Bel Cantanti Opera Visitors", at St. James Episcopal Church in Leesburg, Virginia. Bel Cantanti has had continued success with its productions of : Donizetti's "L'elisir d'Amore", Verdi's "Rigoletto", Menotti's "Amahl and the Night Visitors", Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin", Rossini's "Il barbiere di Siviglia", Donizetti's "La fille du régiment", Humperdinck's "Hänsel und Gretel", Rachmaninoff's "Aleko", Tchaikovsky's "Iolanta", Mozart's "Le nozze di Figaro", and Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor". The company's 2007-2008 season produced fully staged versions of Mozart's "Die Entführung aus dem Serail" ("The Abduction from the Seraglio", performed in German, March 2008) and G. Puccini's birth with an abridged version of "La bohème". In December
Donald Shanks (bass-baritone) "Norma" with Dame Joan Sutherland, "La bohème" with Luciano Pavarotti, and Banquo in "Macbeth" with Sherrill Milnes. Other roles he became associated with were Zaccharia in "Nabucco", Rocco in "Fidelio", Osmin in "The Abduction from the Seraglio", Boris in "Boris Godunov", Timur in "Turandot", Ramphis in "Aida", Pistol in "Falstaff", Kekal in "The Bartered Bride", Baron Ochs in "Der Rosenkavalier", Nourabad in "The Pearl Fishers", the Commendatore in "Don Giovanni", and a major role in Leoš Janáček's "The Cunning Little Vixen". He created the role of The Maestro in Alan John's 1995 opera "The Eighth Wonder" at the Sydney Opera