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John Coolidge Adams is an American composer and conductor whose music is rooted in minimalism. Among the most regularly performed composers of contemporary classical music, he is particularly noted for his operas, which are often centered around recent historical events. Apart from opera, his oeuvre includes orchestral, concertante, vocal, choral, chamber, electroacoustic and piano music.
Nixon in China is an opera in three acts by John Adams with a libretto by Alice Goodman. Adams's first opera, it was inspired by U.S. president Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China. The work premiered at the Houston Grand Opera on October 22, 1987, in a production by Peter Sellars with choreography by Mark Morris. When Sellars approached Adams with the idea for the opera in 1983, Adams was initially reluctant, but eventually decided that the work could be a study in how myths come to be, and accepted the project. Goodman's libretto was the result of considerable research into Nixon's visit, though she disregarded most sources published after the 1972 trip.
Carlisle Sessions Floyd was an American composer primarily known for his operas. These stage works, for which he wrote not only the music but also the librettos, typically engage with themes from the American South, particularly the Post-civil war South, the Great Depression and rural life. His best known opera, Susannah, is based on a story from the Biblical Apocrypha, transferred to contemporary rural Tennessee, and written for a Southern dialect. It was premiered at Florida State University in 1955, with Phyllis Curtin in the title role. When it was staged at the New York City Opera the following year, the reception was initially mixed; some considered it a masterpiece, while others degraded it as a 'folk opera'. Subsequent performances led to an increase in Susannah's reputation and the opera quickly became among the most performed of American operas.
Der Besuch der alten Dame is an opera in three acts by Gottfried von Einem to a German libretto by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, based on his 1956 play of the same name.
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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.
The Death of Klinghoffer is an American opera, with music by John Adams to an English-language libretto by Alice Goodman. First produced in Brussels and New York in 1991, the opera is based on the hijacking of the passenger liner Achille Lauro by the Palestine Liberation Front in 1985, and the hijackers' murder of a 69-year-old Jewish-American wheelchair-using passenger, Leon Klinghoffer.
Peter Sellars is an American theatre director, noted for his unique stagings of classical and contemporary operas and plays. Sellars is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he teaches Art as Social Action and Art as Moral Action. He has been described as a key figure of theatre and opera for the last 50 years.
Doctor Atomic is an opera by the contemporary American composer John Adams, with libretto by Peter Sellars. It premiered at the San Francisco Opera on October 1, 2005. The work focuses on how leading figures at Los Alamos dealt with the great stress and anxiety of preparing for the test of the first atomic bomb.
Arthur Leslie Benjamin was an Australian composer, pianist, conductor and teacher. He is best known as the composer of Jamaican Rumba (1938) and of the Storm Clouds Cantata, featured in both versions of the Alfred Hitchcock film The Man who Knew Too Much, in 1934 and 1956.
Jack Hamilton Beeson was an American composer. He was known particularly for his operas, the best known of which are Lizzie Borden, Hello Out There!, and The Sweet Bye and Bye.
El Niño is an opera-oratorio by the contemporary American composer John Adams. It was premiered on December 15, 2000, at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris by soloists Dawn Upshaw, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, and Willard White, the vocal ensemble Theatre of Voices, the London Voices, La Maîtrise de Paris, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, with Kent Nagano conducting. It has been performed on a number of occasions since, and has been broadcast on BBC Television.
A Flowering Tree is an opera in two acts composed by John Adams with libretto by Adams and Peter Sellars, and commissioned by the New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna, the San Francisco Symphony, the Barbican Centre in London, the Lincoln Center in New York City, and the Berliner Philharmoniker.
Louise Clappe was an American writer, best known for her "Shirley Letters." Clappe was born in New Jersey, spent most of her youth and young adult life in Massachusetts, and later moved out West to Quincy, California, in Plumas County with her husband Fayette Clapp. It was out West where she took on the pen name of Dame Shirley and wrote her widely known "Shirley Letters". Louise and Fayette eventually separated, but she remained out West teaching for some time. Louise eventually returned to New Jersey, where she lived out the remainder of her life, dying in 1906. The Quincy town plaza is named after her.
Mark Grey is an American classical music composer, sound designer and sound engineer.
The Second Hurricane is an opera in two acts by Aaron Copland to a libretto by Edwin Denby. Specifically written for school performances, it lasts just under an hour and premiered on April 21, 1937, at the Henry Street Settlement playhouse in New York City. Set in the United States in the 1930s, the opera tells the story of a group of high school students who become trapped on an island while working to rescue the victims of a hurricane.
Josefa Segovia, also known as Juanita or Josefa Loaiza, was a Mexican-American woman who was executed by hanging in Downieville, California, on July 5, 1851. She was found guilty of murdering a local miner, Frederick Cannon. She is known to be the first and only woman to be hanged in California.
The Gospel According to the Other Mary is an opera-oratorio by the American composer John Adams. The world premiere took place on May 31, 2012, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles with Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic who also premiered the staged version on March 7, 2013, at the same venue.
J’Nai Bridges is a two time Grammy-Award winning American mezzo-soprano. She is a winner of the Marian Anderson Award and has performed for the Metropolitan Opera, Washington National Opera, and San Francisco Opera. BET has described her as The Beyoncé of opera.
References
- 1 2 3 4 "Girls of the Golden West – production details". San Francisco Opera. Retrieved October 26, 2018.
- ↑ "'John Adams Girls of the Golden West". Boosey & Hawkes (music publishers). Retrieved January 21, 2023.
- ↑ Shirley, Dame (1970). The Shirley Letters. Peregine Press.
- ↑ Smith-Barazini, Marlene (Winter 1999–2000). "Out of the Shadows: Louise Clappe's Life and Early California Writings". California History. 78 (4): 238–261. doi:10.2307/25462581. JSTOR 25462581.
- ↑ "John Adams's New Opera Girls of the Golden West Announced" (Press release). Boosey & Hawkes. June 2016. Retrieved October 26, 2018.
- ↑ Michael Cooper, "John Adams and Peter Sellars Again Joining Forces for New Opera", The New York Times , 14 June 2016, accessed 15 June 2016
- ↑ Michael Cooper, "RECENSIE: Adams – Girls of the Golden West", 3 March 2019, accessed 19 January 2023
