Related Research Articles
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.
Maoism, also known as Mao Zedong Thought, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed while trying to realize a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of China and later the People's Republic of China. A difference between Maoism and traditional Marxism–Leninism is that a united front of progressive forces in class society would lead the revolutionary vanguard in pre-industrial societies rather than communist revolutionaries alone. This theory, in which revolutionary praxis is primary and ideological orthodoxy is secondary, represents urban Marxism–Leninism adapted to pre-industrial China. Later theoreticians expanded on the idea that Mao had adapted Marxism–Leninism to Chinese conditions, arguing that he had in fact updated it fundamentally and that Maoism could be applied universally throughout the world. This ideology is often referred to as Marxism–Leninism–Maoism to distinguish it from the original ideas of Mao.
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.
Einstein on the Beach is an opera in four acts composed by Philip Glass and directed by theatrical producer Robert Wilson, who also collaborated with Glass on the work's libretto. The opera eschews traditional narrative in favor of a formalist approach based on structured spaces laid out by Wilson in a series of storyboards which are framed and connected by five "knee plays" or intermezzos. The music was written "in the spring, summer and fall of 1975." Glass recounts the collaborative process: "I put [Wilson’s notebook of sketches] on the piano and composed each section like a portrait of the drawing before me. The score was begun in the spring of 1975 and completed by the following November, and those drawings were before me all the time."
The San Francisco Opera (SFO) is an American opera company founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola (1881–1953) based in San Francisco, California.
Robert Bruce Avakian is an American political activist who is the founder and chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP). Coming out of the New Left of the 1960s and influenced strongly by Maoism, Avakian developed the RCP's theoretical framework, "the New Synthesis" or "New Communism". He has written several books over four decades, including an autobiography.
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.
Erling Wold is a San Francisco-based composer of opera and contemporary classical music. He is best known for his later chamber operas, and his early experiments as a microtonalist.
Zheng Zhou is a Chinese-born baritone whose singing career included performances in major opera houses and concert halls in North America and Europe. He also appears on the premiere recordings of Philip Glass's the CIVIL warS and La Belle et la Bête on Nonesuch Records and Jason K. Hwang's chamber opera The Floating Box on New World Records. After retiring from the stage, he became Professor of Singing at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.
On Protracted War is a work comprising a series of speeches by Mao Zedong given from May 26, 1938, to June 3, 1938, at the Yenan Association for the Study of the War of Resistance Against Japan. In it, he calls for a protracted people's war, as a means for small revolutionary groups to fight the power of the state.
Grant Gershon is a Grammy Award winning American conductor and pianist. He is Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, formerly Resident Conductor of the Los Angeles Opera, member of the Board of Councillors for the USC Thornton School of Music and a former member of the Chorus America Board of Directors.
Mark Grey is an American classical music composer, sound designer and sound engineer.
Mark Alburger was a San Francisco Bay area composer and conductor. He was the founder and music director of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, as well as the music director of Goat Hall Productions / San Francisco Cabaret Opera. Alburger was also the editor-publisher of 21st-Century Music Journal, which he founded in 1994 as 20th-Century Music.
James Maddalena is an American baritone who is chiefly associated with contemporary American opera. He gained international recognition in 1987 when he originated the role of Richard Nixon at the premiere of John Adams's opera Nixon in China at Houston. He has since reprised the role on many occasions, and recorded it for the Nonesuch Records release of the opera in 1987. In addition to Maddelena's role as Nixon, he has originated two other Adams characters: the Captain in The Death of Klinghoffer and Jack Hubbard in Doctor Atomic. He has also performed roles in the premieres of operas by Paul Moravec and Stewart Wallace among other American composers.
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun is a phrase which was coined by Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong. The phrase was originally used by Mao during an emergency meeting of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on 7 August 1927, at the beginning of the Chinese Civil War.
Goat Hall Productions (GHP) is an opera company and musical theatre company based in Potrero Hill in San Francisco, California, United States. Presenting programs under the names San Francisco Cabaret Opera, Fresh Voices Festival of New Works, and The Kurt Weill Project, it was co-founded in 1997 by Harriet March Page and Dave Hurlbert, and is dedicated to the performance of opera and song, with a special interest in contemporary music.
In the Penal Colony is a chamber opera in one act and 16 scenes composed by Philip Glass to an English-language libretto by Rudy Wurlitzer. The opera is based on Franz Kafka's German-language short story In the Penal Colony. It was commissioned by ACT Theatre in Seattle, Washington, where it premiered on August 31, 2000. It has a running time of approximately 80 minutes and is scored for two singers and a string quintet.
Girls of the Golden West is an opera in two acts with music by John Adams and a libretto by Peter Sellars. The San Francisco Opera commissioned the work jointly with Dallas Opera, the Dutch National Opera and Teatro La Fenice in Venice. The opera was premiered in San Francisco on November 21, 2017. The running time is 160 minutes.
Carolann Page is an American singer and actress. She is a crossover artist with credits in musical theatre, opera, chamber music and concert repertoire.
References
- ↑ Liner notes to Nixon in China, Nonesuch, 1987.
- ↑ California Artists Management
- Liner notes to Nixon in China, Nonesuch, 1987.
- California Artists Management
