FARMINGTON – For light summer entertainment check out PORTopera’s Young Artists’ production of Café Vienna by American composer Richard Pearson Thomas It will be performed on Friday, July 15 at 7:30 p.m. in Nordica Auditorium in Merrill Hall at the University of Maine at Farmington.
The story deals with the intersecting lives of four patrons in the course of their daily visits to a coffee house in Vienna. (Austria, NOT Maine.) The music is tuneful and romantic as you would expect, and will be sung in English.
The work is set in 1907, close to the time of Lillian Nordica’s final visit and concert in her hometown of Farmington in 1911. In fact, the centennial of that visit is being celebrated in part with this performance of Café Vienna. It is being co-sponsored by the Arts Institute of Western Maine, an affiliate of the University of Maine at Farmington, and the Nordica Memorial Association.
PORTopera’s Young Artists are selected by competitive, national auditions of young singers who are on the cusps of operatic careers. There will be five performers in the opera, one of whom, Jesse Wakeman, is one of this year’s winners of the Nordica Memorial Scholarship. He will return to Farmington on Aug. 17 to perform in the annual Nordica Day concert with the other winner, Shannon Connell, along with the original scholarship winner from 1985, Dr. Joseph Wiggett.
Tickets for Café Vienna will be $12 for adults, but free for children 16 and younger. They can be purchased at the door or ahead of time from Everyday Music in Farmington. For more information you can call The Nordica Homestead Museum at 778-2042.
