This March, Ramin Karimloo will make his operatic debut in Songbird, presented by Washington National Opera. Songbird is a contemporary rendition of La Périchole, an operetta by Jacques Offenbach. Karimloo will co-star in Carmen (2021–2022) with Isabel Leonard, a prominent mezzo-soprano in America.
Songbird and Piquillo, two struggling singers and lovers, travel to New Orleans during the Prohibition era for Mardi Gras, a time when the cultures of America, France, and Spain collide, in an attempt to make ends meet. However, the lustful mayor Don Andrès takes advantage of their lack of wealth and sets up a fake marriage in order to have Songbird as his mistress. Can they achieve happiness despite Don Andrès and his cunning allies’ corrupting influence?
Offenbach’s boleros and seguidillas serve as inspiration for director Eric Sean Fogel, arranger/orchestrator and conductor James Lowe, and librettist Kelley Rourke as they adapt La Périchole for a modern audience with a fresh jazz-infused arrangement. Through the use of instrumentation typical of the bands of that era—piano, bass, drums, banjo, trumpet and cornet, clarinet, trombone, and sousaphone—Lowe’s recreated orchestration creates a particularly New Orleans sound. The text also uses a Big Easy style to contrast French and English.
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Songbird made its outdoor premiere at the 2021 Glimmerglass Festival. Performed in the 1,161-seat Eisenhower Theater, the WNO performance is an extension of that one, with a redesigned set by James F. Rotondo III. A nine-piece on-stage band performs a tight 75-minute show with the cast. The Eisenhower’s closeness makes it seem as though the audience is seeing a jazz performance in a speakeasy.
Isabel Leonard is back in the role of Songbird. Broadway actor Ramin Karimloo, a Tony Award® nominee, portrays Piquillo. Edward Nelson, a young American baritone who won the 2020 Glyndebourne Opera Cup, portrays Don Andrès. A number of graduates of WNO’s esteemed Cafritz Young Artists program make up the remaining cast.
Exhibitions take place in Eisenhower Theater from March 9–23, 2024.
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