Bringing Up Baby is a 1938 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks, and starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. It was released by RKO Radio Pictures. The film tells the story of a paleontologist in a number of predicaments involving a scatterbrained heiress and a leopard named Baby. The screenplay was adapted by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde from a short story by Wilde which originally appeared in Collier's Weekly magazine on April 10, 1937.
La fanciulla del West is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Guelfo Civinini and Carlo Zangarini, based on the 1905 play The Girl of the Golden West by the American author David Belasco. Fanciulla followed Madama Butterfly, which was also based on a Belasco play. The opera has fewer of the show-stopping highlights that characterize Puccini's other works, but is admired for its impressive orchestration and for a score that is more melodically integrated than is typical of his previous work. Fanciulla displays influences from composers Claude Debussy and Richard Strauss, without being in any way imitative. Similarities between the libretto and the work of Richard Wagner have also been found though some attribute this more to the original plot of the play, and have asserted that the opera remains quintessentially Italian.
James Conlon is an American conductor. He is currently the music director of Los Angeles Opera and principal conductor of the RAI National Symphony Orchestra.
Don Quichotte is an opera in five acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Henri Caïn. It was first performed on 19 February 1910 at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo.
Michael Nathaniel Hersch is an American composer and pianist. He currently serves as faculty at the Johns Hopkins Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland, where he completed his own studies in music composition. The New York Times has commented that he writes "extraordinarily communicative music" and that "Mr. Hersch's music speaks for itself eloquently".
Feuersnot, Op. 50, is a Singgedicht or opera in one act by Richard Strauss. The German libretto was written by Ernst von Wolzogen, based on J. Ketel's report "Das erloschene Feuer zu Audenaerde". It was Strauss' second opera.
Nathan T. Gunn is an American operatic baritone who performs regularly around the world. He is an alumnus of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where he is currently a professor of voice.
Edward Barnes is an American composer and producer.
Mark Lamos is an American theatre and opera director, producer and actor. Under his direction, Hartford Stage won the 1989 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre and he has been nominated for two other Tonys. For more than 15 seasons, he has been artistic director of the Westport Country Playhouse. In May 2023, he announced he will leave the post in January 2024.
Royce Vavrek is a Canadian-born Brooklyn-based librettist, playwright, dance scenarist, musical theatre writer and filmmaker known for his collaborations with composers David T. Little, Missy Mazzoli, Mikael Karlsson, Ricky Ian Gordon, Paola Prestini and Du Yun, soprano Lauren Worsham, producers Beth Morrison and Lawrence Edelson, and conductors Steven Osgood, Julian Wachner and Alan Pierson.
Cincinnati Opera is an American opera company based in Cincinnati, Ohio and the second oldest opera company in the United States. Beginning with its first season in 1920, Cincinnati Opera has produced operas in the summer months of June and July with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra providing orchestral accompaniment.
Zachary "Zach" James is an American actor, singer, recording artist and 2022 Grammy Award winner. He is known for creating the role of Lurch in The Addams Family on Broadway, Abraham Lincoln in the world premiere Philip Glass opera, The Perfect American, Amenhotep III in the Olivier and Grammy Award-winning production of Akhnaten and for appearances on the television shows, 30 Rock,Murphy Brown, Law & Order: Organized Crime and The Blacklist. Since February 10th, 2024, he has starred as Hades in the West End production of Hadestown at the Lyric Theatre in London. Zachary was named the Most Innovative Opera Singer of 2019 by The Classical Post, Breakout Opera Artist of 2019 by Verismo Magazine and was identified as an industry leader and invited to be an official ambassador for Opera America. He has sung with some of the world's top opera companies and orchestras including English National Opera, LA Opera, Teatro Real, The New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Opera Philadelphia and NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo and made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 2019 in Akhnaten. His debut visual album, Call Out, has played 31 film festivals worldwide and received the highly commended designation from London’s Classical Music Digital Awards. His solo show, On Broadway, won him BroadwayWorld’s Vocalist of the Decade and Performer of the Decade awards for the years 2010-2020. The show was filmed live at Chris’s Jazz Cafe in Philadelphia, produced by Des Moines Metro Opera, and released as an album in 2021. Zachary is the host and creator of the comedy talkshow, What Happened Was... which aired every Friday on TDO Network, 2021 thru 2023, produced by Dallas Opera.
Timothy Sheader is a British theatre director. Sheader read Law with French at the University of Birmingham before moving into a career in theatre. Since 2007, he has been Artistic Director at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre.
John Thomas Holiday Jr. is an American operatic countertenor. His repertoire focuses on the Baroque and contemporary composers, including staged opera and opera in concert, works for voice and orchestra, and experimental mixed-media. He has participated in several world premieres. He has performed with several opera companies in the United States, toured with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and sung in Shanghai and several European cities. He also sings gospel, pop, and jazz; he was a contestant on season 19 of NBC's The Voice, a vocal competition television series.
Prospero's Rooms is a single-movement orchestral composition by the American composer Christopher Rouse. The work was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, for which Rouse was composer-in-residence, and was completed in 2011. The title comes from the Edgar Allan Poe short story "The Masque of the Red Death," in which the main character Prince Prospero and his fellow aristocrats try to escape the ravages of a plague known as the "Red Death" by locking themselves away from the outside world during a masquerade ball.
Gregory Spears is an American composer of instrumental and operatic works that blend aspects of romanticism, minimalism, and early music. Among his best known works are the operas Fellow Travelers and Paul's Case, as well as his Requiem.
Andrea Velis was an American operatic tenor who had a lengthy association with the Metropolitan Opera that spanned 33 seasons. Considered a highly skilled character actor, he excelled in supporting roles, often to great comedic effect. His voice is preserved on several recordings made for Live from the Metropolitan Opera and the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts.
Anthony Roth Costanzo is an American countertenor who has led performances at opera companies around the world. Beginning his career in musical theatre at the age of 11, he has since been featured at the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, English National Opera, Los Angeles Opera, and Glyndebourne Opera Festival, as well as in concert with the New York Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, London Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, and National Symphony Orchestra. In 2012, he won first place at Plácido Domingo's international opera competition Operalia and, in 2009, was a Grand Finals Winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. As an actor, he has performed in several films, including the Merchant Ivory film A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, for which he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. As a producer and curator, he has created shows for National Sawdust, Opera Philadelphia, the Philharmonia Baroque, Princeton University, WQXR, The State Theater in Salzburg, MasterVoices, and Kabuki-za Tokyo. Costanzo is a graduate of Princeton University, where he has returned to teach, and he received his master's degree from the Manhattan School of Music.
Opera Fusion: New Works (OF:NW) is a partnership between Cincinnati Opera and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) dedicated to fostering the development of new American operas. This collaboration is jointly led by Evans Mirageas, the Harry T. Wilks Artistic Director at Cincinnati Opera, as well as Robin Guarino, Professor of Opera at CCM. Since its founding in 2011, OF:NW has developed twenty-three new American operas. From the program's inception in 2011 through 2022, co-founders Marcus Küchle and Guarino served as co-artistic directors.
Fellow Travelers is an American historical romance political thriller television miniseries based on the 2007 novel of the same name by Thomas Mallon. Starring Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey, it centers on the decades-long romance between two men who first meet during the height of McCarthyism in the 1950s. The series premiered on October 29, 2023, on Showtime following an October 27 release on Paramount+ with Showtime.
