Minnesota Opera is a performance organization based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was founded as the Center Opera Company in 1963 by the Walker Art Center, and is known for premiering such diverse works as Where the Wild Things Are by Oliver Knussen (based on the children's novel by Maurice Sendak) and Frankenstein by Libby Larsen. Its latest commissioned piece and world premiere, The Fix– based on the story of “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, the Chicago White Sox, and their attempt to fix the world series. with music by Joel Puckett and libretto by Eric Simonson– was presented in February 2019. The President and General Director is Ryan Taylor, and the Artistic Director is Dale Johnson.[1][2]
Minnesota Opera's season typically runs from September through April, with five productions per season and five to eight performances of each production. Performances are given at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in Saint Paul, Minnesota. According to OPERA America, the company is the 13th largest opera company in the United States.
Non-standard repertoire
While much from the standard repertoire is performed, the company has distinguished itself with productions of some unusual and rare operas in the last decade.
In 2011, Bernard Herrmann's sole opera Wuthering Heights was presented. The full opera has yet to receive a staging, as the official world premiere by Portland Opera in 1982 was abridged by some 30 minutes.
In 2011, Minnesota Opera produced Silent Night by composer Kevin Puts and librettist Mark Campbell, an MN Opera commission that won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Music. In 2013, Minnesota Opera commissioned the opera Doubt by composer Douglas J. Cuomo and librettist John Patrick Shanley.
In March 2015, the company gave the premiere performance of Kevin Puts' opera The Manchurian Candidate (based on Richard Condon's novel, with libretto by Mark Campbell).[3]
In May 2016, Minnesota Opera produced The Shining, a newly commissioned American opera in two acts with music by composer Paul Moravec and a libretto by Mark Campbell, based on the novel by Stephen King. It is part of the 'New Works Initiative' of Minnesota Opera.
A complete list of earlier seasons' productions appears on the company's web site[4]
Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italian composer, best known for his almost 70 operas. Along with Gioachino Rossini and Vincenzo Bellini, Donizetti was a leading composer of the bel canto opera style during the first half of the nineteenth century. Donizetti's close association with the bel canto style was undoubtedly an influence on other composers such as Giuseppe Verdi. Donizetti was born in Bergamo in Lombardy. Although he did not come from a musical background, at an early age he was taken under the wing of composer Simon Mayr who had enrolled him by means of a full scholarship in a school which he had set up. There he received detailed training in the arts of fugue and counterpoint. Mayr was also instrumental in obtaining a place for the young man at the Bologna Academy, where, at the age of 19, he wrote his first one-act opera, the comedy Il Pigmalione, which may never have been performed during his lifetime.
Maria Stuarda is a tragic opera, in two acts, by Gaetano Donizetti, to a libretto by Giuseppe Bardari, based on Andrea Maffei's translation of Friedrich Schiller's 1800 play Maria Stuart.
Opera Omaha is a major regional opera company in Omaha, Nebraska. Begun in 1958, the professional company is widely known for the International Fall Festival events it held in the 1980s and 1990s, which garnered international attention and served as the U.S. and world premieres for a number of notable works. One of these performances, the 1990 U.S. premiere of the 1841 work Maria Padilla, was among the primary debuts for noted soprano Renee Fleming. "I’ve been calling all my singer friends and saying, 'You’ve got to sing for this company.'" Fleming said at the time. It has "a lot of vision." In 2007, the Toronto Star said "Opera Omaha has grown into one of the continent's most enterprising regional opera companies."
Jonathan Dove is an English composer of opera, choral works, plays, films, and orchestral and chamber music. He has arranged a number of operas for English Touring Opera and the City of Birmingham Touring Opera, including in 1990 an 18-player two-evening adaptation of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen for CBTO. He was Artistic Director of the Spitalfields Festival from 2001 to 2006.
The Handmaid's Tale is an opera composed by the Danish composer Poul Ruders in 2000, to a libretto by Paul Bentley based on the novel of the same name written by Canadian author Margaret Atwood.
Il Pigmalione (Pygmalion) is a scena lirica in one act by Gaetano Donizetti. The librettist is unknown, but it is known that the libretto was based on one by Antonio Simeone Sografi for Giovanni Battista Cimador's Pimmalione (1790), in turn based on Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Pygmalion and ultimately based on Book X of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Sografi's libretto was also used for an opera by Bonifacio Asioli (1796).
Der hochmütige, gestürzte und wieder erhabene Croesus is a three-act opera composed by Reinhard Keiser. The German language libretto by Lucas von Bostel was based on Nicolò Minato's 1678 dramma per musica Creso, the music for which was composed by the Emperor Leopold I.
Family Opera Initiative (FOI) is an American opera company based in New York City that commissions, develops, and premieres original works for cross-generational audiences. It was founded in 1995 by Grethe Barrett Holby, originally as part of American Opera Projects. Its mission was and remains to create new repertory for family audiences, to bring the experience of opera to a diverse audience, and to engage the community in the process and performance of their works.
The Virginia Arts Festival is a Norfolk-based non-profit arts presenter which serves southeastern Virginia, offering dozens of performances during the spring and throughout the year. Virginia Arts Festival performances have included international ballet companies, along with modern, contemporary, and ethnic dance companies; world-renowned soloists and ensembles in musical genres including classical, jazz, world, folk, rock, blues, bluegrass, country, and pop; opera; theater and cabaret; and collaborative productions with local arts organizations like the Virginia Symphony Orchestra.
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's providing orchestral accompaniment.
L'Ange de Nisida is an opera semiseria in four acts by Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti, from a French-language libretto by Alphonse Royer and Gustave Vaëz.
Opera North is an opera company based at The Grand Theatre, Leeds, England. This article covers the period during which the Music Director has been Richard Farnes.
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 currently 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.
Evan Mack is an American composer, librettist and pianist. He is "considered one of the most gifted composers of his generation by industry insiders." He is currently published with Hal Leonard, Alfred, and KDP Publishing
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.
Pauline is a chamber opera in two acts composed by Tobin Stokes to a libretto by Margaret Atwood. Commissioned by City Opera Vancouver, the opera is set in Vancouver in March 1913 during the final days in the life of the Canadian writer and performer Pauline Johnson. It premiered on 23 May 2014 at Vancouver's York Theatre.
The Shining is an American opera in two acts and an epilogue, with music by composer Paul Moravec and a libretto by Mark Campbell, based on the 1977 novel by Stephen King. The opera received its world premiere on 7 May 2016 at the Ordway Music Theater, Saint Paul, Minnesota. It is part of the "New Works Initiative" of Minnesota Opera.
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 fourteen new American operas. From the program’s inception in 2011 through 2018, co-founders Marcus Küchle and Guarino served as co-artistic directors.
The Fall of the House of Usher is a 1988 opera by Philip Glass to a libretto based on Edgar Allan Poe's 1839 short story by Arthur Yorinks who also worked with Glass on The Juniper Tree.
The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs is an opera with music by American composer Mason Bates and an English-language libretto by Mark Campbell. It was commissioned by Santa Fe Opera, Seattle Opera, San Francisco Opera, the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, with support from Cal Performances. The opera is about one of the most influential people in recent history; it is set at a time when he must confront his own mortality and circle back on the events that shaped his personal and professional life.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
