Antonacci set to perform in Fayetteville

FAYETTEVILLE — Christopher Lacy needs a box.

He’s sending a velvet and silk embroidered stole to send his favorite pen pal and opera star, Italian soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci.

He sent her another wrap, a vintage beaded Chinese number, in 2009, about the time they began cultivating a long-distance friendship via email and Facebook. Antonacci (pronounced Ann-tone-ah-chee) can be seen wearing the wrap in YouTube videos found by searching “Antonacci Savona.” Since then, there has been much communication and other homages, or gifts, passed between them. Lacy recalled he once sent her some “Angel” perfume not knowing that “she’s really not a perfume person.”

For the last three years, Lacy has been working to bring Antonacci to within traveling distance of Fayetteville. Finally last summer, she agreed to a concert April 3 at Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall on the University of Arkansas campus.

And she’s waiving her fee as a gift to the nonprofit John Harrison Opera Foundation, of which Lacy is board president.

“I had hoped to get her to come somewhere close, such as Dallas or Kansas City. Then she offered to come here,” said Lacy, an opera enthusiast who studied and performed in Italy, among other places. Most recently he taught opera in the music department at the UA. He’s now grounded by a debilitating spinal chord injury.

Antonacci appears as taken with Lacy as he is with her.

“We corresponded so openly and intensively that I felt we had been friends for years,” Antonaci said. “I was very touched that he played my recordings for his students.”

Early in her career, Antonacci performed in San Francisco and Philadelphia, but she has not been to the United States in at least 15 years. Much of her career has been spent globetrotting and performing the great operas of our time. She has been compared to the legendary Maria Callas and is widely known for her role in this generation’s Carmen. Antonacci was the cover story in a recent issue of Opera News.

In other words, she’s a big deal.

Her only other stops on the April North American tour will be at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.; the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York; and a venue in Montreal. She’ll perform basically the same program — a collection of French and Italian love songs — and will be accompanied by pianist Donald Sulzen of Munich, Germany. Sulzen once studied at the UA.

Lacy first saw Antonacci on DVD in the mid 2000s, in Les Troyens, a French opera by Hector Berlioz. Antonacci played the role of Cassandre, a Trojan prophetess who foresees the fall of Troy. Her performance blew Lacy away.

“She was just like a wild animal,” he said. “She just inhabits the role.”

It has always been a dream of Lacy’s — and the John Harrison Opera Foundation — to bring world-class opera singers to Fayetteville in a recital setting. Local fans gather regularly at the Malco Razorback Cinema in Fayetteville to watch live simulcasts of the Metropolitan Opera, so Lacy knows there’s a following.

“I see that audience and I want to capture that audience and get them to Stella Boyle,” he said.

It’s unfortunate that perhaps the one person who would enjoy this concert most will miss it. The late John Harrison, who had retired as director of UA libraries by the time he died in 2003, was an avid, if not rabid, opera fan. His daughter, Olivia Clawson, talks often of her father’s “nest” — his personal listening nook that was wall-to-wall with DVDs, CDs and a large television and sound system.

The foundation named for him promotes the celebration of opera and the arts in Northwest Arkansas, providing scholarships and finding solo vocal recitals by established artists of international renown.

Though Antonacci has foregone her fee to perform at the UA, the foundation is seeking sponsorships to cover other expenses. Anyone wishing to participate should call Lacy at (479) 841-2190. Tickets for Antonacci’s recital are $100 and can be purchased by calling (479) 443-5600.