Applications for 2007-08 season of Composers & the Voice now available

American Opera Projects is proud to announce the fifth season of our Composers & the Voice Workshop Series. Once again we will select 6 composers to work with the company’s Resident Ensemble of Singers. The primary focus of the Composers & the Voice Series is to give composers extensive experience working collaboratively with singers on writing for the voice. Workshop sessions focusing on libretto development are also integrated into the season. This series will include 11 workshop sessions between October, 2007 and May, 2008.

For more information and to download an application, click here.

AOP blog goes live!

American Opera Projects joins the blog world with an interactive branch of their website that allows audiences to read about and reply to AOP news and events. The blog will also be home to more audio and video excerpts of AOP works and the online journal of our artists as they take readers behind the scenes of AOP productions in development.

For more about the AOP blog: click here

Darkling plays to sold-out houses in Europe

Audiences packed the houses to see Michael Comlish’s touring version of Darkling when it visited Berlin, Germany and Gniezno, Poland this June. Over 600 people gathered in the Max Kade Auditorium at the Freie Universitat Berlin on June 9, to see Darkling as part of a city-wide celebration of the arts and sciences. Two days later in Poland, ancestral home to Darkling author Anna Rabinowitz and performer Elzbieta Czyzewska, audiences filled every one of the 350 seats in the Aleksander Fredro Theater and then unfilled them with a rapturous standing ovation at the end of the evening. Stefan Weisman’s wonderful score was accompanied by members of ensemble courage from Dresden, Germany.

Pit of Despair!

Though some musicians may think they walk on water, the orchestra of Romulus had a chance to prove it when they arrived to a 6-inch pool of water filling their pit on May 19 – the day before opening night. During restoration on the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum a faulty sump pump was installed that failed to hold back the ground water from the heavy rains that pummelled New York City that week. Rehearsal proceeded as planned around the moat which was drained in time for a proper dress rehearsal the next morning.

AOP Receives Accolades for a Month of New Music

AOP, “known for bringing cutting-edge vocal productions to the masses,” (New York magazine) recently finished up an especially busy and rich run of performances, receiving wide praise from audiences and New York press. In May, a total of nine composers’ works were showcased at major venues in front of eager audiences. Besides, a “best date under $50″ recommendation for Composers & the Voice, Time Out NY also praised AOP’s preview of the touring version of Darkling at New York City Opera’s VOX festival as “dark [and] absorbing.” The New York Times‘ review of Wall-to-Wall Opera at Symphony Space made special mention of Tarik O’Regan’s opera-in-development at AOP, Heart of Darkness, calling it ‘”a dense, dreamlike chamber opera heavily tinged with exoticism, like ‘Death in Venice‘ on steroids.” And the “appealingly lyrical” (The New Yorker) music of Louis Karchin’s opera Romulus (pictured above), staged at the Guggenheim Museum, prompted Steve Smith at The New York Times to conclude, “I would have happily stayed to hear it performed again.”