Boston Lyric Opera opens its 50th season Friday with “William Tell,” a story about a community coming together to fight authoritarianism.
“This felt like a great piece right now in Boston, the city of revolution,” said Nina Yoshida Nelsen, artistic director for BLO, who will perform the part of Hedwige, William Tell’s wife.
The story is one that we’ve seen repeated throughout history. The four-act show follows the legendary archer William Tell gathering his community to fight for freedom against tyranny.
Nearly one year ago, Yoshida Nelsen helped decide that “William Tell” would be BLO’s 50th season opener. She reached out to transdisciplinary artists Vita Tzykun and David Adam Moore to co-direct.
The full version of “William Tell,” Gioachino Rossini’s final opera, runs over four hours. Given its length, the show is rarely produced on American stages. The last production of “William Tell” in Boston was in 1880.
“It’s an exciting challenge for the company,” Yoshida Nelsen said. “It’s also a statement of who we are as a company at 50 years old. Here we are and look at us doing something that hardly anyone does.”
In order to put on this show, the company and directors knew they had to trim the length of the show.
“That is the most traditional thing to do with this piece,” Moore said.
After the third performance of “William Tell” in the 19th century, people began to cut the show down because of its runtime filled with ballet sequences and long breaks. Tzykun and Moore decided to cut out those longer “filler” sequences and keep the “essential” plot points to make a more cinematic version of the opera.
“What we’ve done is we have created the William Tell that is fitting for our time and for a contemporary audience,” Tzykun said.
BLO’s performance of “William Tell” has a runtime of about two and a half hours.
Tzykun and Moore, who are also in charge of the production design, applied their “ethos” of trans-disciplinary art into the project. In addition to the traditional elements of an orchestra and choir, the set includes video projections.
They decided not to set the performance in medieval Switzerland, where the story originated, to avoid boxing it into a historical performance.
“This story is too radioactive right now,” Moore said. “It’s absolutely reflective of real-world situations, recent historical situations, future historical situations and anxieties of the future.”
This production is set in a fictional world five years or so into the future. The conflict is between the two neighboring countries – Helvetia, a place with a degrading democracy, and Allemania, governed by an authoritarian regime. Character costuming reflects a more contemporary look with camouflage pants and trench coats.
George Gagnidze of Germany plays William Tell. He is joined by Anya Matanovič as Mathilde, Konu Kim as Arnold, Brianna J. Robinson as Jemmy and others.
“If you want to make ‘William Tell’ on the stage you should find a good menu of the singers,” Kim said. “That’s not easy.”
The cast has been utilizing BLO’s new space in Boston for the past few weeks of rehearsal. The building was renovated last year to add three new rehearsal rooms.
In the past, the company struggled to find rehearsal space in Boston. David Angus, who’s entering his 17th season as BLO’s lead conductor, recalled having to move around five locations when preparing for a show. Now the company has a central location allowing performers to settle into a space and connect with one another.
“It doesn’t sound like such a big deal,” Angus said. “But it’s transformative.”
“William Tell” opens Friday at the Emerson Colonial Theater. There will be three more performances on Sept 27, Oct. 2 and Oct. 4. The opera will be sung in French, but there will be English surtitles for audiences to follow along.
“They can expect a fantastic surprise,” Angus said. “Music that they’ve never heard that is going to blow them away. A thrilling story which is told with passion and honesty.”