Earlier this month, OPERA America’s McKay Studio was home to a compelling performance featuring the latest art songs by composer and pianist Felix Jarrar. Entitled “Liederabend with Felix Jarrar & Friends,” the event showcased the vocal talents of mezzo-soprano Jessica Trainor Tasucu, baritone Benjamin Howard, contralto Allison Gish, and tenor Ryan Morgan. Jarrar’s diverse repertoire of art songs ranged from {…}
“Liederabend With Felix Jarrar & Friends” will give a concert at Opera America featuring 14 world premiere pieces. Composer and pianist Jarrar with collaborators mezzo-soprano Jessica Trainor-Tasucu, contralto Allison Gish, tenor Ryan Mangan, and baritone Miguel Angel Vasquez will present a concert of the works written throughout the pandemic. The program includes “Wild West,” song cycles “French Kisses” with texts {…}
Emerging Artists Theatre is set to present Felix Jarrar’s “Mother Goose” at the TADA! Theater in New York on Oct. 5 and 6. The opera, which had its world premiere in late 2019, tells the story of Leonora Goosling, the keeper of the Mother Goose Inn and Suites, and her unique guests from numerous famed fairy tales. The opera will {…}
It’s the holiday season, a time when performances of Handel’s “Messiah” are a long-standing tradition. But with the world in the grip of a second wave the COVID-19 pandemic, music organizations large and small have looked for new ways to perform the work safely. Composer/Pianist Felix Jarrar’s “Too Hot to Handel: A Virtual Messiah Part One” is one such undertaking. {…}
Composer and pianist Felix Jarrar will to present “Nurturing Nature During Quarantine: a social distancing salon” on May 31, 2020 at 5 p.m. EDT. The virtual recital will feature sopranos Marina Harris and Julia Taylor as well as mezzo-soprano Allison Gish performing alongside Jarrar. The performance will feature standard operatic and art song repertory as well as the premiere of {…}
(Credit: Orlando Mendiola) There were plenty of F’s— High F’s, Low F’s, and Middle F’s—in composer/librettist’s Felix Jarrar’s “Mother Goose: A Drag Comic Chamber Opera,” and, I’m not speaking of notes on a staff; I’m talking about the f-word. Jarrar’s latest creation and collaboration with director Bea Goodwin was crass and vulgar; in short, I loved it. “Mother Goose” was {…}
Composer Felix Jarrar has announced that his new opera “Mother Goose” will have its world premiere on Nov. 21, 2019 at Dixon Place in New York City. The opera will be directed by Bea Goodwin, who collaborated with Jarrar on “Tabula Rasa” and “A Christmas Carol” as librettist and director. The opera will star Allison Gish the title role alongside {…}
(Credit: Teatro Nuovo) On the evening of Thursday, July 18, 2019, opera lovers excitedly took to their seats for a semi-staged production of Rossini’s rarely performed “La Gazza Ladra” (“The Thieving Magpie”) at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater. The opera was presented by Teatro Nuovo, a fairly new organization which aims to produce “exciting revivals of neglected Bel Canto {…}
Composer Felix Jarrar will feature a concert of his works on May 28, 2019 at the City Winery NYC. The concert, entitled “The Vocal Music of Felix Jarrar at The Loft,” will feature a number of artists that the composer has worked with in the past including Sara Lin Yoder, Eugenia Forteza, Rebecca Richardson, Petra Jarrar, Julia Taylor, Savannah Greene, {…}
The true tragedy of Benjamin Britten and Ronaldo Duncan’s “The Rape of Lucretia” is that its story, about a virtuous woman in Ancient Rome who is raped by a powerful man, continues to re-enact itself in the modern world. What is arguably most complicated about the opera itself is that this tragedy is framed by the male gaze, which only {…}
In Benjamin Britten and Ronald Duncan’s “The Rape of Lucretia,” a young Roman soldier is goaded into testing the chastity of Lucretia, who was the only woman not to betray her husband Collatinus. This roman soldier, Tarquinius, proceeds to show up at Lucretia’s home, awaken her from bed, and, despite being repeatedly rejected, he rapes her. Lucretia winds up killing {…}