Dinner at Eight is an opera by William Bolcom to a libretto by Mark Campbell based on the play of the same name by George S. Kaufman. It was first performed at the Minnesota Opera on 11 March 2017 in a production staged by Tomer Zvulun. The same production received its European premiere in October of 2018 in the Wexford Festival in Ireland. [1]
William Elden Bolcom is an American composer and pianist. He has received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Arts, a Grammy Award, the Detroit Music Award and was named 2007 Composer of the Year by Musical America. He taught composition at the University of Michigan from 1973 until 2008. He is married to mezzo-soprano Joan Morris.
The Opéra de Monte-Carlo is an opera house which is part of the Monte Carlo Casino located in the Principality of Monaco.
The Ghosts of Versailles is an opera in two acts, with music by John Corigliano to an English libretto by William M. Hoffman. The Metropolitan Opera had commissioned the work from Corigliano in 1980 in celebration of its 100th anniversary, with the premiere scheduled for 1983. Corigliano and Hoffman took as the starting point for the opera the 1792 play La Mère coupable by Pierre Beaumarchais. They took seven years to complete the opera, past the initial deadline. The opera received its premiere on December 19, 1991, at the Metropolitan Opera, with the production directed by Colin Graham. The premiere run of seven performances was sold out. The original cast included Teresa Stratas, Håkan Hagegård, Renée Fleming, Graham Clark, Gino Quilico, and Marilyn Horne. The Metropolitan Opera revived the opera in the 1994/1995 season.
Wexford Festival Opera is an opera festival that takes place in the town of Wexford in south-eastern Ireland during the months of October and November.
The Theatre Royal, was an opera house and performance venue in Wexford Ireland which opened in 1832 and closed in 2005. It was the home of the annual Wexford Festival Opera, and has now been replaced by The National Opera House.
Wuthering Heights is the sole opera written by Bernard Herrmann. He worked on it from 1943 to 1951. It is cast in a prologue, 4 acts, and an epilogue that repeats the music of the prologue. The opera was recorded in full by the composer in 1966, but it had to wait until April 2011, the centenary of the composer's birth, for a complete theatrical performance.
L'Amour de loin is an opera in five acts with music by Kaija Saariaho and a French-language libretto by Amin Maalouf. The opera received its world premiere performance on 15 August 2000 at the Salzburg Festival.
Mirandolina is a comic opera in three acts by Bohuslav Martinů, with a libretto by the composer after Carlo Goldoni's 1751 comedy La locandiera. Salieri had an opera on the same subject premiered at the Vienna Kärtnertortheater in 1773.
Stephen Barlow is an Australian-born London-based opera director. He was educated at Melbourne Grammar School and the University of Melbourne. He has directed more than 50 operas worldwide for many major companies including the Metropolitan Opera New York, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Santa Fe Opera, Opéra de Monte-Carlo, Opera Holland Park (London), Scottish Opera, The Grange Festival, Central City Opera, (Colorado), Singapore Lyric Opera, Mid Wales Opera, British Youth Opera, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the Royal College of Music, the Royal Northern College of Music, the Royal Academy of Music and University College Opera, London. He has also worked for the Royal National Theatre, London and the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg.
Virginia is an opera, a tragedia lirica, in three acts by composer Saverio Mercadante. The Italian libretto by Salvadore Cammarano is based on Vittorio Alfieri's tragedy of the same name. Alfieri's play was in turn taken from a story in Livy's Ab Urbe condita. Although initially written for performance in 1850 at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, the subject matter of Mercadante's opera was objected to by the Bourbon government censors and performance was banned outright. That decision was widely ridiculed, not just in Italy, but throughout Europe. After the fall of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1861, the ban on the opera no longer existed.
Transformations is a chamber opera in two acts by the American composer Conrad Susa with a libretto of ten poems by Anne Sexton from her 1971 book Transformations, a collection of confessional poetry based on stories by the Brothers Grimm. Commissioned by Minnesota Opera, the work, which is described by its composer as "An Entertainment in 2 Acts", had its world premiere on 5 May 1973 at the Cedar Village Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Anne Sexton, who had worked closely with Susa on the libretto, was in the audience. It went on to become one of the most frequently performed operas by an American composer with its chamber opera format of eight singers and an instrumental ensemble of eight musicians making it particularly popular with smaller opera companies and conservatories. The 2006 revival production of Transformations at the Wexford Opera Festival won The Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Opera Production.
The Golden Ticket is an opera based on Roald Dahl's classic 1964 book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by the contemporary American composer Peter Ash, with a libretto by Donald Sturrock. The Golden Ticket was commissioned by American Lyric Theater, Lawrence Edelson, Producing Artistic Director; and Felicity Dahl. It premiered at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis on June 13, 2010 in a co-production between OTSL, Ireland's Wexford Festival Opera, and American Lyric Theater.
Lost Highway is a 2003 opera adaptation of the 1997 David Lynch film of the same name, by Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth with the libretto by 2004 Nobel Prize-winner Elfriede Jelinek.
Grethe Barrett Holby is an American theatre producer, stage director, choreographer, and dramaturge best known for her work in opera. Holby is noted as the founder of American Opera Projects, where she served as Artistic Director from 1988 until 2001. She serves as Executive Artistic Director of Family Opera Initiative, which she founded in 1995, and Ardea Arts, Inc., which she founded in 2006. The Rockefeller Foundation awarded Holby a 2006 Creative Arts Residency The Bellagio Center.
Silent Night is an opera by composer Kevin Puts and librettist Mark Campbell. As Silent Night: Opera in Two Acts the work had its world premiere at the Ordway Theater, Saint Paul, Minnesota, on November 12, 2011 under the directorship and dramaturgy of Eric Simonson. As Silent Night, the opera had its East Coast premiere at the Philadelphia Academy of Music on February 8, 2013. It premiered in the Southwest at Bass Performance Hall with Fort Worth Opera on May 4, 2014. The European premiere took place on October 24, 2014, in a new production by Tomer Zvulun, at the Wexford Festival Opera in Ireland. In 2014 the work was staged at the Calgary Opera and the Cincinnati Opera, The Wexford production was performed at the Atlanta Opera and in 2015 it was performed at the Opéra de Montréal and the Lyric Opera of Kansas City. It received its West Coast premiere at Opera San Jose on February 11, 2017. The Glimmerglass Festival and University of Kentucky Opera Theatre presented the opera in 2018. It won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Hamlet is an opera in two acts by Australian composer Brett Dean, with an English libretto by Matthew Jocelyn, which is based on Shakespeare's play of the same name. The libretto uses "as little as 20 per cent" of the play's text and also takes inspiration from the "first quarto" as it "offers a different view on certain moments".
Tomer Zvulun is an Israeli stage director. Since 2013 he is the General and Artistic Director of Atlanta Opera.
Barbara Zechmeister is a German operatic soprano and voice teacher. A member of the Oper Frankfurt from 1996, she has appeared in major European opera houses and international festivals. She has performed in world premieres, and in recitals and recordings. Zechmeister has been a voice teacher at Dr. Hoch's Konservatorium since 2005.
Craig Irvin is an American operatic baritone. Irvin did his undergraduate study at the Simpson College, in Indianola Iowa, before completing his graduate work at The University of Tennessee. During his graduate studies, he performed with the Knoxville Opera as Basilio in Il Barbiere di Siviglia and as a soloist in Verdi's Requiem with the Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra. He has performed in many leading opera houses both nationally and internationally, including premiering the role of Lieutenant Horstmayer in Kevin Puts and Minnesota Opera's acclaimed and Pulitzer Prize winning Silent Night “I’ve had the new-opera experience that no one gets” Irvin is quoted to say by Opera News, in singing the same role multiple times.
Ella Marchment is a British opera director, artistic director, and an associate professor. She is a co-founder of the campaign charity SWAP'ra, Supporting Women and Parents in Opera, and the artistic director of Opera Festival of Chicago, and Opera in the Rock, Arkansas. She previously founded the opera company Helios Collective. She has directed the International Opera Awards since 2017.