was first performed at London’s Covent Garden in 1734 and not heard again until 1988 when it was presented as part of the 37 Handel Festival of the German Democratic Republic.

At Westminster, it will be performed in Italian with English supertitles. The set in The Playhouse includes a thrust stage, which will limit seating. Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for students/seniors. Rider University faculty, staff and students may receive one free ticket. Due to the limited seating, the box office suggests obtaining tickets in advance. The Westminster box office is open weekdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Its number is 609-921-2663.