Bronx Opera (BxO) is an opera company in the Bronx, New York. It was founded in 1967 by artistic director and music director, the conductor Michael Spierman. The company is a member of the New York Opera Alliance. [1]
The company performs two operas a year, one lesser known work, and an opera from the standard repertoire. All productions are sung in English with full orchestra and chorus. [2] Additionally, the company presents concerts of opera excerpts throughout the year. The company's opera orchestra is increased to full-size to form the fully professional Orchestra of the Bronx which gives two free concerts every year. [3]
Opera performances are at Lehman College's Lovinger Theatre and Hunter College's Kaye Playhouse in Manhattan's Upper East Side; concerts are given in the Bronx and surrounding areas from Long Island to Delaware County. [4]
In 1966, a group of musicians were attempting to put together a performance of Handel's Messiah . While this performance never happened, it was the genesis of what became the Bronx Opera. Michael Spierman, a recent graduate of New York University's University Heights campus in the Bronx (now Bronx Community College of the City University of New York) took the core of the group that was to perform the Messiah and combined it with his intention to form an opera company that would be based at the Bronx NYU campus. This organization was to be known as the Heights Opera. It was as the Heights Opera Company that the group first performed on November 24, 1967, at Vladeck Hall of the Amalgamated Housing Cooperative. The opera was Mozart's Così fan tutte .
Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, often referred to simply as LaGuardia, is a public magnet high school specializing in teaching visual arts and performing arts, located near Lincoln Center in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of the Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, in the U.S. state of New York. Located at 100 Amsterdam Avenue between West 64th and 65th Streets, the school is operated by the New York City Department of Education, and resulted from the merger of the High School of Music & Art and the School of Performing Arts. The school has a dual mission of arts and academics, preparing students for a career in the arts or conservatory study as well as a pursuit of higher education.
The 9th Annual Grammy Awards were held on March 2, 1967, at Chicago, Los Angeles, Nashville and New York. They recognized accomplishments of musicians for the year 1966. The 9th Grammy Awards is notable for not presenting the Grammy Award for Best New Artist. Frank Sinatra won 5 awards.
Zubin Mehta is an Indian conductor of Western and Eastern classical music. He is music director emeritus of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) and conductor emeritus of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
The Crane School of Music is located in Potsdam, New York, and is one of three schools which make up the State University of New York (SUNY) at Potsdam.
Luther College is a private Lutheran liberal arts college in Decorah, Iowa. Established as a Lutheran seminary in 1861 by Norwegian immigrants, the school today is an institution of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The upper campus was listed as the Luther College Campus Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021.
Manhattan School of Music (MSM) is a private music conservatory in New York City. The school offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in the areas of classical and jazz performance and composition, as well as a bachelor's in musical theatre.
Westminster Choir College (WCC) is a residential conservatory of music, formerly located in Princeton, New Jersey, before moving to Rider University's Lawrenceville campus in fall 2020. Westminster Choir College educates students at the undergraduate and graduate levels for musical careers in music education, voice performance, piano performance, organ performance, pedagogy, music theory and composition, conducting, sacred music, and arts management; professional training in musical skills with an emphasis on performance is complemented by studies in the liberal arts. All students study with Westminster's voice faculty, the largest voice faculty in the world. The school's proximity to New York City and Philadelphia provides students with easy access to the musical resources of both cities.
The Handel and Haydn Society, familiarly known as H+H, is an American chorus and period instrument orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1815, it is in its 207th consecutive season, the most of any performing arts organization in the United States.
The Lansing Symphony Orchestra (LSO) is an American symphony orchestra headquartered in Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1929 under the leadership of its first Music Director, Izler Solomon. Since 2006, the orchestra has been headed by Music Director Timothy Muffitt.
Donald Nally is an American conductor, chorus master, and professor of conducting, specializing in chamber choirs, opera, and new music. He is conductor of the professional new-music choir, The Crossing, based in Philadelphia. He teaches graduate students at Northwestern University's Bienen School of Music.
Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music (CCBXHSM) is the first comprehensive high school of music in the Bronx, New York, United States. The current principal is Jerrod Mabry, who became principal in March 2013 after having taught English and acted as Assistant Principal since the school opened in 2003. Mabry replaced the founding principal, Dr. William Rodriguez, upon his retirement.
Leonard J[ordan] Lehrman is an American composer who was born in Kansas, on August 20, 1949, and grew up in Roslyn, New York. Since Aug. 3, 1999, he has resided in Valley Stream, New York.
The University Musical Society (UMS) is a not-for-profit performing arts presenter located on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was established in December 1880. While UMS is affiliated with the University of Michigan and is a regular collaborator with many university units, UMS supports itself from ticket sales, foundation and government grants, corporate and individual contributions, and endowment income.
Beverly Wolff was an American mezzo-soprano who had an active career in concerts and operas from the early 1950s to the early 1980s. She performed a broad repertoire which encompassed operatic and concert works in many languages and from a variety of musical periods. She was a champion of new works, notably premiering compositions by Leonard Bernstein, Gian Carlo Menotti, Douglas Moore, and Ned Rorem among other American composers. She also performed in a number of rarely heard baroque operas by George Frideric Handel with the New York City Opera (NYCO), the Handel Society of New York, and at the Kennedy Center Handel Festivals.
Eunice Alberts (1927–2012) was an American contralto who had an active career as a concert soloist and opera singer during the 1950s through the 1980s.
Andrew McKinley was an American operatic tenor, violinist, arts administrator, music educator, and school administrator. Although he mainly performed in the United States, he had an active international singing career with major opera companies and symphony orchestras from the 1940s through the 1960s. His repertoire spanned a wide range, from leading tenor parts to character roles.
Robert White is an American tenor and voice teacher who has had an active performance career for eight decades. If he is not better known to the general public, it is because his career, confined to art song and the concert stage, has not brought him the wider renown of singers who make their careers in opera; but he has long been cherished by connoisseurs of vocal music for the pure lyric sweetness of his voice and his scrupulous musicianship.
Yvonne Ciannella is an American coloratura soprano in opera and concert. She began her career performing and recording with the Robert Shaw Chorale in the early 1950s. After graduate voice studies at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, she embarked on a career as an opera singer; working mainly in Germany at the Staatstheater Braunschweig, Theater Bonn, and Theater Dortmund during the 1960s. She also appeared as a guest artist with opera companies in Berlin, Cologne, Florida, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Vienna. For many years she was a member of the voice faculty of Florida State University.
Harold Rosenbaum is an American conductor and musician. He is the artistic director and conductor of the New York Virtuoso Singers and the Canticum Novum Singers. The New York Virtuoso Singers appear on 48 albums on labels including Naxos Records and Sony Classical. He has collaborated extensively with many ensembles including the New York Philharmonic, Juilliard Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra, Bang on a Can, Mark Morris Dance Group, Orchestra of Saint Luke's, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Riverside Symphony, and Brooklyn Philharmonic.
The Princeton University Orchestra (PUO) is the flagship symphony orchestra of Princeton University. The ensemble tours internationally and includes over 100 musicians, almost all of whom are undergraduates at the university. Every academic year, the Princeton University Orchestra holds eight or nine concerts in Richardson Auditorium in Alexander Hall.