By Randi Bjornstad
No, there won’t be a fully staged opera onstage in Eugene to usher in the New Year on Dec. 31 this year.
Instead, Eugene Opera will present a couple of other musical options leading up to the New Year, one on Dec. 29 and the other on New Year’s Eve. The season’s only major opera production of the 2019-20 season, Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca, will happen on March 13 and 15.
Opera officials announced several months ago that as part of continued restructuring to maintain its solid financial footing, the decades-old tradition of performing a favorite major opera on New Year’s Eve would not happen, at least as 2019 turns into 2020. That’s partly because in order to save money, the opera has given up its status as a resident company at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts in favor of looking for lower-cost — and perhaps more intimate and less formidable — places to perform.
On Dec. 29, that will be a late-afternoon concert at First Christian Church in downtown Eugene, when Eugene Opera offers the little match girl passion, performed by four singers and a percussionist. Created by David Lang and based on the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, it’s a musical rendition of the tragic story of a young girl who dares not go home to her family’s hovel on New Year’s Eve because she has not sold enough matches that day to earn money to help her desperately poor parents. She burns through all her matches trying to keep herself a bit warm, and by their light she sees — or imagines — various apparitions, one of a lovely firelit dining room with a table laden with fine foods, another of her beloved but no-longer-living grandmother, who gathers her into her arms and carries her to heaven.
To recognize the issue of homelessness in the Eugene-Springfield community, the Dec. 29 performance will include an opportunity to give cash donations or gifts of toiletries and personal hygiene items to benefit the Interfaith Family Shelter run by St. Vincent de Paul of Lane County.
Then, on Dec. 31, the opera moves to The Shedd Institute for the Arts for a performance by opera soloists of Johannes Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzes and the third act of the opera La Bohème, accompanied by four-hand piano. A full dinner option is available by reservation for those who would like to eat before the show. All adult attendees will receive a glass of champagne to ring in the New Year.
Eugene Opera brings in the New Year
The Little Match Girl Passion
When: 4 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 29
Where: First Christian Church, 1166 Oak St., Eugene
Tickets: $25 general admission ($15 for students and youths), available in advance online at eugeneopera.org
Brahms’ Waltzes and La Bohème, Act III
When: 6 p.m. dinner, 8 p.m. musical program on Tuesday, Dec. 31
Where: The Shedd Institute for the Arts, 868 High St., Eugene
Tickets: $30 concert only (includes a glass of champagne); $100 for dinner and concert (menu includes appetizers, salad, entree choices of Roasted Beer Brine Chicken, Brown Sugar Bourbon Beef Flank Steak, or Butternut Squash & Beets Napoleon with Basil Pesto, cheesecake, hosted wine, and a glass of champagne), available at The Shedd box office, 541-434-7000, or online at theshedd.org
