Superstar Joshua Bell shines, dramatic “Pictures” grasp audience
By Peter Alexander June 30 at 1:08 a.m.
The 2023 Colorado Music Festival summer concert series got under way last night (June 29) with an orchestra program that was everything music director Peter Oundjian had promised.
“I think its important,” he has said, that the festival should open with “a very welcoming opening night.” Which indeed it was: an opening flourish, a warm romantic violin concerto warmly played, and a popular orchestra showpiece. Could you ask for more?
Carlos Simon. Photo by Terrance Ragland.
The concert opened with an exciting piece not even two years old, Motherboxx Connection by American composer Carlos Simon. Commissioned by the Sphinx Organization and the University of Michigan Symphony, it was premiered in January, 2022.
Conceived as part of a multi-movement work titled TALES, Motherboxx Connection evokes, in the words of the composer, “multi-faceted aspects of blackness.” All scurry and brilliance, the score exploits the full orchestra. There are rushing strings; syncopated bursts of sound from the brass; chattering woodwinds; and punctuating percussion. Here it was played with brio and precision, providing a sparkling introduction to the 2023 festival.
The musical high point of the evening came with the introduction of violinist Joshua Bell to play Bruch’s dramatic and lushly Romantic Violin Concerto in G minor. Bell is known for his skill with the 19th-centruy Romantic style, and this concerto, composed in 1866, is a perfect match for his playing.
Joshua Bell. Photo by Lisa Marie Mazzucco.
From the very first note, deep in the violin’s lower register, Bell’s playing had a penetrating warmth and richness that brought the most lyrical moments to life. Here was the greatest virtue of the performance: the lyrical passages sang, and even the softest moments were well projected. Nor was Bell averse to the more heroic moments of this dramatic work, playing them with flair and intensity.
Conductor Peter Oundjian and the orchestra found all the drama and impact in the score. Bell was so well in accord with their interpretation that when not playing toward the audience, he often turned to Oundjian or the orchestra as if to connect more deeply with the other musicians on stage.
If there were any criticism of the performance, it would be that Bell’s playing was so controlled and lyrically shaped that the blazing finale seemed almost subdued. Indeed, you may hear more fiery performances of the Concerto, but you will never hear one more expressive and deeply felt.
Bell and Oundjian had an orchestral encore prepared, and it was one that spoke to the violinist’s strengths: the “Meditation” from Massenet’s opera Thaïs. Bell’s ability to sustain long, rhapsodic melodic lines and spin the softest phrases into silence made an unforgettable performance.
The concert concluded with Mussorgsky’s great showpiece Pictures at an Exhibition in the familiar Ravel orchestration. Never afraid to use the full force of brass and percussion, Oundjian achieved powerfully dramatic effects. I have never heard a more forthright and forceful opening “Promenade”: more than a stroll through the galleries, this was more of a robust hike. But all the better to contrast with the music that followed.
Conductor Peter Oundjian with the CMF Orchestra. Photo by Michael Ensminger.
From the boisterous “Children’s Quarrel” at the Tuileries, to the lumbering oxcart of “Bydlo,” to the delicate “Ballet of Unhatched Chicks,” Oundjian and the orchestra found a strongly characterized sound for each movement. The catacombs were suitably hushed and eerie, and I’m not sure I have ever heard a more violent “Baba Yaga’s Hut.” The entrance into the final sketch, “The Great Gate of Kiev,” was carefully held back, allowing the music to build over time.
With careful control, the “Great Gate” can hardly fail, and it did not. The climactic final chords had exactly the effect that Oundjian—and Ravel—wanted. The audience went away energized. And the festival is off to a scintillating start.
NOTE: The same program will be repeated tonight (June 30) at 6:30 p.m. Ticket are available from the Chautauqua Box Office.
A FINAL DRAMATIC TOUCH: Only in Boulder? Departing patrons were greeted by blazing lights, flashing police cruisers, and a detour from the sidewalk. During the concert a bear had taken up residence in a tree on the Chautauqua grounds. This was just the extra drama a music festival should have at the base of the Flatirons!
Opening weeks: Joshua Bell plays Bruch, Rachmaninoff turns 150
By Peter Alexander Jun. 27 at 11:25 p.m.
Chautauqua Auditorium
The 2023 Colorado Music Festival (CMF) gets under way at the Chautauqua Auditorium Thursday with what music director Peter Oundjian calls “a very welcoming kind of opening night” (7:30 p.m. June 29; details below).
Peter Oundjian. Photo by Geremy Kornreich
By welcoming, Oundjian probably means comfortable for the audience. Or as he says, “you don’t want to do something too insanely eclectic on the opening night.” And indeed opening night is only a little bit eclectic, with a new piece by American composer Carlos Simon nestled with superstar violinist Joshua Bell playing Max Bruch’s G minor Violin Concerto and Mussorgsky’s evergreen favorite Pictures at an Exhibition in the familiar Ravel orchestral arrangement.
That program will be repeated at 6:30 p.m. Friday. Other events in the opening weeks of the festival are a family concert featuring Peter and the Wolf at 10:30 a.m. Sunday, July 2; and a celebration of the 150th anniversary of Rachmaninoff’s birth Thursday and Friday July 6 and 7, and Sunday, July 9 (times and programs below).
As the 2023 CMF artist in residence, Bell will be featured for the opening night concert, June 29–30; and at the closing two concerts, Aug. 3 and 6, when he will play a pre-premiere read-through of a suite for violin and orchestra that he commissioned from five prominent American composers. While the later concerts explore Bell’s involvement in the music of our time, the opening night performance of the Bruch Concerto showcases his ability with Romantic music.
Joshua Bell. Photo by Phillip Knott
Oundjian has known Bell since he was 14 and values that ability. “He has always had this rare sort of skill, looking back to when people played in a Romantic fashion, with the repertoire that calls for it,” he says. Bell studied with legendary Russian-American violinist Josef Gingold, who was born in 1907 in Brest-Litovsk in what was then the Russian empire and who is considered one of the last links to the Romantic violin style.
“It was a beautiful old-school approach to the playing and the sound production,” Oundjian says of Gingold’s teaching. “The sound, the expressive fingering, finding a way to express like a singer would—that’s what’s so wonderful about Bell’s playing. He’s like a great singer.”
Bell has been unusually successful in the transition from prodigy at 14, and before, to a successful adult artist. “He’s very, very focused,” Oundjian says. “He’s very disciplined in terms of what his goals need to be, very clear I think in his career.”
The Bruch Concerto, written in 1866, is an ideal vehicle for the Romantic style that Bell represents. “It just never stops being stunningly beautiful,” Oundjian says. As for the rest of the opening program, “Carlos Simon is a great way to open it all up—it has drive and it’s surprising and it’s brand new.” And it’s programmed with Pictures at an Exhibition—”one of the most exciting orchestral pieces ever written.”
Carlos Simon. Photo by Terrance Ragland
Simon is currently composer in residence at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and faculty at Georgetown University. He received the 2021 Medal of Excellence recognizing outstanding classical Black and Latinx musicians from the Sphinx Organization, which also commissioned Motherboxx Connection. The title is derived from the work of the cartoonist duo known as Black Kirby, which in turn is a pun on pioneering cartoonist Jack Kirby’s motherbox, a living computer.
Simon writes in his program notes, “To represent the power and intelligence of the motherboxx, I have composed a short, fast-moving musical idea that constantly weaves in and throughout the orchestra. A majestic, fanfare-like motif also provides the overall mood of strength and heroism. I imagine the motherboxx as an all-knowing entity that is aware of the multi-faceted aspects of blackness.”
For the second week of the festival, Oundjian put together programs that recognize the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. Two different programs will be shared over three concerts, July 6–7 and July 9. “The idea of celebrating the 150th birthday is completely obvious,” Oundjian says. “But what was less obvious was how to celebrate this.”
He thought of two things he could bring to American audiences that they might not know. First was that Rachmaninoff lived in the U.S. many years and eventually gained American citizenship; and the second was the playing of Russian pianist Nicolai Lugansky.
“What I decided was to focus on the great orchestral music, which included piano concertos created or premiered in America,” Oundjian explains. “It felt important for everyone to realize that Rachmaninoff, yes he was of Russian descent, but he died in America. In fact he got his American citizenship just weeks before he died. I think it’s important that we realize that this was his country. And this was where he found the most success and, I wouldn’t say happiness, but lack of unhappiness, more like.”
Those American works include familiar audience favorites—the Third Piano Concerto and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini—but also works that are not well known but that Oundjian wants to bring to people’s attention.
“You have his magnificent Third Symphony which is not often played and I so love it, and the Third Piano Concerto, which was premiered by the New York Philharmonic,” he says. “And you have the other pieces written while he was living in America, the Symphonic Dances, which is an absolute masterpiece, and the Fourth Piano Concerto, which you never hear and is stunningly beautiful and the Paganini Variations which we all know and love.
“It just seemed to make up a beautiful week of celebration of Rachmaninoff in America.”
Nikolai Lugansky
For the concertos, Oundjian chose a pianist he has worked with in the past, but who is not well known in the U.S. “Nikolai Luganski is not well known in America, which is a reason that I thought it would be wonderful to bring him here. People should know about him.
“He plays the Rachmaninoff concerti in a style which is in line with the character and the true soul of Rachmaninoff. Rachmaninoff’s music shouldn’t be overzealously expressed, and Luganski’s playing is so powerful, it’s so spiritual—and (he has) a unique approach to Rachmaninoff that has a purity about it that I wanted to emphasize, because Rachmaninoff was a profoundly sensitive person.”
Oundjian is as pleased with the rest of the scheduled festival as he is with the opening concerts. “I was very fortunate that almost everything that we wanted to present became a reality—which is not always the case,” he says.
“People were available, and wanted to do the repertoire, so it came into place quite smoothly.”
NOTE: The remainder of the 2023 Colorado Music Festival will be previewed in subsequent articles.
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COLORADO MUSIC FESTIVAL Performances June 29–July 9 All performances at Chautauqua Auditorium
7:30 p.m. Thursday June 29 and 6:30 p.m. Friday, June 30: Festival Opening Program Festival Orchestra, Peter Oundjian, conductor With Joshua Bell, violin
Carlos Simon: “Motherboxx Connection” from Tales: A Folklore Symphony for orchestra
Max Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor
Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition (orchestrated by Ravel)
Family Concert: 10:30 a.m. Sunday, July 2 Festival Orchestra, Kalena Bovell, conductor With Jennifer Bird-Arvidsson, soprano, and Janae Burris, narrator
Bizet: Carmen Suite No. 1
Eric Whitacre: Goodnight Moon
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: “Danse Nègre” from African Suite
Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf
7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 6 and 6:30 p.m. Friday July 7 Festival Orchestra, Peter Oundjian, conductor With Nicolai Lugansky, piano
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor —Symphony No. 3 in A Minor
6:30 p.m. Sunday, July 9 Festival Orchestra, Peter Oundjian, conductor With Nicolai Lugansky, piano
Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini —Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Minor —Symphonic Dances
2023 Summer Season features three mainstage adaptations of the Bard
By Peter Alexander June 22 at 11:57 a.m.
Central City Opera (CCO) returns to a three-production mainstage season this summer for the first time in more than 10 years with three musical works based on Shakespeare.
Opening Night at Central City Opera. Featured in Central City Opera’s 75th anniversary book, “Theatre of Dreams, The Glorious Central City Opera- Celebrating 75 Years.”
The 2023 Festival season runs from Saturday, June 24, until Sunday, Aug. 6, with the three works performed in rotating repertory (see full list of dates below). The three works are musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet by French composer Charles Gounod, which stays close to the original plot in most respects (opens June 24); an opera by Rossini based on a French version of Othello that differs in significant ways from Shakespeare’s play (opens July 15); and Cole Porter’s Broadway hit Kiss Me, Kate, which uses Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew as a plot device in a broadly comic tale of feuding actors, interlocking love triangles and ruthless but luckless gangsters (opens July 1).
First to open is Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, the closest of the three works to Shakespeare (performances June 24–Aug. 5). First performed in 1859, it was a huge success from the outset, with more than 300 performances over the next decade, and it remains popular today. This is largely due to the combination of a story that is familiar and much loved, and a beautifully written Romantic score.
“The music is fantastic!” director Dan Wallace Miller says. “Of all the adapted Shakespeare, its the one that fits the mold of French grand opera the best. It’s inherently French, and it has the sumptuous, flowing quality you expect.”
Dan Wallace Miller
The opera has most of the major plot points of the play—the hatred between Montagues and Capulets, the Capulets’ ball where Romeo and Juliet fall instantly in love, the balcony scene, the deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt, and the deaths of the lovers in Juliet’s tomb. There are only a few differences from the original, Miller says.
For one, the play opens with a scene that is missing in the opera, a brawl between the Montagues and Capulets that sets the tone for the violence between the two families. “The other huge difference,” Miller says, “is that because this is an opera, you gotta have the final duo!” Instead of Juliet waking up to find Romeo’s corpse and then stabbing herself, as in the play, Juliet wakes up as Romeo is not quite dead yet. Only after their duet does he die, and then she kills herself.
Taking inspiration from Wieland Wagner’s minimalist stagings at Bayreuth after World War II, the opera is played in a bare unit set that represents the inside of a mausoleum. Different locations are suggested by changes in lighting, by moss, and by flowers, but the setting also symbolizes the pointless hatred that turns all of Verona into a mausoleum.
“The idea is that the ghosts will keep reliving this tragic story up until the point where humanity itself has forgotten that any of these people ever existed,” Miller says. “The people involved in the conflict don’t know what instigated it in the first place, but it has resulted in centuries of blood and tragedy.”
Miller also stresses that Romeo and Juliet are both children—she is specifically not yet 14, and he is probably a little older. “They are adolescents,” he says. “They are not the platonic ideal of romance. Romeo goes to the Capulet ball, and the first woman he sees he falls in love with. The realization that Juliet is the daughter of his enemy is a further turn-on—lust spurred on by rebellion.”
A challenge to the performers is the contradiction between very young characters and music that requires seasoned professionals. “It’s about adolescent love, but my God it’s so difficult to sing,” Miller says. “It’s absolute fireworks!
“Both Ricardo Garcia and Madison Leonard, who are singing Romeo and Juliet, are just doing a phenomenal job. It is so endearing to see that spark of adolescent glee in every interaction they have.”
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Kiss Me, Kate (performances July 1–26) was Cole Porter’s greatest success. It opened on Broadway in 1948 and ran for more than 1000 performances, followed by a London West End production in 1951, and several subsequent revivals up to 2019.
The show is about actors trying to mount a musical version of The Taming of the Shrew, in which different cast members have different stakes in the show. Producer/director/star Fred Graham needs a success in order to revive a floundering career; co-star and ex-wife Lilli Vanessi is engaged to the influential General Harrison Howell, but also caught between her genuine love for Fred and his arrogant mistreatment of her. Bill, the boyfriend of younger actress Lois Lane, is involved with gangsters who attempt to hold the production hostage for his debts.
Ken Cazan
The entanglement of these different dilemmas creates lively theatrical humor. “The wit of (Kiss Me, Kate) is very sophisticated, acerbic, clever stuff,” stage director Ken Cazan says. “It’s amazing, the whole thing. But some of it’s dated. Something I have to deal with in 2023 is the misogyny that’s just through the roof.”
Cazan points to the original ending of the show, where Lois goes face down before Fred, as a sign of submission. He will talk to the cast and ask how they want to play that scene. “I think we’ll probably do a 180 from that,” he says. “I’m fascinated to talk to Emily (Brockway) and Johnathan (Hays), the two principals, and say, what happens after this?
“It’s up to them to perform it and I don’t want to force them into anything.” So if you want to know how this production turns out, you’ll have to see it!
In addition to the ending, the script is full of lines that are very troublesome in 2023—even the cheery tune sung by the gangsters, “Brush up your Shakespeare.” One line that is almost always changed today is when Lois sings to Bill, “Won’t you turn that new leaf over, So your baby can be your slave?” People from casual friends to CCO audience members to Pamela Pantos, managing director of Central City Opera, have told Cazan that they hate that line. It will be changed, he says, as it almost always is today.
The conception of the female roles is something else Cazan wants to modernize. He specifically mentioned Lauren Gemelli, the actor playing Lois/Bianca. “She’s so often done as a bubble headed sexpot, which is tremendously dated,” he says. “Lauren walked in (to her audition) and you could see the brains behind the manipulation. I’m very excited to work with her.”
The feuding between Fred and Lilli is supposedly based on real life. The show’s original producer, Arnold Saint-Subber, had seen on- and off-stage battles between legendary husband-and-wife actors Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in a 1935 production of Taming of the Shrew. He later asked married writers Bella and Samuel Spewack to write a script based on Lunt and Fontanne, and they brought in Cole Porter to write the music.
It turned out to be a brilliant partnership. “Every song was a hit!” Cazan says. “I love it!”
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The final show to open this summer will be Rossini’s Otello (performances July 15–Aug. 6). While based loosely on the same characters, this is not Shakespeare’s Othello that you may be familiar with. First performed in 1820, Rossini’s opera was based on a 1792 adaptation by French playwright Jean-François Ducis.
His Shakespearean adaptations in French included not only Othello, but Hamlet, Macbeth and Roméo et Juliette. Working in the late 18th century, Ducis was subject to the rigid rules of classical French theater, to the extent that some of his plays differed extensively from the original.
For his play, and subsequently Rossini’s opera, Ducis transferred the action entirely to Venice. In other differences, Otello and Desdemona are engaged but not married; Desdemona has another suitor, Rodrigo; Iago, another rejected suitor, pretends to support Rodrigo; and jealousy is less of a motivating factor than the racism that Othello encounters. As director Ashraf Sewailam explains, “Otello is referred to as ‘l’Africano’ multiple times by white characters, so the racist stuff is unambiguous.”
Ashraf Sewailam
To shine a light on the racism, the production has been placed in classical times, where we can more easily notice its impact. “The central idea, staging it in ancient Rome, I credit to (CCO executive director) Pamela Pantos,” Sewailam explains. That setting avoids contemporary political sensitivities, while clearly highlighting racial animus within a diverse society.
The opera is not often performed today, for a variety of reasons. The greatest is simply that it has been overshadowed by Verdi’s Otello, which was first performed in 1887, 67 years after Rossini’s opera. Another reason is that it calls for four virtuoso tenors who can sing in Rossini’s highly decorated style. There are tenors today who can sing those roles, but as Sewailam comments, “they have to get them all four at the same time, obviously.”
Sewailam has sung several roles at Central city Opera, but this will be his first appearance as director. He has directed smaller productions and scenes before—at San Diego Opera and dell’Arte Opera Ensemble in New York, among others—but he says directing a mainstage production in Central City is “a breakthrough for my directing.”
He sees the unfamiliar variant of the plot as an opportunity rather than an obstacle. “It’s a chance to highlight a different version of the plot,” he says. Instead, “the challenge is how the opera is structured musically.” Using singer’s slang, he says “the opera is really a ‘park and bark’ structure”—meaning a series of static arias where singers show off their vocal prowess without advancing the plot. But Sewailam has found plenty in the text for the production to transcend “park and bark.”
Like his fellow directors, he is excited about the singers he will be working with. “The cast is amazing!” he says. “We have quite a few twists and turns. We have a Black Iago, which presents both a problem and an opportunity, to mine the psychology of Iago and see what we can do with it.
“We are not contriving something that’s not there, but we want to mine everything to make it as compelling as possible.”
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Central City Opera 2023 Season All performances in the Central City Opera House
Roméo et Juliette By Charles Gounod, Jules Barbier and Michel Carré John Baril, conductor, and Dan Wallace Miller, stage director Performed in French with English supertitles
7 p.m. Saturday, June 24; Friday, June 30 2 p.m. Sunday, July 2; Saturday, July 8; Wednesday, July 12; Saturday, July 15; Friday, July 21; Friday July 28; Sunday, July 30; Wednesday, Aug. 2; Saturday, Aug. 5
Kiss Me, Kate By Cole Porter, Samuel and Bella Spewack Adam Turner, conductor, and Ken Cazan, stage director Performed in English with English supertitles
7 p.m. Saturday, July 1; Friday, July 7; Saturday, July 29; Saturday, Aug. 5 2 p.m. Wednesday, July 5; Sunday, July 9; Friday, July 14; Sunday, July 16; Saturday, July 22; Wednesday, July 26
Otello By Gioachino Rossini and Francesco Berio di Salsa John Baril, conductor; Ashraf Sewailam, stage director Performed in Italian with English supertitles
7 p.m. Saturday, July 15; Friday, Aug. 4 2 p.m. Wednesday, July 19; Sunday, July 23; Saturday, July 29; Sunday, Aug. 6
Portions of a new work—for now The Calling—will be performed June 16 & 18
By Peter Alexander June 14 at 11:25 a.m.
Composer Tom Cipullo is seeking a name for his new opera.
Composer Tom Cipullo (l) and Leigh Holman (r), artistic director of CU’s Eklund Opera program. Photo by Stabio Productions for CU NOW.
Right now it’s The Calling; before that it was The Next Voice you Hear. His work-in-progress is the subject of the 2023 CU New Opera Workshop (CU NOW) in the College of Music, and the first thing Cipullo wanted to do in the workshop was find the right title.
“I think it was the first thing I said when I arrived here,” he says. “I need a better title!” The Calling was suggested by one of the performers, and so far that is the title that everyone likes best.
Conductor Nick Carthy (standing) with pianist Nathália Lato.
But whatever you call it, you can catch a preview this Friday and Sunday at the Music Theater in the CU Imig Music Building (7:30 p.m. June 16 and 2 p.m. June 18; admission is free). Portions of the opera-in-progress will be performed by early-career artists from the CU Eklund Opera program under the direction of conductor Nicholas Carthy and stage director Leigh Homan. They will be accompanied by pianist Nathália Kato.
The libretto, written by Cipullo, tells the intertwining stories of three characters: televangelist Pastor Dove; IRS Agent Cordero, who is investigating Dove’s ministry for potential tax violations; and Dolores Caro, an older woman who supports Dove’s ministry.
Two of these characters are based on models. The televangelist was inspired by someone Cipullo won’t name that he saw interviewed about his extravagant lifestyle. “He was so charming and frightening at the same time that I couldn’t take my eyes off of him,” Cipullo says. But he wants you to know he is not trying to mock the televangelist.
“I was trying to tell his side of it,” he says. “He’s giving to people. Maybe it’s worth it for these people, what he’s giving them. (It makes) me think, the preacher actually believes he’s doing good.”
Dolores, the homebound contributor to the ministry, is partly Cipullo himself. She is surrounded by old-fashioned consumer goods and feeling left behind by the 21st century. “There’s a lot of me in her,” Cipullo admits. Like Dolores, “I still have a landline. And I can’t figure out how to work this (smartphone)!”
The character of the IRS agent was suggested to Cipullo, and he is more of an original creation. As someone who grew up religious and knows both the Bible and literature, Agent Cordero is an ideal foil to Dove.
With these three characters it would be easy to write a biting satire, but that’s not Cipullo’s game. “I hope it’s more nuanced than that,” he says. “The biting satirical way is the way that a lot of people in New York would look at people who give to televangelists, but I’m more interested in what the people who listen to these televangelists get out of it.”
When pressed, Cipullo says that The Calling is neither satire nor comedy, but both—and partly tragedy, in a way. “It’s all of these,” he says. “I think it is a commentary on the condition of the country, with tragic and comic overtones. Any good opera that wants to touch your heart has to have light moments in it.”
Getting the right balance of ingredients is one purpose of CU NOW and similar workshops. Composers can hear portions of their new works and see what works and what doesn’t, and to write new material when required. Often the performers themselves provide ideas that end up in the finished work—and not just the title.
When he arrived for the workshop, Cipullo says, “I had specific things that I was concerned about, and I had various epiphanies. I didn’t really have the title, there was too much wordiness and (I was concerned about) the momentum and how to shape it.
Leigh Holman (l) and composer Tom Cippullo (r) during a rehearsalfor ’The Calling.’
“Then there are specific levels—for example, someone’s singing an aria, there are specific musical things. Maybe it’s only a moment, maybe it’s a beat, maybe it’s too long. Maybe something’s wrong. I don’t know what it is, but we have to try to figure out what it is, as a group.”
CU NOW, founded by Holman in 2010, provides a longer working period than most workshops—up to two or three weeks. This gives composers a chance to tackle more changes than they could in a few days, which is valuable to the creative process. Composers who have been part of CU NOW in the past include Cipullo, Kamala Sankaram, Jake Heggie and Mark Adamo.
But Holman makes it clear that CU NOW is first and foremost for the students, giving them experience they will need in their careers. Working with composers, and learning new music on short notice, have become more necessary as more new operas are being produced around the country. At first, she says, the singers struggled to keep up with the changes they had to make overnight.
But “it’s developed now to they’re begging for music,” she says. “They ask, ‘Did you write me any music last night?’ And Tom is writing new music almost every day and sending it to them every morning, and by 2 o’clock they know it already!”
That experience prepares the students for the facts of professional life today. “This is a golden age of American Opera,” Holman says. “The singers, if they’re going to work, they need to have these skills. When we started, there weren’t other universities doing these workshops and now they’re doing them all over.”
And at this point Cipullo speaks up. “But there’s nothing like this one”! he says.
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CU New Opera Workshop Leigh Holman, director Nick Carthy, conductor Nathália Kato, pianist
The Calling by Tom Cipullo (portions)
Music Theatre, Imig Music Building 7:30 pm. Friday, June 16 2 p.m. Sunday June 18
Sharps & Flatirons 