Dimitri Pittas
Dimitri Pittas, Faust no longer
Details are scarce beyond a press release issued this morning but the Santa Fe Opera has announced that tenor Dimitri Pittas (pictured) will have to bow out of their current production of Faust due to a nasty injury . He was set to play the titular role in the Gounod production starting August 8, which is now running intermittently until August 27. (A full list of show dates and times is on the SFO's site; the next performances will take place on Wednesday and Saturday.)
Pittas, a tenor who last worked with the SFO in 2009's The Elixir of Love , was performing in Macbeth at the Royal Opera House in London's Covent Garden when he fell and tore his ACL . Now, instead of performing in Santa Fe, the poor guy will be on crutches for an estimated seven weeks. SFO General Director Charles MacKay learned about the bad news on Friday.
Luckily, Bryan Hymel, the current Faust, will able to retain the role he's currently playing and keep the production steady. "Dimitri was going to take over for him for a couple of performances at the end of the season, but luckily, Bryan planned to stay in Santa Fe anyways to cover the role once Dimitri took over [as an understudy], so Bryan is just going to continue as Faust," SFO Press Associate Dolores McElroy says. "He's already in the role, so there has been no impact."
