This article includes a list of general references, but it remains largely unverified because it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations .(December 2009) |
The Opera Company of Brooklyn (OCB) is an opera company founded in 2000 which performs in a variety of venues in New York City. It is a non-profit organization operating under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Opera Company of Brooklyn is led by American conductor, Jay Meetze. Other artists who have worked with the company include Gerard Alessandrini, Thomas Pasatieri, Joseph Rescigno, and Adam Silverman.
The company also has an educational outreach program as well as a Resident Artist Program (RAP) for singers, coaches, pianists and conductors. Artists who have worked with students on the RAP include Lucine Amara, Harolyn Blackwell, Catherine Malfitano, Ashley Putnam and Thomas Pasatieri. [1]
OCB was featured on the Jeopardy! quiz show, Good Morning America with MythBusters and CNN. [2] Other coverage include numerous reports on radio: National Public Radio's Day to Day , American Public Media's Marketplace , 1010 WINS, WNYC's Overnight Music and Soundcheck , and reviews and articles (some front-page and full-page) in the Wall Street Journal , The New York Times , [3] New York Post and New York Daily News , New York , [4] American Record Guide , Opera News , [5] Classical Singer, [6] and Crain's New York Business . [7]
The company has also performed new works like Thomas Pasatieri’s La Divina, an opera about the last days of a famous diva supposedly based on Maria Callas. Meetze recorded the opera where internationally renown soprano Sheri Greenawald, now the head of San Francisco Opera, Merola Young Artist program, performed.
The company's CD [1] on Albany Records and featuring music by American composer, Thomas Pasatieri was named one of the "Best of the year" by Metropolitan Opera's Opera News magazine. [5]
Martina Arroyo, Steuart Bedford, Harolyn Blackwell, Simon Estes, Carlisle Floyd, Denyce Graves-Montgomery, William Hicks, Rhoda Levine, Elaine Malbin, Jane Marsh, Ashley Putnam, Barry Tucker, Frederica von Stade, David Walker. [8]
Art/NY's Fort Greene Auditorium, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater- The Joan Weill Center for Dance, Bargemusic, Barnard College, Brooklyn Bar Association: Annual Dinner at Marriott, Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce Christmas Party, Brooklyn Heights First Unitarian Church, Brooklyn Museum of Art: Eternal Egypt Exhibition, Brooklyn Public Libraries: Main Branch and Brooklyn Heights, CAMI Hall, First Street Gallery, Columbia University, Freeport Memorial Library - Long Island, Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany, Good Shepherd Catholic Church, ICO Art & Music Gallery, Katonah United Methodist Church, Liederkranz Club, Marymount Manhattan College: Adult Continuing Education course in opera, Metropolitan Community United Methodist Church, Northside Piers, NYC College of Technology's Voorhees Theatre and Klitgord Auditorium, New York City Public Schools, Phillipa Schuyler Middle School, Plymouth Church, Pratt Institute: Student Welcome Week, Science Skills Center High School, St. Ann's Episcopal Church, Saint James Church, St. Teresa's Church, Studios 353, The Young Women's Leadership School
Wallace Kirkman Harrison was an American architect. Harrison started his professional career with the firm of Corbett, Harrison & MacMurray, participating in the construction of Rockefeller Center. He is best known for executing large public projects in New York City and upstate, many of them a result of his long and fruitful personal relationship with Nelson Rockefeller, for whom he served as an adviser.
Cold Spring is a village in the town of Philipstown in Putnam County, New York, United States. The population was 2,013 at the 2010 census. It borders the smaller village of Nelsonville and the hamlet of Garrison. The central area of the village is on the National Register of Historic Places as the Cold Spring Historic District due to its many well-preserved 19th-century buildings, constructed to accommodate workers at the nearby West Point Foundry. The town is the birthplace of General Gouverneur K. Warren, who was an important figure in the Union Army during the Civil War. The village, located in the Hudson Highlands, sits at the deepest point of the Hudson River, directly across from West Point. Cold Spring serves as a weekend getaway for many residents of New York City.
Lyric Opera of Chicago is one of the leading opera companies in the United States. It was founded in Chicago in 1954, under the name 'Lyric Theatre of Chicago' by Carol Fox, Nicola Rescigno and Lawrence Kelly, with a season that included Maria Callas's American debut in Norma. The company was re-organized by Fox in 1956 under its present name and, after her 1981 departure, it has continued to be of one of the major opera companies in the United States. The Lyric is housed in a theater and related spaces in the Civic Opera Building. These spaces are now owned by the Lyric.
Seattle Opera is an opera company based in Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1963 by Glynn Ross, who served as its first general director until 1983. The company's season runs from August through late May, comprising five or six operas of eight to ten performances each, often featuring double casts in major roles to allow for successive evening presentations.
Thomas White Lamb (1871–1942) was a Scottish-born, American architect. He is noted as one of the foremost designers of theaters and cinemas in the 20th century.
Lisa Hopkins Seegmiller, credited as Lisa Hopkins until 2008, is an American classical singer and actress from Simi Valley, California. She holds a B.A. in Theater Studies and Acting from Yale University and a M.M. in Classical Voice from the Manhattan School of Music.
Thomas Pasatieri is an American opera composer.
Harolyn Blackwell is an American lyric coloratura soprano who has performed in many of the world's finest opera houses, concert halls, and theaters in operas, oratorios, recitals, and Broadway musicals. Initially known for her work within musical theater during the early 1980s, Blackwell moved into the field of opera and by 1987 had established herself as an artist within the soubrette repertoire in many major opera houses both in the United States and in Europe. Feeling that she was being "type cast" into one particular kind of role, Blackwell strove to establish herself within the lyric coloratura repertoire beginning in the mid-1990s. With the aid of such companies as Seattle Opera, Blackwell successfully made this move and is now an interpreter of such roles as Lucia in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and Olympia in Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffman. She has also periodically returned to musical theater performances throughout her career in staged productions, concert work, and recitals. Blackwell is known for her interpretations and recordings of the works of Leonard Bernstein.
The Seagull is an opera in three acts by Thomas Pasatieri to an English libretto by Kenward Elmslie. The plot is based on Anton Chekhov's 1896 play, The Seagull.
Ashley Putnam is an American soprano from New York City. Her professional singing career began in 1976 and has spanned over 30 years.
The Richard Tucker Music Foundation, founded in 1975, carries the name of Richard Tucker. The foundation is a "non-profit cultural organization dedicated to perpetuating the artistic legacy of the great American tenor through the support and advancement of the careers of talented American opera singers by bringing opera into the community. The Foundation seeks to heighten appreciation for opera by offering free performances in the New York metropolitan area and by supporting music education enrichment programs."
Daniel Okulitch is a Canadian bass-baritone. He first came to attention on Broadway as Schaunard in Baz Luhrmann's production of La bohème in 2002/03 – a role he repeated when the production traveled to Los Angeles the following year, for which he received the Ovation Award for Best Ensemble Performance from the Los Angeles Stage Alliance. He has since begun an international career with opera companies and orchestras throughout Europe and North America, and is admired for both his singing and powerful stage presence. He is sought after for many contemporary operas and world premieres, as well as the roles of Mozart, including Figaro and Don Giovanni.
John Clark, better known as Signor Brocolini, was an Irish-born American operatic singer and actor remembered for creating the role of the Pirate King in the original New York City production of The Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan, in 1879–80.
The American Opera Project (AOP) is a professional opera company based in Brooklyn, New York City, and is a member of Opera America, the Fort Greene Association, the Downtown Brooklyn Arts Alliance, and the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York (A.R.T./NY). The company's primary mission is to develop and present new operatic and music theatre works and has gained a reputation for the "rarefied range" of the projects it fosters. AOP was founded in 1988 by Grethe Barrett Holby who served as Artistic Director of AOP from 1988 until 2001, at which point Charles Jarden became the company's Executive Director and Steven Osgood the company's Artistic Director. Steven Osgood left the post of Artistic Director in 2008 to pursue conducting full-time but remains the Artistic Director for AOP's "Composers & the Voice" program.
Michigan Opera Theatre (MOT) is the principal opera company in Michigan, USA. The company is based in Detroit, where it performs in the Detroit Opera House. Each year it presents an opera and dance season. The company presents four operas in their original language with English supertitles and hosts dance companies with touring repertoire. It also presents musical theatre performances. The company has an orchestra, chorus, children's chorus, and extensive dance and arts education outreach programs. In 2005 MOT won a National Endowment for the Arts, Access to Artistic Excellence grant to support its staging of the world premiere of Margaret Garner.
The Stronger is an opera in one act by composer Hugo Weisgall. The English language libretto by Richard Henry Hart is based on August Strindberg's 1889 play of the same name. It premiered at the White Barn Theatre in Westport, Connecticut on August 9, 1952 and was dedicated to that theatre's founder, the actress Lucille Lortel.
Lauren Flanigan is an American operatic soprano who has had an active international career since the 1980s. She enjoyed a particularly fruitful partnership with the New York City Opera, appearing with the company almost every year since 1990. She has sung more than 100 different opera roles on stage during her career, often appearing in contemporary works or more rarely staged operas. Opera News stated that, "Flanigan has enjoyed one of the most distinctive careers of any artist of her generation, one marked by a high volume of contemporary works. Modern composers love her because of her innate musicality, dramatic power and lightning-fast skills and instincts."
Signor Deluso is an opera buffa in one act composed by Thomas Pasatieri. The English-language libretto, written by the composer, is loosely based on Molière's 1660 comedy Sganarelle, ou Le Cocu imaginaire. It premiered on 27 July 1974 at the Madeira School auditorium in McLean, Virginia performed by the Wolf Trap Opera Company. It has been subsequently performed many times by various small opera companies in the United States and Europe. In a review of a 2008 revival in Washington, D.C., Anne Midgette described it as "an exuberant sendup of over-the-top comic opera plots, filled with effusive lovers leaping with alacrity to wrong conclusions in floods of extreme vocalism."
The Trial of Mary Lincoln is an opera in one act by composer Thomas Pasatieri. Commissioned for television by the National Educational Television network under the leadership of Peter Herman Adler, the work uses an English language libretto by Anne Howard Bailey. Bailey was awarded the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series for her libretto. A work of historical fiction, the opera is based on the life of Mary Todd Lincoln; mainly focusing on the 1875 trial where her sanity was being evaluated.
Judith Christin is an American operatic mezzo-soprano.