“A Guest of Honor“ was ragtime composer Scott Joplin’s first of two opera, whose plot was based on the historical events surrounding President Theodore Roosevelt and his invitation of advisor Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House with his wife in October of 1901. Joplin’s “grand opera” has a short but complex history, with much of what is {…}
“1984“ is an English-language opera written by Ukrainian-Jewish, American composer Lorin Maazel (1930-2014) based on George Orwell’s dystopian novel. The libretto was written by American writers J. D. McClatchy and Thomas Meehan, the latter having written the literary works for various well-known musicals such as Annie and Hairspray. The opera received its premiere at the Royal Opera House on May {…}
“Alice in Wonderland” is a eight-scene, contemporary opera by Korean composer Unsuk Chin (1961-) with the libretto co-written by Chin and eminent Chinese-American writer David Henry Hwang, the librettist for other composers such as Huang Ro, Osvaldo Golijov, and Phillip Glass. The opera was composed between 2004 and 2007 and based upon the novels Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and {…}
“Kafka’s Trial” (Proces Kafka) was a co-commissioned, one-act opera and prelude written by Danish composer Poul Ruders and British actor and librettist Paul Bentley to celebrate Copenhagen Opera House’s new operatic season. Poul Ruders is best known for his topical and fantastic operatic themes such as “The Handmaid’s Tale” (1990), which made a resurgence thanks to The English National Opera’s {…}
“The Incompetence Opera” was a short, three-act mini-opera performed as part of the 27th Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony in 2017, an annual parody event founded by freelance writer and Harvard University graduate Marc Abrahams in 1991 as a farcical homage to the Nobel Peace Prize award. The event honors unnecessary research into themes that are obviously insipid in character. {…}
“Aqua Net & Funyuns” was a 2020 project by New York City-based opera company Experiments in Opera taking the form of a podcast where in each 25-minute episode, three one-act “operas” are performed, each with their own plot and cast of characters. However, all three are connected by “easter eggs” (hidden elements) that tie each of the operas together, and {…}
(Credit: Marc Brenner) “The Life and Death of Alexander Litvinenko” is a two-act opera composed by the former investment fund manager, investor, and composer Anthony Bolton, with a libretto by British composer and playwright Kit Hesketh-Harvey. History The opera was originally written by Bolton during the period of 2012 to 2020, whose story was based on the controversial assassination of {…}
Yma Súmac was born in Sept. 13, 1922 as Zoila Emperatriz Chávarri Castillo. She was worldwide known for her five octave vocal range. She was a true diva, also known as the “Incan Princess.” She was born in El Callao, a city next to Lima, but grew up and spent her childhood in Ichocán, a district of the region Cajamarca {…}
(Credit: ALAN NAHIGIAN) “Rituals” is a five-act monodrama for mezzo-soprano and 10 instrumentalists composed by American composer John Zorn. The History The opera received its first performance at the 1988 Bayreuth Opera Festival, of which Wagner’s Parsifal (conducted by the late James Levine) opened the festival’s activities and where the late German opera director Harry Kupfer premiered a controversial-yet-innovative reimagining of {…}
(Image Source: Official Website) With a modest cast of only two, and composed as a modern compliment to Bela Bartok’s expressionist opera “Bluebeard’s Castle”, composed in 1918 and reading as a complex, minor-second analogy of Bartok’s inner turmoil at the time, Hungarian composer Péter Eötvös’ 12th one-act opera “Senza sangue” is a pearl of the new operatic epoch, a testament {…}
On the 29th of August 1775, Joseph Haydn’s seventh opera, “L’Incontro Improvviso” (The Unexpected Encounter – Hob 28:6) was premiered at “Eszterháza,” the Hungarian palace of Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, principle patron of Haydn and a strong advocate of Haydn’s symphonic repertoire. The work had accompanied a four-day visit by Archduke Ferdinand Karl of Austria-Este and his consort Maria Beatrice d’Este. {…}
