A Sizzling Sommerfest

Doc Severinsen’s new band features musicians from Latin America’s A-list.
Jesse Ventura isn’t the only celebrity to recently emerge from an expat life in Mexico: Doc Severinsen, the indefatigable elder statesman of classical pops, who moved south of the border in 2006, is happily redefining his retirement with a new show and a new band.

A familiar face at Sommerfest, the pops conductor laureate returns this year with some new Mexican friends: classical guitarist Gil Gutierrez and violinist Pedro Cartas (whose duo, Gil and Cartas, performs internationally) and Miguel Farero, one of the world’s leading Latin percussionists and the house drummer for Dancing with the Stars. The quartet serves up El Ritmo de la Vida (the rhythm of life), a program featuring jazzed-up Spanish music, heartfelt Latino and American ballads, great movie music, and gypsy jazz à la Django Reinhardt. July 12–13. Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall, Mpls., 612-371-5656

Maureen O’Flynn plays Violetta in the Sommerfest finale, Verdi’s La Traviata.
Soprano Maureen O’Flynn is becoming a regular visitor to these parts, and she is far from wearing out her welcome. Her Elena was the best thing about the Minnesota Opera’s 2006 production of Rossini’s La Donna del Lago and her Mimi stole the show in the La Bohème, which closed last year’s Minnesota Orchestra Sommerfest.

O’Flynn returns for this year’s Sommerfest finale, playing one of her signature roles—Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata, an opera based on Alexander Dumas’s autobiographical novel and play La Dame aux Camelias (also the source of the Garbo film Camille). It’s a role she’s sung more than fifty times, including with the Metropolitan Opera.

As has become custom, the Minnesota Orchestra presents the opera in a semistaged production, a fact that thrills O’Flynn. “When working with a story this brilliant, a story of real people, the simplicity clears away all possible distractions. It pares down the story to its essence,” she says. “This is one of the best pieces of theater—I don’t limit that to opera—and this kind of staging has a strong impact, almost more than a full staging.” Aug. 2. Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall, Mpls., 612-371-5656

Sommerfest Highlights
Macy’s Day of Music features free music on six stages in and around Orchestra Hall, including one free Minnesota Orchestra concert. At noon, five finalists of the junior portion of the Minnesota International Piano e-Competition compete, and at 8 p.m., the overall winner plays again on a program that includes Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. July 11

Andrew Litton, back for his sixth season as Sommerfest’s artistic director, adds an American twist to the traditional concert of delectable Strauss waltzes—a centennial celebration of Leroy Anderson. July 18

Osmo Vänskä conducts a program of all–Finnish music, including Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony and Kalevi Aho’s Ninth Symphony. July 24

Litton conducts the orchestra and the Terence Blanchard Quintet for Jazz at the Movies, a sonic chronicle of jazz’s celluloid evolution from Hitchcock to Spike Lee. July 31

Theatre de la Jeune Lune joins forces with the Minnesota Orchestra for a dramatic but family-friendly telling of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. July 27