Punching above our weight

A DMMO curtain call

Des Moines is a triple A city. We are proud of that. The major leagues are close enough in Kansas City, Minneapolis and Chicago. We embrace our size and limited aspirations as a tradeoff for escaping the rat races that accompany major league status. We choose blithe over blight and bright lights.

We restrict our bragging to girls basketball, agricultural production and “our state fair.” Then some outsider visits and points out superlative things that we take for granted. That happens every summer when the opera world sends its elite correspondents to Indianola to cover the entirety of Des Moines Metro Opera’s season. 

They make it harder each year to ignore the fact that our opera is elite on a worldwide level. This summer, 14 sold-out shows played to audiences from six countries and 42 states. 

Among them was James Sohre, the director of Opera Las Vegas. Writing in “Opera Today,” he declared: “Des Moines Metro Opera’s unsurpassingly ravishing production of Karol Szymanowski’s ‘King Roger’ has joined the ranks of the finest performances I have ever experienced… If Twyla Tharp and Mark Morris had a love child it might be Isaac Martin Lerner who provided stylish and evocative choreography that was all pulsing limbs, and ethereal lifts, and carnal undulations. The dancers were exceptionally gifted and added immeasurably to the mystery and mayhem.”

Jeffrey Gibson, American, Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee, born 1972. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Chris Roque, courtesy of UAP | Urban Art Projects

Sohre concluded, “There is simply no other company in the world that could have created such an intimate, overpowering ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ with such a fever pitch high level of artistry. Full stop. Opera is a fusion of so many disciplines, and it takes a consummate degree of quality control to meld so many disparate talents together. But that is just what Des Moines Metro Opera consistently does, opera after opera after opera, after year after year after year.” And Sohre has seen a thing or two in Vegas.

Autumn brings us back to the business of an AAA town. Music is still at the helm with new seasons commencing for Des Moines Symphony Orchestra (DMSO) and Civic Music Association (CMA), which begins its second century bringing major league talent to our friendly confines. 

It looks like a really good kickoff for both. The Harlem String Quartet joins DMSO for Michael Abels’ “Urban Legends.” That is part of the September 2026-27 celebration of America 250, which begins with Kevin Put’s “Heartland” and Linda Robbins Coleman’s “In Good King Charles’s Golden Days” before “American Mosaic” by Peter Boyer and video artist Joe Sohm. It concludes with Leonard Bernstein’s “Symphonic Dances from West Side Story.” 

CMA’ s 101st lineup begins Oct. 2 with a collaboration by Boston Brass and Turtle Island blending classical, jazz, and crossover styles reimagining of “Romeo and Juliet.” After, they move from Kabalevsky and Prokofiev to Elvis Costello’s “Juliet Letters” and Bernstein’s “West Side Story.”

In a special musical treat this fall, St. John’s Lutheran brings Australian guitarist Andrew Blanch and Argentine singer Maria Eugenia Nieva here Sept. 20 on their “Spanish Romance” tour. That evening begins with a solo Spanish guitar recital J.S. Bach to the works of Spanish Maestros Fernando Sor, Francisco Tárrega, and Manuel de Falla. Then it turns 20th-century masterpieces by Astor Piazzolla and Antonio Lauro. The concert’s finale brings mezzo-soprano Maria Eugenia Nieva on stage for love songs from Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela and Puerto Rico.  

Beyond musical fronts, Jeffrey A. Gibson joins the Des Moines Art Center’s (DMAC) permanent collection. He is an American Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee painter and sculptor. His monumental sculpture “nashoba holba/wayaha/coyote/they are witty and transform themselves in order to guide us” is the latest acquisition of DMAC. Originally presented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gibson’s sculpture is an homage to the animal kingdom. ♦

Jim Duncan is a food and art writer who has been covering the central Iowa scene for more than five decades.