Madame White Snake is an opera with music by Zhou Long and libretto by Cerise Lim Jacobs, published by Oxford University Press. Awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Music, it was premiered on Feb. 26, 2010, by Opera Boston at the Cutler Majestic Theatre. It is based on the Legend of the White Snake and was created by Jacobs as a gift to her now late husband. The Pulitzer Committee described the opera as, "a deeply expressive opera that draws on a Chinese folk tale to blend the musical traditions of the East and the West." [1] Zhou stated, "I have been working very hard to blend the East and the West for years." [1] The opera was performed, in English, in Beijing in October 2010. [2] In China Zhou's 2010 English-language opera shares the same title as the traditional Beijing opera version, Legend of the White Snake , Báishézhuàn, but is distinguished by the term " geju " (Western opera) rather than " jingju " (Beijing opera).
Opera is a form of theatre in which music has a leading role and the parts are taken by singers, but is distinct from musical theater. Such a "work" is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librettist and incorporates a number of the performing arts, such as acting, scenery, costume, and sometimes dance or ballet. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble, which since the early 19th century has been led by a conductor.
Zhou Long is a Chinese American composer. He won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
A libretto is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or musical. The term libretto is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as the Mass, requiem and sacred cantata, or the story line of a ballet.
Jacobs' first libretto and Zhou's first opera, it was the first opera commissioned by Opera Boston, co-commissioned by the Beijing Music Festival Arts Foundation. Jacobs is a Chinese-American retired lawyer and Zhou is a Chinese-American composer. [3] "Giving voice to sweeping melodies worthy of Puccini without sounding imitative, and employing such vocal effects as bent pitches, slides and Sprechstimme to suggest the unique idiom of Peking Opera, [Zhou] wove both aesthetics into a unique whole, creating a vivid and freestanding musical world of his own." [4]
The Beijing Music Festival (BMF) is an annual music festival held in Beijing, China which has become one of the most well-known musical events in the world, drawing international attention. The festival presents about 30 concerts in October every year offering a wide variety of classical and jazz music including opera, orchestral, chamber, solo, and choral concerts. BMF also gives prominence to music education and community engagement offering free children's concerts and students' concerts, as well as master classes which draw about 6,000 music students, teachers, and spectators. It prides itself in presenting both Western and Chinese music alike.
A melody, also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combination of pitch and rhythm, while more figuratively, the term can include successions of other musical elements such as tonal color. It may be considered the foreground to the background accompaniment. A line or part need not be a foreground melody.
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian opera composer who has been called "the greatest composer of Italian opera after Verdi".
- Director: Robert Woodruff
- Conductor: Gil Rose
- Xiao Ching: Michael Maniaci
- Madame White Snake: Ying Huang
- Abbot Fahai: Dong-Jian Gong
- Xu Xian: Peter Tantsits
Robert Woodruff is an American theater director.
Gil Rose is the founder and conductor of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), founder and General-Artistic Director of Odyssey Opera, Artistic Director of Monadnock Music Festival, Professor of Practice at Northeastern University, and Executive Producer of the record label "BMOP/sound."
Michael Maniaci is an American opera singer. Possessing a male soprano voice, Maniaci is noted for his claim to be able to sing into the upper soprano range without resorting to falsetto, an otherwise common phonation for men who sing in high registers, such as countertenors. Although this was possible for castrati because of the hormonal imbalance following castration, Maniaci claims that, for some unknown reason, his larynx did not develop and lengthen completely during puberty, causing his voice not to "break" in the usual manner. Maniaci claims that this physical particularity has given him the ability to sing in the soprano register without sounding like a typical countertenor or a female singer. There are, however, critics who claim that Maniaci actually sings in falsetto.
