Louis Joseph Andriessen was a Dutch composer, pianist and academic teacher. Considered the most influential Dutch composer of his generation, he was a central proponent of The Hague school of composition. Although his music was initially dominated by neoclassicism and serialism, his style gradually shifted to a synthesis of American minimalism, jazz and the manner of Stravinsky.
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.
Esa-Pekka Salonen is a Finnish orchestral conductor and composer. He is principal conductor and artistic advisor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, conductor laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and music director of the San Francisco Symphony.
La clemenza di Tito, K. 621, is an opera seria in two acts composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Caterino Mazzolà, after Pietro Metastasio. It was started after most of Die Zauberflöte, the last of Mozart's principal operas, had already been written. The work premiered on 6 September 1791 at the Estates Theatre in Prague.
Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: The Tempest (2004), Violin Concerto (2005), Tevot (2007), In Seven Days (2008), and Polaris (2010).
Loris Haykasi Tjeknavorian is an Iranian Armenian composer and conductor. He has appeared internationally as a conductor, serving as the principal conductor of the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra from 1989 to 1998 and later from 1999 to 2000. As a composer Tjeknavorian has written 6 operas, 5 symphonies, choral works, chamber music, ballet music, piano and vocal works, concerti for piano, violin, guitar, cello and pipa, as well as music for documentary and feature films. Among his best known works are the opera Rostam and Sohrab, based on the story of Rostam and Sohrab from Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, and the ballet Simorgh.
I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky is a 1995 "song play" with music composed by John Adams and a libretto by June Jordan.
Von heute auf morgen is a one act opera composed by Arnold Schoenberg, to a German libretto by "Max Blonda", the pseudonym of Gertrud Schoenberg, the composer's wife. It is the composer's opus 32.
Rosa, A Horse Drama also called Rosa – The Death of a Composer is an opera in 12 scenes by Dutch composer, Louis Andriessen with a libretto by English film maker Peter Greenaway. The libretto was the sixth in Greenaway's Death of a Composer series which explores the deaths of ten 20th-century composers, two real, and the remaining eight fictional. It premiered at the Dutch National Opera on 2 November 1994 in a production co-directed by Greenaway and Saskia Boddeke. A recording of the opera was released on the Nonesuch label in 1998; Asko/Schönberg, conductor Reinbert de Leeuw..
Víctor Varela is a Venezuelan-Swedish composer based in Gothenburg. His compositions include works for orchestra, vocal and instrumental chamber music, with electronics and computer devices.
Grant Gershon is an American conductor and pianist. He is Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Resident Conductor of the Los Angeles Opera, member of the Board of Councillors for the USC Thornton School of Music and a member of the Chorus America Board of Directors.
Robert Xavier Rodríguez is an American classical composer, best known for his eight operas and his works for children.
Michel van der Aa is a Dutch composer of contemporary classical music.
Mark Grey is an American classical music composer, sound designer and sound engineer.
Greek is an opera in two acts composed by Mark-Anthony Turnage to a libretto adapted by Turnage and Jonathan Moore from Steven Berkoff's 1980 verse play Greek. The play and the opera are a re-telling of Sophocles's Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex with the setting changed to the East End of London in the 1980s. The opera was first performed on 17 June 1988 in the Carl-Orff-Saal of the Gasteig, Munich, in a co-production by the Munich Biennale, the Edinburgh International Festival and the BBC.
Michael Lazarevich "Misha" Geller was a Russian viola player and composer.
Luonnotar, Op. 70, is a tone-poem for soprano and orchestra, completed by Jean Sibelius in 1913. It was dedicated to Aino Ackté, who premiered the work at the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester, England on 10 September 1913, with an orchestra conducted by Herbert Brewer. Sibelius arranged it for voice and piano in 1915.
The Passenger is a 1968 opera by Mieczysław Weinberg to a Russian libretto by Alexander Medvedev. Medvedev's libretto is based on the 1959 Polish radio play Pasażerka z kabiny 45 by concentration-camp survivor Zofia Posmysz. The opera, scheduled for the Bolshoi Theatre in 1968, was not premiered until 2006, when musicians of the Stanislavsky Theatre presented a semi-staging conducted by Wolf Gorelik in the Svetlanov Hall of the Moscow International House of Music on 25 December. Medvedev's libretto was reworked in 2010 for the first staged performance of the opera at the Bregenzer Festspiele into German, English, Polish, Yiddish, French, Russian and Czech. It has then been performed internationally.
L.A. Variations is an orchestral composition by the Finnish composer Esa-Pekka Salonen. The work was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, of which Salonen was then music director. It was first performed at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, January 16, 1997, with Salonen conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The piece is dedicated to the orchestra, about which Salonen remarked, "I wrote LA Variations specifically for the players of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. I'm very proud of the virtuosity and power of my orchestra."
La Commedia is an opera in five parts composed by Louis Andriessen. A retelling of Dante's Divine Comedy, the multi-language libretto was constructed by Andriessen using extracts from Dante's poem as well as several other sources including the Old Testament and the poetry of Joost van den Vondel. Andriessen describes the work as a "film opera" and collaborated closely with film director Hal Hartley in its development. La Commedia premiered on 12 June 2008 at the Koninklijk Theater Carré in Amsterdam.
