Opera-spresso

Soprano Lucianna Astorga is the sort of emerging artist who doesn’t wait around for opportunities to present themselves. She’s energetic, persistent, and apparently quite willing to send a follow-up email. Or two. That determination has brought her to Opera Southwest, where she makes her debut as Lola in Cavalleria rusticana.

Lola is one of opera’s more economical troublemakers. She has relatively little music but manages to generate an extraordinary amount of difficulty for everyone else. Married to Alfio, romantically entangled with Turiddu, and not especially troubled by either circumstance, she demonstrates that stage time and dramatic influence are not necessarily correlated.

For Astorga, performing with Opera Southwest is something of a homecoming. A native New Mexican, she has maintained strong ties to the state’s musical community, including appearances in Nathan Felix’s immersive operas at the Albuquerque Museum. Her work has taken her well beyond New Mexico, but there’s something particularly satisfying about seeing a young singer return to perform on a major stage in her home state.

The opera business does occasionally reward persistence. In Lucianna’s case, it has produced a role in which making trouble is practically the entire job. Learn more about Lucianna Astorga here

Cavalleria runs October 25-November 1, 2026

Buy Tickets

Opera Southwest’s relationship with mezzo-soprano Olga Perez Flora began with a minor emergency. In 2022, during preparations for Robert Xavier Rodríguez’s Frida, the company suddenly needed a replacement for the four combined roles of Dimas’ Mother, Lupe Marin, Mrs. Rockefeller and Natalia Trotsky. Whew!

Olga had only recently moved to Albuquerque, an exceptionally fortunate coincidence for an opera company confronted with the prospect of finding a qualified mezzo-soprano on very short notice.

She stepped in, saved the day, and has been coming back ever since.

Her subsequent appearances with Opera Southwest have included Toypurina in Héctor Armienta’s Zorro, the Mother and the Sea in Jorge Martín’s Before Night Falls, and the title role in the company’s 2024 Spanish-language production of Carmen. These assignments represent a fairly spectacular range of characters.

This season Olga returns as Mamma Lucia in Cavalleria rusticana, the mother of Turiddu, whose considerable maternal anxieties turn out to be entirely justified. It is a compact role, but a crucial one: Mascagni places the emotional consequences of the opera’s violence squarely in her hands.

Outside Opera Southwest, Olga is Associate Professor of Voice and Head of Voice at the University of New Mexico, where she trains young singers while maintaining an active performing career of her own. Her work spans opera, musical theater, and concert repertoire, including Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and a recording project devoted to Cuban art songs.

An opera company can spend considerable time and money cultivating artistic relationships, arranging auditions, and planning future collaborations. Occasionally the whole process begins because somebody cancels at the last minute and the right singer happens to have just moved to town.

Visit Olga Perez Flora’s website

Cavalleria runs October 25-November 1.

Buy Tickets

Artistic Director Anthony Barrese first heard baritone Todd Thomas in 2002, singing Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor during Barrese’s first season at Sarasota Opera, and never forgot him.

The following season, Todd sang the title role in both versions of Verdi’s Macbeth. One Macbeth is ordinarily sufficient to exhaust a baritone. Two suggests either an exceptionally robust constitution or a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of leisure.

Over the next twenty years their paths crossed repeatedly. Anthony heard Todd’s debut with another company in La traviata, encountered him in Tosca, and watched him become one of Sarasota Opera’s most dependable leading baritones. Todd’s career, meanwhile, took him to the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and major houses around the world.

Remarkably, despite two decades of professional overlap and friendship, they didn’t actually work together until Todd came to Opera Southwest for our New Year’s Eve concert in 2022.

Anthony describes Todd as one of his personal musical heroes – high praise indeed.

Todd returns to OSW as Alfio in Cavalleria rusticana, a role that ought to be relatively straightforward for a man whose repertoire includes Iago, Scarpia, Rigoletto, and Macbeth. Alfio, after all, is a hardworking fellow whose principal misfortune is discovering that his wife has been sleeping with somebody else. He responds by killing the man responsible, which is not a particularly constructive approach to marital difficulties but does bring the opera to a decisive conclusion.

For an artist who has spent decades portraying some of opera’s most accomplished villains, playing a man with an entirely legitimate grievance must be something of a change. 

Learn more about Todd Thomas here

Cavalleria runs October 25-November 1, 2026

Buy Tickets

I heard Jeremy Brauner this spring at Sarasota Opera, where he was singing Sam in Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah. Our Artistic Director Anthony Barrese had Jeremy in mind for our Cavalleria rusticana, so I was excited to hear him live.

Jeremy made an impression. One of the challenges of casting opera is that an audition, a recording, and a recommendation can tell you a great deal about a singer, but there’s still no substitute for sitting in a theater and hearing what actually happens.

Jeremy is making his Opera Southwest debut as Turiddu in Cavalleria rusticana, a role he previously covered at Sarasota Opera. His résumé also includes Canio in Pagliacci, Don José in Carmen, and Fritz in Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz. 

An interesting biographical detail: Jeremy began his operatic career as a baritone before deciding, with the assistance of a voice teacher, that he was actually a tenor. He made the transition in 2016 and has since worked his way into some of the heaviest tenor repertoire, including Turandot, Il trovatore, and Pagliacci. Changing voice types is not quite as simple as changing jobs, especially when the new job involves singing over an enormous orchestra.

Turiddu requires a tenor with substantial vocal horsepower, but also the ability to make a rather unsympathetic character seem recognizably human. He’s impulsive, selfish, and spectacularly bad at evaluating the consequences of his actions. In other words, an excellent operatic protagonist.

Maestro Barrese knew what he was doing. 

Visit Jeremy Brauner’s website

Cavalleria runs October 25-November 1, 2026

Buy Tickets

There is a particular satisfaction in welcoming back a singer who once passed through our apprentice program, especially when they return to sing one of opera’s most formidable roles. Max Potter, who was an apprentice artist at Opera Southwest, returns this month as Santuzza in Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana. We like to think we recognized something early. Whether we can claim any credit for what followed is, naturally, another matter entirely.

Santuzza is not a role for the fainthearted. She spends much of the opera in a state of considerable emotional distress, much of it entirely justified, and Mascagni has thoughtfully provided her with some exceptionally demanding music in which to express it. The role requires a singer who can move between wounded vulnerability and outright fury, sometimes within the space of a few measures. Max, happily, has demonstrated a considerable aptitude for both.

Since her time with us, her career has taken her through a gratifyingly varied assortment of operatic circumstances. She’s sung Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro, Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier, Mercedes in Carmen, and more. The first two are trouser roles, the third emphatically is not.

Her concert work has been no less varied, encompassing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Verdi’s Requiem, and Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été. She’s also been involved in premieres and workshops of new American music, which we regard as an especially commendable use of a singer’s time.

Opera companies have a habit of describing returning artists as members of the family, a metaphor that can be stretched beyond its useful limits. Still, there is something genuinely pleasing about having apprentice artists return after such success. We think you’ll like hearing her as Santuzza.

Visit Max Potter’s website

Cavalleria runs October 25-November 1, 2026.

Buy Tickets