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Click here for the Opera Plus Series Order form
2010-2011 OPERA PLUS SERIES
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New American Opera Previews - from Page to Stage
MIDGE WOOLSEY will host an afternoon of excerpts from two new operas that will be performed in the near future. These opera excerpts will be performed by singers from the Encompass New Opera Theatre and the Manhattan School of Music.
The Encompass New Opera Theater will perform highlights from a new opera Angel of the Amazon, libretto and music by Evan Mack. This is based on a true story of the life and mission of Sister Dorothy Stung, an American nun who devoted her life to helping Brazilian peasant farmers gain land rights and build sustainable communities.
In 2005 at the age of 73, Dorothy was murdered by two gunmen who were paid by the owner of a South American logging company. Ms. Woolsey will moderate panels comprised of composers, librettists, directors, and performers.
New American Opera Previews-from Page to Stage will be held on Sunday, March 13, 2011, 2:30 PM at the Manhattan School of Music, Broadway and West 122nd St., Greenfield Recital Hall - second floor. A reception will follow.
- Maria Golovin by Gian Carlo Menotti
Maria Golovin which had its premiere at the 1958 Brussels World Fair and ran briefly on Broadway in late 1958 before its television premiere on the NBC Opera Theater on March 8, 1959.
In this old fashioned drama Maria Golovin, a married woman whose husband is a prisoner of war, comes with her young son to spend the summer in a villa which has rented apartments. She soon falls in love with Donato, a budding architect who was blinded in the war and whose mother owns the villa. Donato's jealously develops into madness and brings about a shattering conclusion. Franca Duval, Richard Cross, Patricia Neway, and Ruth Kobart were in all three productions. The opera is in the dramatic style of the famed Douglas Sirk movies of the Ô50s which starred Lana Turner and Jane Wyman as the older and romantically needy women and Rock Hudson and John Gavin as the sensitive younger men. The music is considered one of Menotti's most melodic operas. Richard Cross will be interviewed by Eric Myers after the showing. Maria Golovin on Saturday, May 21, 2011, 2 PM at the Paley Center for Media, 25 West 52nd St.
- Teatro Grattacielo
Teatro Grattacielo, of which DUANE PRINTZ is the founder and general director, will continue its exploration of little known verismo operas.
In the spring, they will do a double bill of two one-act operas entitled "Love, Lost...Love Won" consisting of Umberto Giordano's (Andrea Chenier) last opera, Il re, and Primo Riccitelli's I compagnacci. Il rei premiered in 1929 in Milan's La Scala and disappeared. This will be the North American premiere. I compagnacci was presented at the Metropolitan Opera in 1923 with Beniamino Gigli and Elizabeth Rethberg following its premiere at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome earlier that year. It made the rounds of opera houses around the world and then disappeared after World War II.
Both operas are comedies that take place in medieval times with happy endings. The response this year to Teatro Grattacielo's I gioielli della Madonna was very enthusiastic so plan on attending and discovering another two delightful and well performed rarely seen operas. The opera will be performed in concert version in late May at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center. The seats are located in the "house seat" area. Included in the price ception after the performance.
Please reserve for 2010-2011 OPERA PLUS SERIES
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