The Stonewall Operas Outside The Pomada Inn The Community Nightlife | |
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by Bryan Blaskie Brian Cavanagh-Strong Kevin Cummines TJ Rubin | |
Librettist | Seth Christenfeld Ben Bonnema Shoshana Greenberg Deepali Gupta |
Language | English |
Premiere | May 2019 Shubert Theatre |
The Stonewall Operas, are a series of four mini-operas inspired by the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Riots, the spark of the modern LGBTQ rights movement, which had their world premiere in May 2019 at New York University's Shubert Theatre and the Stonewall Inn, as part of the June, 2019 Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019 celebrations, [1] and the 2019 New York Opera Fest, a two-month celebration of the art form. [2] The operas capped NYU's "Stonewall at 50", a series of events commemorating the riots and legacy. [1]
They are the fourth collaboration between American Opera Projects (AOP), and the Advanced Opera Lab at NYU Tisch School of the Arts' Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program where emerging opera writers create projects on historical New York City locations. [1] Previous projects were produced about Brooklyn's Fort Greene Park, Judy Chicago's feminist piece The Dinner Party , on permanent display at The Brooklyn Museum, and New York City's International House. [3]
The operas were performed by professional opera singers from AOP, directed by students from The New School's College of Performing Arts, choreographed by students from the Dance Department, and designed by students from Tisch's Design Department. [4]
Outside and Nightlife are based on the Stonewall Riots themselves, while Pomada Inn follows two stories in present-day Kyiv and New York City, and The Community takes place 400 years in the future, [6] in a "post-apocalyptic 2418". [7]
Stonewall or Stone wall may refer to:
The Stonewall Inn, often shortened to Stonewall, is a gay bar and recreational tavern in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City, and the site of the Stonewall riots of 1969, which is widely considered to be the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights in the United States.
The Shubert Organization is a theatrical producing organization and a major owner of theatres based in Manhattan, New York City. It was founded by the three Shubert brothers in the late 19th century. They steadily expanded, owning many theaters in New York and across the country. Since then it has gone through changes of ownership, but is still a major theater chain.
The New York University Tisch School of the Arts is the performing, cinematic and media arts school of New York University.
Samuel S. Shubert was an American producer and theatre owner/operator. He was the middle son in the Shubert family and was raised in Syracuse, New York.
Robert Woodruff is an American theater director.
Catherine Filloux is an American playwright. Filloux's plays have confronted the issue of human rights in many nations. She is of French and Algeria descent. She lives in New York City, New York.
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
The urban campus of New York University (NYU) is located in Manhattan, and is around Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, and also is in MetroTech Center in Downtown Brooklyn. NYU is one of the top three largest landowners in New York City.
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.
Peter Meineck is Professor of Classics in the Modern World at New York University. He is also the founder and humanities program director of Aquila Theatre and has held appointments at Princeton University and University of South Carolina.
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.
Missy Mazzoli is an American composer and pianist who is a member of the composition faculty at the Mannes College of Music. She has received critical acclaim for her chamber, orchestral and operatic work. In 2018 she became one of the first two women to receive a commission from the Metropolitan Opera House. She is the founder and keyboardist for Victoire, an electro-acoustic band dedicated to performing her music. From 2012-2015 she was composer-in-residence at Opera Philadelphia, in collaboration with Gotham Chamber Opera and Music-Theater Group. Her music is published by G. Schirmer. Mazzoli received a 2015 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award, a Fulbright Grant to the Netherlands, and in 2018 was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of Best Classical Composition. In 2018, Mazzoli was named for a two-season term as the Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Iain Bell is an English composer whose output is predominantly of vocal works, namely opera, art song or orchestral song.
The Gay Liberation Monument is part of the Stonewall National Monument, which commemorates the Stonewall uprising of 1969. Created in 1980, the Gay Liberation sculpture by American artist George Segal was the first piece of public art dedicated to gay rights and solidarity for LGBT individuals, while simultaneously commemorating the ongoing struggles of the community. The monument was dedicated on June 23, 1992, as part of the dedication of the Stonewall National Monument as a whole.
New York City is home to one of the largest LGBTQ populations in the world and the most prominent. Brian Silverman, the author of Frommer's New York City from $90 a Day, wrote the city has "one of the world's largest, loudest, and most powerful LGBT communities", and "Gay and lesbian culture is as much a part of New York's basic identity as yellow cabs, high-rise buildings, and Broadway theatre". LGBT travel guide Queer in the World states, "The fabulosity of Gay New York is unrivaled on Earth, and queer culture seeps into every corner of its five boroughs". LGBT advocate and entertainer Madonna stated metaphorically, “Anyways, not only is New York City the best place in the world because of the queer people here. Let me tell you something, if you can make it here, then you must be queer.”
Stonewall National Monument is a 7.7-acre (3.1 ha) U.S. National Monument in the West Village neighborhood of Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan, New York City. The designated area includes the 0.19-acre (0.077 ha) Christopher Park and the block of Christopher Street bordering the park, which is directly across the street from the Stonewall Inn—the site of the Stonewall riots of June 28, 1969, widely regarded as the start of the modern LGBT rights movement in the United States.
Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019 was a series of LGBTQ events and celebrations in June 2019, marking the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots. It was also the first time WorldPride was held in the United States. Held primarily in the metropolitan New York City area, the theme for the celebrations and educational events was "Millions of moments of Pride." The celebration was the largest LGBTQ event in history, with an official estimate of five million attending Pride weekend in Manhattan alone, including an estimated four million in attendance at the parade. The twelve-hour parade included 150,000 pre-registered participants among 695 groups.
Stonewall is an American opera about the 1969 Stonewall riots, the spark of the modern LGBTQ rights movement, which received its world premiere June 2019 in conjunction with Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019, projected to be the world's largest LGBTQ event. Stonewall was commissioned by New York City Opera (NYCO), and features music by Iain Bell, libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winning Mark Campbell, and direction by Leonard Foglia. The production is a 2019 Pride Initiative of the NYCO, an annual production of an LGBT-focused work each June in commemoration of Gay Pride Month. The opera premieres in June 2019 at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center. The opera was produced to honor both the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, and the 75th anniversary of the NYCO. Stonewall is the first opera to feature a transgender character written for an openly transgender singer, mezzo-soprano Liz Bouk.
Mark Campbell is a New York-based librettist and lyricist whose operas have received both a Pulitzer Prize in Music and a GRAMMY Award. Mark began writing for the stage as a musical theatre lyricist, but turned to libretto-writing after he premiered Volpone, his first full-length opera in 2004 at Wolf Trap Opera Company.