Photo Credit: Promo Image on Interpark Based on the seventh book by French novelist and poet Victor Hugo, Russian-Canadian composer Airat Ichmouratov and his opera, “The Man Who Laughs,” is a chilling look at the ways in which our pasts always catch up to us, no matter who we are, noble or otherwise. The opera originated from a 2023 Festival Classica {…}
(Photo Credit: Opéra de Lyon) “Irrelohe” is the sixth opera of 20th-century Austrian composer Franz Schreker, begun in 1919 and premiered shortly after in 1924 at the Stadttheater Köln. Coming right after Schreker’s then latest opera, Der Schatzgräber. The opera is a three-act opera about the tribulations of love and sacrifice. This was a poignant theme for him, as during {…}
“A Marvelous Order” is the first opera of American composer Judd Greenstein in collaboration with librettist Tracy K. Smith and visual artist Joshua Frankel. Using projected visuals and vocal samples, the opera invigorates the standard libretto-composer model that opera tends to use. Focusing on a fight over city space during the 1960s in New York City, the opera attempted to {…}
Photo Credit: Cory Weaver Premiering at San Francisco Opera just last year, John Adams’ newest opera, “Antony and Cleopatra” brought the story of the ill-fated lovers to the 21st century with a score that echoed the profound feelings each lover had for the other. On the back of previous renditions of the infamous story, such as Samuel Barber’s 1966 version, {…}
“Lilith” is the first opera by American composer and designer Deborah Drattell. It was composed during the 1980s and premiered in 2001 in New York City with contemporary theatre director Anne Bogart at the helm. It is based upon the biblical and mythological figure Lilith, the woman God created before Eve whose liberated stance and refusal to submit to Adam {…}
Slavery and the lives forever changed by it are not easy things to talk about, much less put on the operatic stage. Yet, many composers like George Gershwin (Porgy and Bess), Rihannon Giddens (Omar), and Scott Joplin (Treemonisha) have all depicted the stories of real people that slavery sought to turn into buyable objects. Yet, to this legacy there is {…}
Jazz opera is not a new phenomenon when it comes to American opera and the “American” opera tradition. Rather, jazz has thoroughly permeated the fabric of opera since the tradition’s very beginning. By all accounts, George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess,” an opera rife with controversy and iconic music, is the most famous. Yet, others like Scott Joplin’s well-received opera “Treemonisha,” {…}
Die Harmonie der Welt is the ninth opera composed by 20th-century German composer Paul Hindemith. Known for his work in developing and popularizing the compositional philosophy known as New Objectivity, Hindemith’s music was both tonal and not tonal. Exploring the limitations and extensions of traditional musical systems, thanks to the serialism of Arnold Schoenberg, composers were now open towards expressing {…}
(Photo Credit: Joerg Metzner) During World War II (1939-1945), dictator Adolph Hitler of Germany instituted the practice of concentration camps and ghettos in order to try and exterminate non-Arayan populations including gypsies, gays, Jews, Russians, and many ethnic groups. Thankfully, he did not succeed. But, the lasting scars of Nazi Germany have forever shaped our understanding of each other and {…}
The Duenna was the only opera written by Spanish-Catalan composer Robert Gerhard (1896-1970), a student of the serial composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) himself an opera composer. Inspired from the eponymous 1775 story by Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan and set in 18th century Seville, the three-act opera is a comical story about double-crossing and love triangles under the nose of {…}
(PC: JP Maurin) Émilie is a 75-minute, nine-scene opera by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho which takes its plot from the historical figure Marquise Émilie du Châtelet (1706-1749), polyglot and mistress to famous French philosopher François-Marie Arouet (or Voltaire). The work, while its own opera, is to be considered related to Saariaho’s 2006 oratorio La Passion de Simone. The work {…}
