Highlights from the Fall Arts Guide

Washington National Opera

To Saturday, Oct. 7

Music this week

Washington National Opera kicks off its season with an “innovative double bill,” which translated from Press Release into English means, roughly: “WTF?” Exorcist director William Friedkin, who’s been trifling with the lyric stage since sometime in the late ’90s, came up with the notion of pairing Puccini’s black comedy Gianni Schicchi—a rich old Florentine’s will, a greedy gaggle of relatives, and a cunning paisano, all to the tune of A Room With a View—with Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, a disturbingly romantic creepshow from Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. The latter, loosely based on the French tale of the wife-slaughtering nobleman and the new young bride who just can’t stand not knowing what’s behind that locked door, is lonely, dreamy psychodrama with a bare two characters, and it usually gets the double-bill treatment alongside other contemporary one-acts like Schoenberg’s Erwartung; Puccini’s madcap Schicchi, inspired by a snippet of Dante, is broadly entertaining farce with a cast of more than a dozen. (Even the orchestra musicians are often enlisted to help “mourn” the dead rich guy.) But both are remarkable for their concise, efficient storytelling, and reviews out of L.A.—where Plácido Domingo’s other opera company produced this pairing in 2002—were mixed enough to suggest that pretty much anything could happen onstage. Samuel Ramey, who headlines both operas, has had better decades, but reports suggest a powerfully dark portrayal of Bluebeard and a slapstick rogue of a Schicchi; Washington-born Denyce Graves, she of the velvet mezzo, plays his Judith. Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and Gianni Schicchi run at 7 p.m. Monday, Sept. 25, & Saturday, Oct. 7, and 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 28, & Tuesday, Oct. 3, with a matinee at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 1 at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House, 2700 F St. NW. $45–$300. (202) 467-4600. (Trey Graham)

	The Slits perform with the Apes and Eyes of the Killer Robot Sunday, Nov. 5 at the Black Cat
	Guy Clark performs with Slaid Cleaves Friday, Oct. 20, at 7:30 p.m. at the Birchmere
	Kronos Quartet performs Sunday, Oct. 22, at 7 p.m. at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium
	Leo Kottke performs Sunday, Oct. 5, at the National Museum of Natural History's Baird Auditorium
	Vusi Mahlasela performs Sunday, Nov. 12, at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium in conjunction with "Acoustic Africa"