Des Moines Metro Opera Announces Casting for 47th Festival Season

Indianola, IA — Des Moines Metro Opera’s (DMMO) General and Artistic Director, Michael Egel, is pleased to announce the full casting for the Company’s 47th Festival Season, which runs from June 28 through July 21, 2019, and offers 18 performances of four different operas. “Presenting repertory performances of major works in dynamic contract to one…

“Des Moines Metro Opera Presents Billy Budd” Receives 2018 Upper Midwest Emmy!

Indianola, IA — Iowa Public Television’s broadcast of “Des Moines Metro Opera Presents Billy Budd” has won the 2018 Upper Midwest Emmy in the Arts/Entertainment Program division. The 2018 Upper Midwest Regional Emmy Gala and awards ceremony was held on Saturday, October 6, 2018 at the Radisson Blu Hotel at the Mall of America in Bloomington,…

Des Moines Metro Opera and Iowa National Guard to Present Glory Denied at Camp Dodge

Indianola, IA — After a sold-out run of the rock-infused opera Soldier Songs in 2017, Des Moines Metro Opera (DMMO) is set to present the second installment of a unique collaboration with the Iowa National Guard and Camp Dodge this November. DMMO opens its 47th Season this fall with a production of Tom Cipullo’s poignant and emotionally charged…

Love grows in the Corn Belt

Opera brings people together – be it patrons, communities or a couple separated by the Atlantic Ocean. Gregory Warren and Hester Warren-Steijn met overseas through their careers in opera and now live in two different countries. Opera keeps the married couple connected and brings them here to Indianola two months out of the year to…

Q&A with Sara Gartland

Soprano Sara Gartland returns to Indianola, Iowa, for her fourth summer with DMMO, this time singing the titular role in Antonín Dvořák’s haunting Rusalka. Gartland has a long history with the company, beginning as a member of our Apprentice Artist Program in 2008, as well as mainstage roles as in Regina (2008), Romeo and Juliet (2013)…

Des Moines Metro Opera Announces Repertory for 2019 Season

Indianola, IA – Michael Egel, General and Artistic Director of Des Moines Metro Opera (DMMO), has announced the complete repertory for the Company’s 2019 Season, which includes its 47th Summer Festival and 2nd Stages Series. The productions for the 2019 Season include mainstage performances of Giacomo Puccini’s romantic blockbuster La Bohème, Bernstein’s musical-operetta Candide and Alban Berg’s searing yet beautiful drama, Wozzeck,…

Q&A with David Pershall

Hailed by Opera News as having a “warm and expressive lyric baritone,” David Pershall will be making both a role and company debut this festival season as Gabriel von Eisenstein in Johann Strauss II’s bubbly and effervescent operatic comedy, Die Fledermaus. In preparation for opening night on June 23, we asked Pershall a few questions in our third…

Q&A with Susannah Biller

Susannah Biller travels to the Indianola this summer for her second season with DMMO. Previously performing as Eurydice in DMMO’s 2016 production of Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice, Biller returns to the stage as Rosalinda in J. Strauss’s effervescent and sparkling comedy, Die Fledermaus.  In our second artist Q&A of the 46th Festival Season, Susannah Biller answers questions about…

Embracing the Waltz

THE WALTZ MAY SEEM to us the most decorous of dances, but two centuries ago many saw it as the vortex of sin. In 1816 London’s The Times proclaimed its civic duty “to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion,” a sentiment that was echoed throughout much of Europe. Hedonistic…

Q&A with Zachary James

“The villain was portrayed with towering force by Zachary James, a giant man with a big black bass to match” – Chicago Tribune “…the most electrifying five minutes I have ever spent in the theater. His rendition was at once deeply personal and overwhelmingly explosive. I walked out at intermission still dizzy with tears in my…

Dvořák’s summer sojourn in Iowa

Antonín Dvořák almost made it to Indianola 125 years ago. He was born 4,762 miles away in Nelahozeves, a village north of Prague, in 1841. As the eldest and a boy, he was expected to follow his father’s professions as a butcher and innkeeper. By 1891 Dvořák had become one of the world’s most famous…

Make Him Laugh!

Notes from Kristine McIntyre, director of Flight:  As a director, you always want the composer to love the show. If the opera is a comedy – a rare thing among modern operas – then the bar feels even higher. You need to make them laugh. So you can imagine how I felt in Austin a few…