Maine Perspective Front Page
Maine Center for the Arts Offers Summer Performances
This summer you can get a glimpse of Broadway, spend an intimate evening with a recording artist or get a taste of opera during the Maine Center for the Arts Summer Season.
It all begins Friday, June 5 with the new national touring production of West Side Story. When West Side Story opened in 1957, it electrified musical theatre with its brilliant music and dance. The re-telling of Shakespeare's timeless tale of star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet, set against gang warfare on the gritty streets of New York City, brought together the talents of four Broadway legends: director-choreographer Jerome Robbins, librettist Arther Laurents, composer Leonard Bernstein and lyricist Stephen Sondheim. The 8 p.m. performance at the Maine Center for the Arts reproduces Robbins' original direction and Tony Award-winning choreography.
"An Intimate Evening with Anne Murray," the popular Canadian singer, lights up the MCA Sunday, June 14 at 7 p.m. Her concert features old favorites, including some of her trademark songs, and newer works from her latest CD.
Under the auspices of the Maine Center for the Arts, Opera Maine presents two one-act operas on Sunday, Aug. 9 at 3 p.m. at the Rockport Opera House, and Saturday, Aug. 22 at 3 p.m. at Mount Desert High School. The "delicious" afternoons of opera feature composer Lee Hoiby's Bon Appetit!, written for Jean Stapleton as a musical setting of one of Julia Child's episodes from The French Chef. The second course is the Maine premiere of composer Seymour Barab's send-up of Italian opera, Mushroom Pizza.
The Summer Season ends at the MCA with a concert by Patty Loveless, queen of country music, on Sunday, Aug. 2 at 7 p.m. Academy of Country Music Awards' Female Vocalist of the Year in 1997, Loveless has been described by USA Today as "the unflinching diva of country heartache."
Tickets may be purchased at the MCA box office, or by calling 581-1755 or 1-800-MCA-TIXX.