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Santa Fe Opera Commissions Reed & Kaminsky

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Opera for All Voices
Stories of our Time
a new initiative bringing stories with purpose to all audiences

Commissioned by a consortium of companies led by
Santa Fe Opera in association with San Francisco Opera:

• lyric opera of kansas city • minnesota opera • opera theatre of saint louis •san francisco opera • santa fe opera • sarasota opera • seattle opera

Santa Fe, NM – Santa Fe Opera announces the launch of Opera for All Voices: Stories of our Time, a new initiative committed to telling wide-ranging stories that resonate with all audiences, regardless of age or previous exposure to opera. The seven companies currently in the consortium will work together to commission new works that are flexible in scope and scale, with the potential to be performed in smaller venues and off the main stage while striving for rich storytelling and artistic integrity. The first new work will receive its premiere in 2019 at Santa Fe Opera, composed by Augusta Read Thomas with a libretto by Jason Kim. The second commission will be composed by Laura Kaminsky with a libretto by Kimberly Reed and is slated to premiere at San Francisco Opera in 2020.

Opera for All Voices was born out of the need for works with outstanding artistic quality that can still reach broad-ranging audiences by both accessibility of subject material and budgets. The project also addresses the serious need to bring new audiences to opera by commissioning important works that speak to all voices, designed with modern attention spans in mind, and the need to break down pre-conceived notions that opera is antiquated or elitist.

The teams behind the first two commissions were selected through a rigorous process with feedback from the participating companies. Both teams embody the spirit of the initiative in their previous works, telling stories with purpose through music.

Some Light Emerges premieres at Houston Grand Opera

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The team that created the stunning new opera As One has reunited to create Some Light Emerges for Houston Grand Opera’s HGOCo. Premiering in March 2017, the opera celebrates the unique and enduring impact of Houston’s Rothko Chapel, which was created by painter Mark Rothko. A stunning octagonal structure that serves as a non-denominational chapel, the structure is filled with 14 paintings by Rothko, and was completed in 1971.

Houston Grand Opera shines “Light” on Rothko Chapel

A review from the Houston Chronicle, following the premiere of the new Kaminsky-Campbell-Reed opera, writes:

“Some Light Emerges, the new opera commissioned by Houston Grand Opera through its community collaborative initiative, dives right into Rothko and de Menil’s shared spiritual vision with plaintive, purposefully meandering music by Laura Kaminsky and an audacious libretto by Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed. The 75-minute chamber piece–written for seven singers and seven instruments–just might be the best articulation of the Rothko Chapel’s purpose in modern times … it’s nothing short of a pronunciation of American ideals. The piece remained sublime, a testament to both the performers and the writing.”

View excerpts from the premiere production.

Heggie/Scheer It’s a Wonderful Life

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Bedford Falls came to the opera stage last December in Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s new opera It’s a Wonderful Life, commissioned by Houston Grand Opera. Partially based on the classic Capra film, Heggie and Scheer bring their own unique perspective to the story, enriched by Heggie’s lyrical music.

Starring William Burden as George Bailey, Talise Trevigne as Clara, and Andrea Caroll as Mary, the cast is rounded out with operatic stalwarts Anthony Dean Griffey as Uncle Billy and Rod Gilfrey as Mr. Potter and Mr. Gowers. Patrick Summers conducted, and Leonard Foglia directed the production.

Co-commissioned by Indiana University and San Francisco Opera. (Nov.-Dec. 2018)

For additional information, please click here.

 

Three Way premieres to great success at Nashville Opera

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Nashville Opera gave the world premiere of Three Way by composer Robert Paterson, with a libretto by David Cote in January of 2017. Jointly produced with American Opera Projects, the New York premiere will be given in June of 2017 at BAM.

The piano/vocal score and aria excerpts are now available for purchase:

You can order the CD here.

From The Tennessean:

“An intriguing treatise on power, passion and human connection.”

“Highly accessible! Cote has an obvious gift for humor, yet there also are moments of genuine tenderness. Paterson’s music is mesmerizing, beautifully supporting the story.”

“Paterson’s music is rich and vibrant—and beautifully played by the Nashville Opera Orchestra, conducted by Dean Williamson. Cote’s libretto offers an unexpected blend of whimsy and wistfulness.”

From Schmopera:

“Rarely do we find a postmodern opera that builds in time for audiences to belly laugh, a postmodern opera that encapsulates the complexity and depth of evolving identity and sexuality, and a postmodern opera that is both elegant and accessible. In Nashville Opera’s production of Three Way, with music by Robert Paterson and libretto by David Cote, we find a postmodern opera with all of those things, simultaneously. This production levels the audience’s playing field in a sophisticated way: pairing common, yet updated, operatic tropes with relevant, topical humor and relatable music.”

BroadwayWorld.com has a feature about the composer, here.

Classical Voice America

Robert Paterson talks about research and the quest to create a new, original opera.

For additional information about the work, please click here.

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Reviews

Tennessean review

Nashville Scene

Nashville Arts Magazine

East Nashvillian

Now Playing Nashville

Nashville NPR

Nashville Public Television

Nashville Lifestyles “Top Pick”

Austin Opera’s Manchurian Candidate

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In this highly charged election season, Austin Opera performs Kevin Puts’ and Mark Campbell’s The Manchurian Candidate. Originally premiered by the Minnesota Opera, the opera is part thriller, part satire, and is based on Richard Condon’s novel. Don’t miss the chance to see this second opera by the team that created the Pulitzer-winning opera, Silent Night.

Paterson/Campbell’s THE WHOLE TRUTH

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The Whole Truth, a new one-act opera by composer Robert Paterson and librettist Mark Campbell, was premiered in January as part of the exciting wave of new operas that overwhelmed New York City. A sold-out success that garnered uniform praise, it was paired with Stewart Copeland’s one-act opera, The Cask of Amontillado.

The Whole Truth is a short comic opera for three singers—soprano, mezzo-soprano and baritone—that uses very limited production elements in its storytelling and has been written to be performed in intimate to medium-sized venues. In the opera, a young married woman named Megan (a role shared by the soprano and mezzo-soprano) carries on an affair with a fellow dentist and a dalliance with young carpenter that lead her to momentarily confront the web of lies she has created to other…and to herself. Using a single bed positioned vertically onstage and a couple of chairs, the settings include a psychiatrist’s office, Megan’s dental office, the bed of her lover, the dining table and the bed she shares with her husband, and another psychiatrist’s office. The Man (played by the baritone) employs six cardboard cutouts to help represent the roles he plays: Psychiatrist 1, The Lover, The Husband, The Carpenter and Psychiatrist 2.

Duration: 27′
Instrumentation: piano/vocal version—three singers (soprano, mezzo-soprano, baritone) and piano. Chamber version (10 instrumentalists): flute, oboe, bassoon, percussion, piano, 2 violins, viola, cello, bass.
Libretto by Mark Campbell • Based on the short story of the same name by Stephen McCauley
Commissioned by UrbanArias, Robert Wood, Executive and Artistic Director
Premiere of Chamber Version: American Modern Ensemble, Tyson Deaton, conductor, Walker Lewis, director, Dixon Place, New York, NY, January 16, 17, 18 and 19, 2016.
Premiere of Piano/Vocal Version: UrbanArias, Robert Wood, conductor, Atlas Performing Arts Center, Washington, DC, February 21, 27 and 28, 2015.

Watch the video here:

 

David Bruce’s NOTHING premieres at Glyndebourne

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If someone you knew declared that life had no meaning, how would you convince them it does?

That’s the question a group of teenagers ask themselves in Nothing, a compelling new youth opera that premieres at Glyndebourne this February.

They decide that each of the group must give up an object that means something to them. This starts with toys and clothes, but things quickly escalate as the classmates go to ever more extreme lengths to try to persuade their friend there are things worth caring about.

In Nothing members of Glyndebourne Youth Opera aged 14-19 perform alongside professional singers. It is the latest in a line of pioneering youth operas that have premiered on the main stage at Glyndebourne.

The opera has been adapted from Danish author Janne Teller’s award-winning novel by composer David Bruce and librettist Glyn Maxwell. Their popular adaptation of Philip Pullman’s The Firework Maker’s Daughter wowed audiences in the UK and New York.

Read the Independent review here.

Classical Music previews the piece.

 

Kaminsky/Campbell/Reed to write Georgia O’Keefe Opera

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3dadea7San Francisco’s Opera Parallele (OP) has announced its first main stage opera commission, the creation of a new opera by American composer Laura Kaminsky inspired by the life of Georgia O’Keeffe at the time she left New York to embark on her iconic and influential experiences in New Mexico. The company has been awarded a prestigious Repertoire Development Grant from Opera America in the amount of $35,000 to support the work’s initial stages of creation and workshopping, and is set for an April 2019 premiere. The opera will feature a libretto by Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed, with a film by Reed as part of the production. The production team will be led by Opera Parallele Creative Director Brian Staufenbiel, will be conducted by OP Artistic Director and founder Nicole Paiement and will feature a cast of ten, details will be announced. The production is being undertaken by Opera Parallele in consortium with American Opera Projects and Cornish College of the Arts, and all three co-commissioners will present performances and other activities to be announced.

About The Opera

Today It Rains is set in May 1929, when Georgia O’Keeffe takes a train from New York to Santa Fe with her friend Rebecca Strand, propelling herself away from her tumultuous relationship with Alfred Stieglitz and his circle in search of a more fulfilled life as an artist. The libretto will segue seamlessly between O’Keeffe and Strand, charging forward through the American landscape, and O’Keeffe looking back on her love for Stieglitz. The opera will culminate in a moving finale as O’Keeffe arrives in Santa Fe to begin her new life. The opera’s title comes from one of O’Keeffe’s letters.

About The Composer

Laura Kaminsky is an award-winning, internationally recognized composer of opera, orchestra, chamber, vocal and choral music who is known to Bay Area audiences most recently for the Festival Opera production of As One, an opera about gender identity . As One (co-librettists Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed), premiered in 2014 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) to unanimously positive reviews, and was mounted in 2015 by Festival Opera in Oakland. Subsequently, the As One team has since been commissioned by Houston Grand Opera for a new work, Some Light Emerges, that will premiere in 2017, and by San Francisco’s Opera Parallèle for Today It Rains. Other upcoming commissions include a Piano Quintet for Ursula Oppens and the Cassatt String Quartet and a new work for Flute and Piano for the University of Minnesota/Duluth.

Kaminsky has received grants, awards and fellowships from, among others, the National Endowment for the Arts, Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Opera America, Chamber Music America, BAM/The Kennedy Center De Vos Institute, Aaron Copland Fund, Virgil Thomson Foundation, Roger Shapiro Fund for New Music, American Music Center, USArtists International, CEC ArtsLink International Partnerships, Likhachev-Russkiy Mir Foundation Cultural Fellowship, Kenan Institute for the Arts, Artist Trust, New York State Council on the Arts, Bronx Arts Council, Arts Westchester, North Carolina Arts Council, Seattle Arts Commission, and Meet the Composer. She has received six ASCAP-Chamber Music America Awards for Adventuresome Programming, a citation from the Office of the President of the Borough of Manhattan, the 2015 Polish Gold Cross of Merit, a decoration awarded by the President of Poland for exemplary public service or humanitarian work, as well as the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage 2010 Chopin Award. She has been a fellow at the Hermitage Artist Retreat Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Centrum Foundation, Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, and Millay Colony for the Arts, and, in 2016, the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France.

Currently composer-in-residence at American Opera Projects, Kaminsky is a member of the faculty in the School of the Arts/Conservatory of Music at Purchase College/SUNY, where she served as dean from 2004-2008; she was also Artistic Director of Symphony Space in New York City until 2014. Previously she was chair of the music department at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Artistic Director of the European Mozart Academy in Poland, and visiting faculty at the National Academy of Music in Ghana. In New York she held the positions of Director of Music and Theatre Programs at The New School, Artistic Director of Town Hall, and Associate Director of Humanities at the 92nd Street Y.

Bruce’s THE FIREWORK MAKER’S DAUGHTER at Royal Opera House

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David Bruce’s The Firework Maker’s Daughter returns to the Royal Opera House in December for a run of 27 performances at the Lindbury Studio. The work premiered in 2013 and was nominated for both an Olivier Award and a British Composers Award. The Daily Telegraph’s Michael White called it “the most utterly endearing, joyous and delightful show I’ve seen in ages”  and Opera Now called it “an intoxicating brew….The show is the operatic equivalent of a page-turner, ideally paced for an all-ages audience”

One of a select group of operas that have been performed on Broadway, The Firework Maker’s Daughter shares that honor with Menotti’s operas (4 of which ran on Broadway).

For more information, please click here.

Heggie GREAT SCOTT debuts at Dallas Opera

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Great Scott

Opera star Arden Scott returns to her hometown to save the struggling company that launched her career. The opening night performance of the long-lost opera she discovered falls on the same night as the home team’s first National Championship game (Go, Grizzlies!). The fate of the company hangs in the balance as Arden discovers that greatness is truly a matter of heart.

Starring Joyce DiDonato • Ailyn Pérez • Frederica von Stade • Nathan Gunn • Anthony Roth Costanzo

Conductor Patrick Summers • Director Jack O’Brien
Set and Costume Design Bob Crowley • Lighting Design Brian MacDevitt • Projection Design Elaine J. McCarthy

With an original libretto by Terrence McNally, Great Scott is the sixth opera by Jake Heggie. To purchase tickets, please click here.

The San Diego Opera will give the west coast premiere in May of next year. To purchase tickets, please click here.