By Raffaele Cardone, Miami Lyric Opera

The recent year end recess has given the opportunity to reflect with maturity on MLO’s upcoming challenges and how to face the in moments of economic uncertainty. Needless to say that our tenacity and enthusiasm has been reinvigorated by the artistic success of the past season at Gusman Center’s Olympia Theater in Downtown Miami supported in part by the Knight Foundation.

Once again we wish to appeal to our community and private and Public Institutions to support our efforts in keeping alive the traditional opera in our city.

In 2013 we are adding three new titles to our repertoire: Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera” (A Masked Ball); Puccini’s “Il Tabarro” (The Cloak) and “Gianni Schicchi” (two one-act operas from his “Il Trittico.” The third, “Suor Angelica,” will be repeated on a double bill following the beloved “Cavalleria Rusticana.” With these pieces we have increased our repertoire to 19 titles in less than nine years. No small feat for even big companies.

Our season will start with Bizet’s Carmen at Colony Theater in Miami Beach on March 9^th. The same will be repeated on April 6 and 7 at Olympia Theater in Downtown Miami. This magnificent opera full of popular melodies by George Bizet based on the novel of Prosper Merimee is set in Seville, Spain, around 1830, and concerns the eponymous Carmen,  a beautiful Gipsy with a fiery temper. Free with her love, she woos the corporal Don José, an inexperienced soldier. Their relationship leads to his rejection of his former love, mutiny against his superior, and joining a gang of smugglers. His jealousy when she turns from him to the bullfighter Escamillo leads him to murder Carmen.

A great cast, musicians, dancers and choruses will enhance the presentation of the event usually produced only by large Opera Companies and very rarely by local or less mayor company such as MLO.