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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.

 

Washington Post’s Lovable New Operas

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The Washington Post lists contemporary operas that audiences responded to favorably (“Readers’ Guide to Lovable New Operas“), and several BHM operas were included:

Dead Man Walking

Moby-Dick

Silent Night

The Manchurian Candidate

As One

There are also 10 operas on this list that we’ve engraved in our production department.

Congrats to Jake Heggie, Kevin Puts, Terrence McNally, Laura Kaminsky, Kimberly Reed, and the indefatigable Mark Campbell who wrote 3 of these librettos.

Santa Fe Opera to premiere Bates/Campbell The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs

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Composer Mason Bates and librettist Mark Campbell collaborate on an original opera based on the life of one of the greatest innovators of our time in a new production

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SANTA FE, NM – General Director Charles MacKay announced today Santa Fe Opera’s next commission, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, which will have its world premiere in 2017 as a part of the company’s 61st season. The opera will be composed by Mason Bates, one of America’s most acclaimed and popular composers, with an original libretto by Mark Campbell, who was the librettist for the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera, Silent Night. This will be Bates’ first produced opera. Stage Director Kevin Newbury, who brought both Theodore Morrison’s Oscar (2013) and Lewis Spratlan’s Life is a Dream (2010) to the stage in Santa Fe, will be joined by Michael Christie, Music Director for Minnesota Opera, who makes his company debut leading the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra.

“Riding on the heels of Jennifer Higdon and Gene Scheer’s Cold Mountain, which received both audience and critical acclaim at its world premiere on Saturday, it is a thrill to announce Santa Fe Opera’s next major commission, “ said General Director Charles MacKay. “The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs will mark the Company’s 15th world premiere, continuing the tradition of producing work that pushes the boundaries of the art form. We are delighted to take this journey into the life and legacy of a distinctly American figure through the creative genius of Mason Bates and Mark Campbell.”

MORE ABOUT THE (R)EVOLUTION OF STEVE JOBS

The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs is a new opera that examines the life of one of the most fascinating figures of our time; an innovator who simplified communication with sleek devices, but who paradoxically learned that complex human relationships require more than one button to work. The opera starts at a moment in Jobs’ life when he must face his own mortality and circles back to the events and people in his past that shaped and inspired him: his father Paul, Zen Buddhism, his relationship with a woman whose child he initially disowned, his quick rise and fall as mogul, and – most importantly – his wife Laurene, who showed him the power of love and connection. The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs seeks to capture the buzzing creative realm of Silicon Valley with a kinetic electro-acoustic score, lush vocal writing, a compelling non-linear narrative, and a production as innovative as the man himself.

“Santa Fe Opera’s impact on the creation and dissemination of new opera is simply astonishing, and I’ve been so thankful to visit several times over the past ten years,” said composer Mason Bates. “The superb productions of works new and old, combined with the stunning setting, have made it an essential pilgrimage for me. I’m honored to bring the story of Steve Jobs to this wonderful house and look forward to many more visits in the course of its creation.”

The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs is librettist Mark Campbell’s first collaboration with composer Mason Bates: “Mason’s brilliance at infusing the orchestra with electronica makes him uniquely poised to create a score for this opera that will evoke the innovative and mercurial nature of its subject,” said Campbell. “Audiences at Santa Fe Opera will be treated to a new kind of energy coming from the stage and the pit.” This production also signifies Campbell’s tertiary collaborations with both director Kevin Newbury and conductor Michael Christie, who with composer Kevin Puts, most recently collaborated on The Manchurian Candidate for Minnesota Opera.

This commission will receive its first workshop in San Francisco (September 2015) in collaboration with Cal Performances at UC Berkeley, and with additional support from San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Workshops play a key role in the commissioning process of Santa Fe Opera, illuminating what works well dramatically and musically, and allowing both composer and librettist to test their ideas before the work reaches the stage.

West Edge Opera brings AS ONE to the West Coast

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WEAs One illuminates the brave and painful growth of a transgender person, whose identity is still deemed “abnormal” and, more shamefully for our world, is barely recognized. The deeply normal need to unite body and soul within the boundaries of accepted human interactions has much to reveal to all of us.

As One premiered at The Brooklyn Academy of Music just this past September. It is based on the life experience of noted filmmaker Kimberly Reed.

Two singers, a baritone and a mezzo-soprano, together portray the character Hannah. The two singers embody a young boy who knows he is different but can’t understand how or why. The 70-minute opera traces the life of young Hannah through her eventual gender reassignment. It examines the life of a transgender person through poetry, movement, beautiful music and film in a new and especially touching way.

New York Classical Review called its premiere this past September a “rich addition to the repertoire … formidable on all fronts … As One is everything that we hope for in contemporary opera: topical, poignant, daring, and beautifully written.”

The New York Times wrote: “As One forces you to think, simultaneously challenging preconceptions and inspiring empathy…[with] winning humor and a satisfying emotional arc.”

A Day in the Life of Kimberly Reed, co-librettist of AS ONE

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As One co-librettist and transgender filmmaker Kimberly Reed has created a video for the Op Ed page of The New York Times showing a day in her life – specifically April 7, when As One opened at Utah State University. In the video, Reed shows glimpses of the various ways she has attempted “to dispel misunderstanding and increase empathy” by introducing the quotidian stories of transgender individuals – through documentaries, news interviews, spoken word performances, and most recently through her work on As One.

Grey’s Opera Frankenstein at La Monnaie

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Frankenstein

The Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie (Brussels), 2015/16 season will premiere a new opera by Mark Grey on Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein.
The powerhouse cast and artistic team includes: Scott Hendricks, Sasha Cooke, Malena Ernman, Christopher Gillett, Andrew Schroeder, Robert Hayward, Hendrickje van Kerckhove
Àlex Ollé and La Fura dels Baus creative team. Conductors Leo Hussain and Bassem Samir Akiki

http://www.lamonnaie.be/en/502/579/Frankenstein

Life and death in the light of technological progress

‘Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?’ Unlike the film that was later made of it, Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein told the sad story of a creature born out of a scientific experiment who strives for good, yet does evil and is consequently disowned by his creator. As a philosophical reflection on the human condition, on the technology that gives humanity power over life and death, and as a warning to a society that threatens to cast out the individual, the American composer Mark Grey returns to this original story for his first full-length opera, 200 years after Mary Shelley wrote it. Thanks to the extremely opulent visual idiom of Àlex Ollé and the inspiring conducting of Leo Hussain and Bassem Akiki, this world premiere promises to be a treat for both the eye and the ear.

The Manchurian Candidate at Minnesota Opera

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Manchurian CandidateKevin Puts’ and Mark Campbell’s opera on The Manchurian Candidate will premiere at Minnesota Opera this March. Based on the novel by Richard Condon (which was subsequently made into two film versions) the opera is the second for Puts and Campbell, whose first opera Silent Night won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012 and has gone on to a successful life in repeat productions by several companies in the U.S. and Europe. For additional information and some sneak preview audio clips, please click here.

View some of the sing-through:

Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell discuss the evolution of the opera:

Read the Star Tribune article here.

Paterson/Campbell The Whole Truth premieres at UrbanArias

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The Whole Truth is a short comic opera with music by Robert Paterson and a libretto by Mark Campbell (Bastianello & Lucrezia), based on a short story by author Stephen McCauley. A married women attempts to delude herself into thinking she can carry on two affairs at the same time.  The first with a fellow dentist and the new affair with a young carpenter who has come to work on her and her husband’s home.

“The Whole Truth is like Opera Espresso: short, concentrated, and energizing.”–DC Metro Theater Arts

Performances are at Atlas Performing Arts Center (in the heart of DC’s vibrant and eclectic H Street neighborhood) and produced by UrbanArias.

Starring Amedee Royer, Kate Jackman, Andrew McLaughlin and Jeffrey Gates

Accompanied by R. Timothy McReynolds (piano)

Directed by Courtney Kalbacker