The creators of the fledgling Acansa Arts Festival this week at various Little Rock and North Little Rock venues have pulled off a major coup: an unprecedented collection of superb vocal performances in the same hall on the same night.
A concert titled "Central Arkansas' Own" Wednesday night in the Great Hall of the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock brought together the Arkansas Chamber Singers, Opera in the Rock and Hot Springs' The Muses Project for a start-to-finish gorgeous program ranging from choral church music to opera arias to art songs.
The Chamber Singers and conductor John Erwin opened with a preview of their Oct. 10 season kick-off with the "Kyrie" and "Gloria" from the Mass in Time of War by Franz Joseph Haydn and the Regina Coeli, K.276, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, displaying always-impeccable dynamics and diction.
Five opera singers offered some very impressive arias that included soprano Maria Fasciano Di Carlo blowing the room out in "Un bel di" from Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly, mezzo-soprano Nisheedah Golden enveloping the audience with "Va! Laisse couler mes larmes" from Jules Massenet's Werther and soprano Kira Keating glittering and being gay in the showstopper from Leonard Bernstein's Candide.
Keating and tenor Vernon Di Carlo and Fasciano Di Carlo and baritone Timothy Tucker teamed up for a pair of top-notch love duets: "Tornami a dir" from Gaetano Donizetti's Don Pasquale and "A questa ora" from I Pagliacci by Ruggiero Leoncavallo, respectively.
Muses' soprano Deleen Davidson with a delightful program of autumn-themed art songs, with narrator Toni Spears providing connecting text and translating the German and French poems and one piece of Italian libretto.
The music, theater, dance and fine arts festival runs through Sunday; a complete schedule is available at AcansaArtsFestival.org. More information is available by calling (501) 663-2287.
Metro on 09/25/2014