“There were so many moving parts, we didn’t know if we could pull it off,” Devan said in an interview earlier this month. “So there was a lot of fear around belly-flopping.”In fact, O17 was a critical and box-office success. “We’ve actually used the term ‘sophomore slump’ to make sure there was no slump in the sophomore,” he said. Ironically, his board had worried the first edition was “too edgy,” and Devan had agreed to make O18 “softer,” more conventional. “Ultimately,” he said, “our intention is that people can come to Philadelphia once a year, and touch the future of opera.”——Online:https://www.operaphila.org/festival/

Source: National Post September 14, 2018 12:16 UTC