Conductors got their name by both guiding orchestras and wielding copper batons that deflect lightning away from the brass section. Behold an electrifying performance with this GrouponLive deal to the 76th Annual Brevard Festival at the Brevard Music Center and the Porter Center for Performing Arts. For $30, you get two general-admission adult tickets to any opera or orchestra performance from Friday, June 22, to Saturday, August 4 (a $60 value). Tickets may be used by two people to attend one concert or by one person to attend two concerts. See the schedules of opera and orchestra performances for dates, times, and venues. Tickets are not valid for the season finale or variations.
In the Brevard Music Center’s 76th festival season, more than 400 students flock to the summer institute to learn from a distinguished faculty and perform more than 80 public concerts. An audience of some 30,000 people wades into the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains for the opportunity to experience a full schedule of orchestra, opera, and chamber-music performances that realize the works of masters from Beethoven to Bruckner.
On Saturday, June 30, the center’s artistic director, Keith Lockhart, injects minds with their recommended dose of Wolfgang Amadeus in “Lockhart Conducts Mozart”. The concert opens with the Austrian master’s Symphony no. 35 in D Major, also known as Haffner, since Mozart wrote it for the wedding of a family friend. On the following day, “Lockhart Conducts American Classics” celebrates composers such as Copland, Ives, and Gershwin, whose pieces have graced the nation's ears and soundtracked thousands of high-noon duels.
The center’s Janiec Opera Company belts out an evening of compilations entitled Opera’s Greatest Hits, as well as several full-length classics. A rendition of Rossini’s Barber of Seville complements Gilbert and Sullivan’s masterpiece HMS Pinafore ––the boat with the most velveteen soprano of the Victorian Age. Then in August, conductor Carol Nies ventures into the Bohemian romances that cling to the Latin Quarter of 19th-century Paris in Puccini’s La Bohème.