“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 {…}
Photo: David Lees/Getty Images Among the many criminally unrecognized names in the American classical music canon, African-American female composer Julia Perry (1924-1979) represents the hidden aspect of the Black African-American compositional experience. Alongside other composers like Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, Nora Holt, and male composers like William Grant Still, Vicente Lusitano, and “Black Mozart” Joseph Bologne, Perry’s contribution to America’s {…}
“Shanewis” is a one-act/two-scene opera by the American composer Charles Wakerfield Cadman (1881-1946) which debuted on March 23rd, 1918 at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, Cadman calling his work an “American opera.” Featuring an English libretto by the librettist Nelle Richmond Eberhart (1871-1944), the opera was the first opera about Native Americans featured at the Met. The plot {…}
Reuben, Reuben is a two-act “urban folk opera” or “musical play” written by American composer Marc Blitzstein (1905-1964) in 1955. He is most noted for his off-Broadway adaptation of Kurt Weill and Berthold Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera. Despite Blitzstein’s many works, his name is relatively unknown today nor his opera remembered. The opera’s central story is based on the Faust legend {…}
Der Ferne Klang, or The Elusive Sound (1912), is a three-act opera composed by Austrian composer Franz Schreker (1878-1934) with an original libretto. The work is dedicated to well-known German conductor Bruno Walter and tells the tale of the fated love between amateur composer Fritz and his lover Grete. Although not well-known today, at the time he was regarded as {…}