Divorce Court

As part of Bard SummerScape’s twentieth season The Fisher Center at Bard College in Annandale-On-Hudson, N.Y., will present Camille Saint-Saëns’s French opera “Henri VIII” beginning Friday, July 21. First staged in 1883 by the Paris Opera at the Palais Garnier, “Henri VIII” sees the King of England caught between duty and desire as he attempts to dissolve the marriage with his first wife, the pious Catholic princess Catherine of Aragon, in favor of one of the most infamous, and misunderstood, female figures in British history, the dark-haired beauty, Anne Boleyn. Directed by Jean-Romain Vesperini, who has staged work at the Opera National de Paris, this fully-staged U.S. premiere stars bass-baritone and New Orleans, La., native  Alfred Walker, who was seen this past spring at The Metropolitan Opera in New York City as Frère Laurent in Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette.”