Summer lineup

Cincinnati Opera 2005 Summer Festival season: La Boheme - June 16, 18 and 24 The Barber of Seville - June 23 and 25 Margaret Garner - July 14, 16, and 22 Rigoletto - July 21 and 23 Artistic director Nicholas Muni will talk about the season in an "Opera Rap" at 7 p.m. Oct. 19 in Music Hall (information: 744-3511). Subscription renewals will be sent in October. Advance reservations for tickets to Margaret Garner begin on Oct. 1. The new opera has its own Web site: www.MargaretGarner.org. New subscriptions will be available in March; single tickets go on sale in May. 241-2742; www.cincinnatiopera.com.

The season, says artistic director Nicholas Muni, "honors our company's 85-year heritage, as well as our vision for the future by pairing the most popular works by three Italian masters with a powerful new opera by one of the most gifted American composers of our time."

Cincinnati Opera will open its 85th season on June 16 with three performances of Puccini's La Boheme (June 16, 18 and 24), a timeless tale of poverty-stricken Bohemians in 19th-century Paris. The company has mounted 40 productions of the opera since 1924, most recently in 1999.

Xian Zhang will conduct La Boheme. An international rising star and former University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music faculty member, she conducted Don Giovanni last season.

Rossini's The Barber of Seville, another audience favorite, follows June 23 and 25. The company's last Barber in 1997 introduced mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux as Rosina, a singer whose career has since soared dramatically. Its many hits include "Largo al factotum," in which the barber, Figaro, praises his own talent.

Garner is first commission

Margaret Garner, the company's first commission in 85 years, will be presented July 14, 16 and 22. A co-commission with Michigan Opera Theatre and Opera Company of Philadelphia, it is based on a true story about Boone County slave Margaret Garner, who escaped to Cincinnati with her family and, as pursuers closed in, killed her child rather than return her to slavery. It will be mounted in Cincinnati in honor of the recent opening of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

The starry team includes Nobel Prize-winning author Morrison writing her first opera libretto, Grammy-winning composer Danielpour penning his first opera, and Broadway director Kenny Leon (A Raisin in the Sun) directing his first opera.

Superstar Denyce Graves will sing the title role, and baritone Gregg Baker will portray Robert Garner, her husband. Soprano Angela Brown will sing Cilla, Margaret's mother-in-law, in Cincinnati and Philadelphia. (Jessye Norman will perform that role in Detroit.)

Rodney Gilfry will portray Edward Gaines, the owner of Maplewood Plantation, and tenor John Mac Master will sing the plantation foreman, Casey.

The season ends July 21 and 23 with Verdi's Rigoletto, which the company has performed 119 times in 43 productions. Last mounted here in 1992, the tragic opera begins with a curse and ends with the hunchback Rigoletto crying over the body of his beloved daughter, Gilda.

"These operas have been vehicles for many big stars, including (Metropolitan Opera star) James Morris, who was just starting out as Colline in La Boheme at the Zoo," recalls Cincinnati Opera historian Charlotte Shockley. Opera diva Roberta Peters sang a memorable Gilda in 1951 and '73, and in the '60s, Sherrill Milnes starred as Figaro and twice returned to sing Rigoletto.

Cincinnati Opera will announce 2005 casting and production information at a later date.

E-mail jgelfand@enquirer.com