Our Resident Artists putting a palette of colors into their coloratura at February's Song Shop concert. (photo credit: David Bachman) April Song Shop Concert Saturday, April 4 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM Bitz Opera Factory This Saturday, get ready for some Falstaff , fan favorites, and fa-la-las... all for FREE! Our Resident Artist singers are giving you a sneak peak of some of the music from our final opera of the season. Join us for a FREE one-hour concert featuring excerpts from Falstaff , plus a few bonus arias from your favorite operas guaranteed to make you merrier than the Wives of Windsor! Then stay to meet and mingle after the show, with snacks and coffee provided by the FRIENDS of Pittsburgh Opera! This program is generously sponsored by Dr. Verna Corey in memory of William Penn Snyder III. Saddles, Smoke, & Songs Saturday, April 11 5:00 PM Ople Farms (Zelienople) As part of our Outside the Salon event series, we bring you another exciting opera...
Malic Maat as Bert, Bria Walker-Rhoze and Monteze Freeland as Kenneth in Primary Trust Photo Credit all to Maranie R. Staab Since he first set foot on a Pittsburgh stage what, a decade or so ago, Monteze Freeland has wowed audiences as an actor, director and theater administrator. And while I’ve been able to catch two of the productions in which he showed off his Thespian skills, I have to admit his latest role as Kenneth in Primary Trust is the one that impressed me most. In creating his character of a 38-year-old African-America male living in Cranberry, New York, just east of Rochester, Freeland as Kenneth seems quite comfortably settled in a routine and repetitive life following a childhood trauma as a 10-year-old. Early in the Pulitzer Prize winning play by Eboni Booth, he recalls the anguished terror he felt each day worrying that his mother wouldn’t return from her day job. His emotional life shattered when he returned home one day only to find his mother dead....