By Minnesota Opera staff

From the Italian master who wrote Madame Butterfly and Turandot comes a romantic portrait of America’s iconic Golden West. Puccini’s gorgeous melodies and blazing orchestral colors are set against a backdrop of a gold-mining frontier town, where a poker-playing, pistol-wielding saloon owner finds herself in a love triangle with a handsome outlaw and the sheriff who is in hot pursuit of him. Considered by Puccini as one of his greatest works, La fanciulla del West had its successful and highly publicized premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in 1910.

Soprano Claire Rutter, who was hailed as “blest with a powerful stage presence and a top-end coloratura like warm steal” by Classical Source, makes her Minnesota Opera debut as the high-spirited Minnie, and tenor Rafael Davila also debuts as the bandit Dick Johnson. Completeing the love triangle, bass-baritone Greer Grimsley returns after a critically acclaimed Macbeth in January 2014 as the mining camp’s shady sheriff Jack Rance. Great River Shakespeare Festival artistic director and acclaimed fight choreographer (Silent Night, 2011), Minnesota-based Doug Scholz-Carlson makes his mainstage directorial debut with this Minnesota Opera production. Michael Christie (Manon Lescaut, Arabella, Macbeth) returns for his third season as Minnesota Opera Music Director to conduct the Minnesota Opera Orchestra.

La fanciulla del West by Giacomo Puccini

September 20, 25, 27 and 28, 2014

Sung in Italian with English translations projected above the stage.