Due to a health issue, my posts related to summer events will be delayed. Thank you for your patience, and I hope to begin posting again very soon!
Monthly Archives: June 2022
Santa Fe Opera announces 2023 summer festival season
Summer 2024 will include company’s 19th world premiere
By Peter Alexander June 22 at 3:45 p.m.
Robert K. Meya, general director of the Santa Fe Opera, has announced the repertoire, cast and creative artists for the company’s 2023 summer season.
Opening the opera’s 66th Festival Season will be Puccini’s Tosca and Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, followed by Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Dvořák’s Rusalka and Monteverdi’s Orfeo with a new orchestration by American composer Nico Muhly. Meya also announced the commission of a new opera by composer Gregory Spears and librettist Tracy K. Smith, The Righteous, to be premiered in 2024.
The Righteous will be the company’s 19th world premiere.
The 66th Festival Season will feature a total of 38 performances, including two special Sunday evenings presentring the opera’s singing and technical apprentices in staged scenes, August 13 and 20. Tickets for the 2023 season are now on sale at the Santa Fe Opera’s Web page.
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Santa Fe Opera
2023 66th Festival Season
Giacomo Puccini: Tosca
John Fiore, conductor
Keith Warner, stage director
Cast includes Angel Blue, Leah Hawkins, Joshua Guerrero, Freddie De Tommaso and Reginald Smith, Jr.
Santa Fe Opera new production
Sung in Italian with English and Spanish titles
June 30; July 5, 8, 14, 21; August 1, 7, 12, 19, 23 & 26, 2023
Richard Wagner: The Flying Dutchman
Thomas Guggeis and Alden Gatt, conductors
David Alden, stage director
Cast includes Nicholas Brownlee, Elza van den Heever and Morris Robinson
Santa Fe Opera new production
Sung in German with English and Spanish titles
July 1, 7, 12, 31; August 5, 10, 15, 25, 2023
Claude Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande
Harry Bicket, conductor
Netia Jones, stage director
Cast includes Huw Montague Rendall, Samantha Hankey and Gihoon Kim
Santa Fe Opera new production
Sung in French with English and Spanish titles
July 15, 19, 28; August 3, 9, & 18, 2023
Antonín Dvořák: Rusalka
Lidiya Yankovskaya, conductor
Sir David Pountney, stage director
Cast includes Ailyn Pérez, Robert Watson, James Creswell and Michaela Martens
Santa Fe Opera premiere and new production
Sung in Czech with English and Spanish titles
July 22, 26; August 4, 8, 17 & 22, 2023
Claudio Monteverdi, orchestration by Nico Muhly: Orfeo
Harry Bicket, conductor
Yuval Sharon, stage director
Cast includes Rolando Villazón, Lauren Snouffer, James Creswell and Blake Denson
World premiere of new orchestration; Santa Fe Opera premiere and new production
Sung in Italian with English and Spanish titles
July 29; August 2, 11, 16 & 24, 2023
Read the complete news release from the Santa Fe Opera, with full cast and credits, here.
Statement from Central City Opera Board co-chairs
Comments on the resignation of artistic director Pelham (Pat) Pearce
By Peter Alexander June 18 at 10:05 a.m.
Pelham (Pat) Pearce, the longtime artistic director of Central City Opera, announced his resignation from the company yesterday (June 17). His departure, after more than 26 years with Central City Opera, appears to have been unexpected, as it was first announced by Pearce early in the morning on his personal Facebook page.
Today (June 18) the co-chairs of the company released the following statement:
We wanted share the news that Pelham “Pat” Pearce has decided to step down from his role as Artistic Director of Central City Opera. Pat’s 26+ years have been essential to who Central City Opera is and the fact we are celebrating our 90th Anniversary this year. He has been a visionary and will be missed.
Pat has done an excellent job of preparing for this year’s Summer Festival and has a terrific team in place. We have confidence that our directors, artists and technicians have the expertise to put Pat’s vision on stage and look forward to seeing their wonderful work come to fruition.
We celebrate and thank Pat for his tremendous work and the important legacy he has left on Central City Opera and the whole industry.
–Anne McGonagle and Roopesh Aggarwal
Co-Chairs of the Central City Opera Board of Directors
The announcement comes only two weeks before the opening of the company’s 2022 summer season. There has been no announcement if or when Pearce would be replaced in his role as artistic director. The company hired Pamela Pantos as president and chief executive officer of the company in February.
Further information and tickets for the summer season are available on the CCO Web page.
Portions of new opera to be presented Sunday
Kamala Sankaram’s Joan of the City is inspired by homelessness and Joan of Arc
By Peter Alexander June 17 at 5:23 p.m.
Composer Kamala Sankaram says that many of the pieces she writes start with her own imagination and not the way many operas get written— with a commission for a specific performing organization.
“They start with a crazy idea that I have” Sankaram says. “Then I talk to people and see who also is crazy.” She then works with the “also crazy” people to bring her idea to life.
For her latest project, an opera titled Joan of the City that combines themes of homelessness with the Joan of Arc story, those conversations led her to Leigh Holman, director of the Eklund Opera Program at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the New Opera Workshop (CU NOW).
Sankaram has been in Boulder for the past two weeks, composing music and working with students in the opera program to start turning her “crazy idea” into a site-specific opera that will be premiered next year by Opera Omaha. Completed portions of Joan of the City will be performed at 3 p.m. Sunday (June 19) in the Music Theatre of Imig Music Building.
The performance is free and open to the public, and will take place entirely in the Music Theatre space.
The basic idea of the opera is that not one but five Joans will be fighting, not the English invaders in France, but gentrification and other forces creating homelessness in American cities. Starting in five different places within Omaha, the Joans eventually meet up, as audiences move with them through the city.
Sankaram grew up in Southern California, where the car is king, but after she moved to New York she started walking everywhere. “Whenever I go to a new city I’m walking, and I see the homeless community,” she says. “I think it’s important to have people see what does that feel like, to be walking the city, instead of driving by in a car.
“I started thinking about [homelessness] several years ago, and it has become increasingly problematic and prevalent . . . [in] all places across the United States. So the idea was how do you get people to look and see things that they normally look past.”
Another idea was the use of technology, which features in a lot of Sankaram’s work. It is technology that will allow the onsite performances in Omaha to take place in different places across the city, and also will allow audience members to participate in the performance by playing audio from their cell phones.
The final piece of Sankaram’s “crazy idea” was working with homeless agencies—Mary’s Place in Seattle and Micah House in Omaha—to connect the finished work to the homeless community. With her co-creator of Joan of the City, New York-based hybrid-theater director Kristin Marting, Sankaram and the homeless shelters presented writing workshops for the shelter clients.
The work that came from those workshops became the basis of the text for Joan of the City. “The libretto is all these poems that the shelter clients wrote, and then they’re sort of structured on this overall dramatic arc from the Joan of Arc story,” Sankaram explains. “It starts off as arias and then as the Joans meet each other, it turns into duets and trios and finally a quintet.”
Sankaram’s work is an example of the kind of creative and adventurous projects that CU NOW aims to support. Many new works go through a workshop process, but CU NOW is unique in that it offers a longer than average period for composers to work with performers while refining their work.
The program is largely Holman’s brainchild. She started CU NOW in 2010, and it has offered several composers the opportunity to refine works that were in development, including It’s a Wonderful Life by Gene Scheer and Jake Heggie, which was premiered by Houston Grand Opera in 2016 and performed by the CU Eklund Opera in 2019.
The composers and works are chosen for CU NOW largely through Holman’s contacts in the professional world. “So far nobody has ever submitted anything (for consideration),” she says. “It’s only been knowing somebody or meeting somebody through relationships, or going to see their operas. I just invite them, and they do it because they want to develop their piece and we can provide the students and the facilities and the musicians.”
In addition to the work that is done by an established composer preparing a new piece, there is simultaneously an educational component for young composers. Under the rubric Composer Fellows’ Initiative (CFI), a composer and librettist have been brought in to work with students to develop both their musical skills and their understanding of stagecraft.
This year, the students have been working with composer Tom Cipullo, whose comic opera Hobson’s Choice was featured at CU NOW in 2019, and librettist Gene Scheer, whose was in Boulder for CU NOW last year (Intelligence, with composer Jake Heggie) as well as 2016 (It’s a Wonderful Life).
“It’s a marvelously thrilling thing to be a part of,” Cipullo says of CFI. The composers in this year’s program “are extraordinary young musicians,” he says. “CFI gives them a push into writing operas. They have an interest, they’re all talented. How much they’ll pursue it, what works they’ll create, who can say, [but] they jumped in and they’re doing some really good things.”
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CU Now Opera Workshop
(CUNOW)
Leigh Holman, director
Kamala Sankaram: Joan of the City (portions)
3 p.m. Sunday, June 19
Imig Music Building, Music Theatre (N1B95)
Free
Pelham (Pat) Pearce resigns from Central City Opera
Surprise announcement made this morning (June 17)
By Peter Alexander June 17 at 3:15 p.m.
Pelham (Pat) Pearce, the general/artistic director of Central City Opera who has been with the company since 1996, today announced his resignation from the company.
The announcement was made by Pearce on his facebook page early this morning. The company has not yet responded to Pearce’s sudden announcement, which in its entirety was: “Dear Friends: I have resigned as Artistic Director of the Central City Opera. Please use my personal email, cell or social media to contact me. I look forward to new possibilities.”
The announcement comes only two weeks before the opening of Central City Opera’s 2002 season on Saturday, July. 2. The season, marking their return to Central City after two years that were affected by the COVID pandemic, features the musical Light in the Piazza by Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel (opening July 2) and Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss, Jr. (opening July 9).
For more information on the summer season, visit the Central City Opera Web page.
More information will be posted as it become available.
Longmont Symphony announces 2022–23 season
Season includes Beethoven cycle, Handel’s Messiah, world premieres
By Peter Alexander June 8 at 1:54 p.m.
The Longmont Symphony recently announced their 2022–23 season of concerts. The season features six mainstage concerts, three chamber orchestra concerts, and a Messiah singalong during the Holiday season (Dec. 18; see full season listings below).
The Beethoven symphony cycle will continue with Symphony No. 8 (Oct. 22 and 23), and other familiar orchestral repertoire will be represented by works of Dvořák and Sibelius. There will also be works by less familiar composers, including two world premieres, adding up to a season with intriguing discoveries to be made on most programs.
The first of the two world premieres is Symphony for the Great Return by American composer John Hennecken on the opening night of the new season, Oct. 8. With it on the same program are Dvořák’s familiar Cello Concerto, played by Naumburg Competition winner Clancy Newman, Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, and George Walker’s elegiac Lyric for Strings.
The next installment of the LSO’s Beethoven cycle will feature the Eighth Symphony, possibly the least familiar of the canonical nine symphonies (Oct. 22 and 23 in Stewart Auditorium). Sharing the same chamber orchestral program is a symphony by Anton Reicha, a contemporary and friend of Beethoven. An adventurous and experimental composer for his times, Reicha is little known today, but his work serves to fill in the context in which Beethoven worked.
The major work on the November mainstage concert (Nov. 19) will be Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 in G major, a cheerful and upbeat piece that was written shortly before the composer’s 1892–93 visit to the United States. It will be preceded by three works that reflect the native American experience: Overture to the choral-orchestral Song of Hiawatha by the black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor; American composer Michael Daugherty’s Trail of Tears for flute, strings and harp, inspired by the forced removal of Cherokees from their homeland; and Chokfi’ (Rabbit) for strings and percussion by Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, a composer who is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma. Flute soloist for Trail of Tears will be Brice Smith.
The LSO will celebrate the Holidays with a complete performance of Handel’s Messiah (Dec. 17), followed by an audience-participation truncated Messiah “singalong.”
The new year begins with a family concert (“Painting the Orchestra,” Jan. 21, 2023), followed by an all-Sibelius program (Feb. 18, 2023). Sibelius is generally under-represented in orchestra repertoire now, so it’s good to have a complete concert of his music, even if the program sticks to his more familiar works—Finlandia, the Violin Concerto with soloist Judith Ingolfsson, and the Symphony No. 2 in D major.
March 18 and 19 will see the second concert of the “Made in America” series, opening with Alcancías (Penny banks) for chamber orchestra by the 20th-century Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas. Jason Shafer, principal clarinet with the Colorado Symphony and a previous soloist with the LSO, returns to play Copland’s Clarinet Concerto. Completing the program are Gershwin’s Lullaby and Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin, written for piano as a tribute to the Baroque composer François Couperin and later transcribed for orchestra.
The season’s second world premiere will be the Symphony No. 3 by pianist/composer and CU, Boulder, alumnus Tyler Harrison. It will be paired with Tchaikovsky’s brooding Symphony No. 6, “Pathétique,” in a program titled “Darkness and Light” (April 15).
The 2022–23 concert season wraps up May 6 with a lighter program, “LSO Goes to the Movies,” featuring music by John Williams, Ennio Morricone and Hans Zimmer. Subscriptions are available through the LSO Web page. Tickets to individual concerts will go on sale Friday, July 29.
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2022–23 Concert Season
Longmont Symphony Orhestra
“The Great Return”
Elliot Moore, conductor, with Clancy Newman, cello
- Copland: Fanfare for the Common Man
- George Walker: Lyric For Strings
- John Hennecken: Symphony for the Great Return (World premiere)
- Dvořák: Cello Concerto
7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 8
Vance brand Civic Auditorium
Beethoven Symphony Cycle
Elliot Moore, conductor
- Anton Reicha: Symphony in G
- Beethoven: Symphony No. 8
7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 22
4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 23
Stewart Auditorium, Longmont Museum
“Made in America,” Part 1
Elliot Moore, conductor, with Brice Smith, flute
- Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Overture to Song of Hiawatha
- Michael Daugherty: Trail of Tears
- Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate: Chokfi’
- Dvořák: Symphony No. 8 in G major
7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 19
Vance Brand Civic Auditorium
Candlelight Concert
Elliot Moore, conductor
- Handel: Messiah
4 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 17
Westview Presbyterian Church
Messiah Singalong
Elliot Moore, conductor
- Handel: Messiah (selections)
4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 18
Westview Presbyterian Church
”Painting the Orchestra!” Family Concert
Elliot Moore, conductor
Program includes:
- Prokofiev: March from The Love for Three Oranges
- John Williams: Nimbus 2000
- Prokofiev: Cinderella Ballet Suite (selections)
4 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 21, 2023
Vance Brand Civic Auditorium
“Sibelius: A Portrait”
Elliot Moore, conductor, with Judith Ingolfsson, violin
- Sibelius: Finlandia
- —Violin Concerto
- —Symphony No. 2 in D major
7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 18
Vance Brand Civic Auditorium
“Made in America,” Part 2
Elliot Moore, conductor, with Jason Shafer, clarinet
- Silvestre Revueltas: Alcancías
- Copland: Clarinet Concerto
- Gershwin: Lullaby
- Ravel: L’Tombeau de Couperin
7 p.m. Saturday, March 18, 2023
4 p.m. Sunday, March 19, 2023
Stewart Auditorium, Longmont Museum
“Darkness and Light”
Elliot Moore, conductor
- Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6, “Pathétique”
- Tyler Harrison: Symphony No. 3 (World premiere)
7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 15, 2023
Vance Brand Civic Auditorium
“LSO Goes to the Movies”
Elliot Moore, conductor
Program includes:
- John Williams: Music from Star Wars and Harry Potter films
- Ennio Morricone: Music from Cinema Paradiso
- Hans Zimmer: Music from Pirates of the Caribbean
7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 6, 2023
Vance Brand Civic Auditorium
Season tickets now available. Single-even tickets go on sale July 29.
Sharps & Flatirons 