• Austin Lyric Opera Artistic Director Richard Buckley announced the company’s 2005-06 season. The centerpiece will be Dmitri Shostakovich’s 1934 work, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, the tale of a young bride whose loveless marriage and manipulative lover provoke her to murder (Jan. 7-15). That launches the yearlong celebration of Shostakovich’s centenary by arts groups all across the city. (More on that next week.) Opening the season will be another tale of bloody passions, Il Trovatore, by Verdi (Oct. 7-10). And he’ll close next season as this season with a Mozart, but next year’s will be on a darker note: Don Giovanni (April 28-May 1). For more information, call 472-5992 or visit www.austinlyricopera.org.
• And also on the opera front (sorta), Salvage Vanguard Theater has landed new offices in the hive of audio, video, and arts businesses at 501 Studios. Their phone still rings at 474-SVT-6, but to visit their digs, you now need to foot it to 902 E. Fifth #103. The new location leaves the recently fire-burned company one less thing to worry over as it preps its latest show, the original opera Genghis Khan, by inexhaustible music man Graham Reynolds and SVT big kahuna Jason Neulander. And SXSW-ers, take note: SVT will be accepting wristbands for the shows the open-ing weekend. For more information, visit www.salvagevanguard.org.
This article appears in March 11 • 2005.