When the current Santa Barbara Symphony season was publicly unveiled, on stage at the Lobero Theatre last September, one of the musical highlights of the session was extra-orchestral. The fine mezzo-soprano Christina Pezzarossi Ramsey performed an operatic aria — a teaser for one of the Symphony’s upcoming concerts. That moment arrives this month, under the title Ride of the Valkyries: Opera at the Symphony.
For this unusual programming move, the Santa Barbara Symphony concert at The Granada Theatre on January 20 and 21 sidesteps typical orchestral repertoire in favor of a veritable micro-festival of arias and overtures from celebrated opera repertoire. Maestro Nir Kabaretti, as it happens, is well-suited to the task and the milieu, as a conductor whose international résumé has included significant opera engagements, in Italy, Spain, and elsewhere. He also conducted the opera The Diary of Anne Frank in a visiting production by the esteemed Vienna State Opera.
The upcoming program leans largely toward Italian fare, from the likes of Verdi, Mascagni, Rossini, and Puccini. But, as promised, the Granada program also features Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” a rare household-known bit of opera culture placed in the general public ear through such sources as Warner Brothers’ cartoon culture and the film score of Apocalypse Now. The piece was also heard locally last year in Opera Santa Barbara’s (OSB) pocket-sized version of the epic opera Die Walküre, from whence it comes.
