Opera San Antonio and Artistic Director Tobias Picker open the 2014-15 season with a new production of Mr. Picker’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, based on the children’s book by Roald Dahl, in the Carlos Alvarez Studio Theater at San Antonio’s new Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, with four performances on September 23, 26, 27, and 28, 2014

The new Fantastic Mr. Fox production opens on Tuesday, September 23 at 7:30 p.m., with subsequent performances on Friday, September 26 at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, September 27 at 7:30 p.m. (simulcast to an outdoor screen in Tobin Center’s River Plaza); and Sunday, September 28 at 2:00 p.m. The 70-minute opera is in three acts and performed without an intermission. Tickets are available through the Tobin Center box office online at www.tobincenter.org, by phone at (210) 223-8624, or in person at 100 Auditorium Circle, San Antonio, TX 78205. For more information about Opera San Antonio, visit operaSA.org.

Mr. Picker’s 2014-15 season as Opera San Antonio Artistic Director offers three new productions. In addition to Fantastic Mr. Fox, Mr. Picker has programmed Richard Strauss’ Salome, which runs in January, starring American soprano Patricia Racette in the title role, and a double bill of the Italian comic opera Il segreto di Susanna by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari and the French tragic opera La voix humaine by Francis Poulenc, which runs in March, featuring Italian soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci in both lead roles. The Opera San Antonio production of Salome celebrates the 150th anniversary of R. Strauss’ birth while marking Ms. Racette’s first performance of the title role in a staged production of the opera and the first time the opera has been heard in San Antonio in over thirty years. Additionally, four cast members—mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung, tenor Jay Hunter Morris, tenor Brian Jagde, and Ms. Rapier, who returns after performing in Fantastic Mr. Fox—make their role debuts as Herodias, Herod, Narraboth, and the Page, respectively.

The double bill of Il segreto di Susanna and La voix humaine is a vehicle for Ms. Antonacci, who performed in the same pairing at Opéra Comique in Paris and Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg in the spring of 2013.

From July 2014 to June 2015, four of Mr. Picker’s operas, including Fantastic Mr. Fox, are receiving new productions. A newly revised version of his 2005 opera An American Tragedy premiered at the 2014 Glimmerglass Festival, and there will be new productions of his 2001 opera Thérèse Raquin at the Long Beach Opera and Chicago Opera Theater in early 2015 and of his 1996 opera Emmeline at Opera Theatre of St. Louis in June 2015. San Francisco Opera presented the world premiere of Mr. Picker’s fifth opera, Dolores Claiborne, in September 2013.

About Tobias Picker

American composer Tobias Picker, who is celebrating his 60th birthday season, has been called “our finest composer for the lyric stage” by The Wall Street Journal. He has composed numerous works for nearly every genre including opera, orchestra, chamber ensemble, solo instrument, and voice, and has had works commissioned and performed by the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, and Helsinki Philharmonic. His scores have been called both theatrical and thrilling with a keen intuition for narrative and sturdy melodic architecture, and by employing themes that often personify live events and resonate with audiences of every age, Mr. Picker has become one of America’s most sought-after composers.

In March 2014, Tzadik Records released Mr. Picker’s Invisible Lilacs, a collection of four original chamber works that spans over four decades. He is currently composing an orchestral work for Christoph Eschenbach and the National Symphony Orchestra. The work receives its world premiere performance during the 2015-16 season.

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