OPERAtion Brooklyn Takes a BEATing

This September, AOP (American Opera Projects) and Opera on Tap will present a new installment of their acclaimed series, “OPERAtion Brooklyn,” at the newly launched BEAT Festival. The festival, which aims to showcase Brooklyn’s most innovative and forward-thinking emerging artists in theater, dance and voice, will be held from September 12-23 with performances in venues throughout the borough. AOP and Opera on Tap will present progressive new works of opera in a casual setting on September 13^th (Flatbush Reformed Church), 19^th (Brooklyn Conservatory of Music), and 22^nd (Irondale Center) at 7:30pm. “OPERAtion Brooklyn” will include the world premiere of Daniel Felsenfeld’s song cycle A Genuine Willingness to Help (Book 1), songs from One Ring Zero, and scenes from AOP’s series, Composers & the Voice. More information and tickets can be found at www.beatbrooklyn.com/opera/. The concerts will also be featured as part of the Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend Events.

Opera on Tap will present works for voice and chamber ensemble by resident Brooklyn composers Daniel Felsenfeld and the Brooklyn indie outfit One Ring Zero. The works will be conducted by Yoon Jae Lee, with Mila Henry on piano, and performances by sopranos Marcy Richardson, Delea Shand, and mezzo-soprano Kayleigh Butcher. The program will include a world premiere of Felsenfeld’s song cycle A Genuine Willingness to Help (Book I). Part of the composer’s “Author Project,” the work is comprised of songs set to varied and expressive texts by some of New York’s best young writers, including Jonathan Lethem, Fiona Maazel, and Rick Moody. Felsenfeld’s song cycle Raw Footage: Composer’s Cut (text from Robert Coover’s novel Lucky Pierre) will also be performed. In addition, the program will include four songs drawn from One Ring Zero’s album As Smart As We Are (The Author Project). These “mysterious pop songs,” arranged for piano and chamber ensemble by Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp, have been called “both haunting and entertaining” by The New Yorker and feature texts by Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Isa Chandra Moskowitz, and David Wondrich.

AOP will present two scenes rooted in contemporary conflicts – “Stop and Frisk” by composer Sidney Marquez Boquiren and librettist Daniel Neer and “Male Identity” by composer Zach Redler and librettist Sara Cooper – featuring performances by tenor Brandon Snook (Cincinnati Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre, Sarasota Opera) and baritone Jorell Williams (New York City Center Encores!, Caramoor International Music Festival, Ravinia Festival). Supporting on piano will be music directors Jeanne-Minette Cilliers and Mila Henry, with stage direction by Noah Himmelstein.

Zach Redler and Sara Cooper at a Composers & the Voice workshop.

With their 30^th birthdays on the horizon, three friends worry what kind of men they are becoming after three decades of pop culture consumption and father figure issues in the humorous “Male Identity.” In “Stop and Frisk,” Joe and Sean, best friends and successful urban professionals, meet for an awkward lunch in the park and discuss the racial aftermath of Sean’s recent brush with police in a ‘Stop and Frisk’ search and investigation. “Stop and Frisk” is part of the opera-in-development Triptych in Grant Park.

The scenes were written as part of AOP’s free fellowship program Composers & the Voice (C&V) that provides composers and librettists experience working collaboratively with a group of singers on writing for the voice and the opera stage. In addition to the AOP training, distinguished composers Stephen Schwartz and Kaija Saariaho served as mentors to Zach & Sara and Sidney, respectively, in their official capacity as AOP Composer Chairs providing opportunities for discussion and one-on-one feedback.

Hailed as “a vital series” by TimeOut NY, “OPERAtion Brooklyn” is the partnership between Opera on Tap and American Opera Projects, two of Brooklyn’s most acclaimed producers of indie opera. The series aims to present the most daring of contemporary opera and song in a relaxed setting that encourages drinks and discussion as part of the new classical experience. Previously presented under the title Opera Grows in Brooklyn, the series premiered in March 2009 at Galapagos Art Space. The most recent collaboration, “Curioser & Curioser: An Opera-Burlesque Circus in Wonderland,” brought together the worlds of classical music and burlesque for a night of music and entertainment inspired by the tales of Alice in Wonderland. (www.operationbrooklyn.com)

The BEAT Festival aims to fill a void in Brooklyn’s performing arts community with a yearly fall festival showcasing the greatest works of Brooklyn’s finest performing artists. For its inaugural year, the BEAT festival has hand-picked the most innovative, forward-thinking of Brooklyn’s emerging artists including Lemon Andersen, Elevator Repair Service, Theater Group Dzieci, Creative Outlet Dance Theatre, Marshall Davis Jr., Ishmael “Ish” Islam, and many more all-star artists. “BEAT creates a platform to celebrate what is already here: extraordinary world-class performers who stand as the greatest innovators of the performing arts,” says festival artistic director Stephen Shelley. From September 12-23, artists will perform in venues throughout the borough.

For all BEAT performances, there will be general admission tickets available for $20, as well as tickets at the door that will be sold for a suggested donation of $20. For complete information and tickets visit www.beatbrooklyn.com .

Heart of Darkness Nominated for SBSA Award

The World Premiere of Tarik O’Regan’s one-act opera Heart of Darkness (with libretto by Tom Phillips, based on the novella by Joseph Conrad) was nominated for a South Bank Sky Arts Award* this past week, “one of the world’s most coveted arts awards…celebrating the best of British culture and achievement.”  The ceremony will be held at The Dorchester (London) on May 1, 2012, hosted by English broadcaster and author Melvyn Bragg.

Heart of Darkness was first developed by AOP from 2006-08, before beginning preparations for its World Premiere at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Studio Theatre in November 2011, co-produced by Opera East and the Royal Opera House.

For additional information, read the press articles from Chester Novello, Genesis Foundation, and The Bookseller.

*(Can’t find it on the nominee list?  Scroll down to the “Literature” heading and look at the last line; the “Opera” heading was accidentally listed in the middle.)

O’Regan/Phillips open their “Heart” to praise at London premiere

"Superb": Alan Oke, right, as Marlow, with the "splendid" Sipho Fubesi, front left, in Tarik O'Regan's The Heart of Darkness. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

The maiden voyage into Heart of Darkness is complete! On November 1, the AOP-developed chamber opera from Tarik O’Regan and Tom Phillips premiered at London’s Royal Opera House in a co-production by ROH2 and Opera East. AOP Artistic Director Charles Jarden, Managing Director and Board President Bob Lee and several members of the AOP Board were there at the Linbury Studio Theater to see the creators take their bows with so much joy and pride that they barely noticed that they were up to their ankles in the set’s water-filled stage.

“This is a show that any opera company in the world would have been proud to present,” said Mr. Lee. “It’s been incredible to watch it grow through our public development process, from libretto to premiere. AOP does really provide something to opera audiences that they can’t get anywhere else – witnessing the creation of a work of art from beginning to end.”

Across the pond here at the AOP office, we have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of positive response from audience and critics alike. Stephen Pritchard from The Guardian/Observer UK  in particular gave an incredible rave:

Workshopped by OperaGenesis and American Opera Projects, it was developed by Opera East and ROH2 ready for its triumphant world premiere last week – 75 minutes of intense, sinister storytelling, combining crystal-clear narrative with complex ideas about idealism and self-delusion… Underpinning all this is a score of concise originality. Restless, leaping woodwind propel the narrative through the murky waters of the Congo, while interesting combinations of sonorities – double bass and classical guitar, for instance – trickle and bubble through the music… Concision is nowhere more evident than in Tom Phillips’s gloriously spare libretto. Drawn entirely from Conrad’s own writing, it hacks through the dense jungle of the author’s prose and elevates it to the status of the finest poetry.

Jeanne Whalen of The Wall Street Journal said, “’Heart of Darkness’ is very good … The English-language libretto by Tom Phillips is beautiful. … If you think of opera as an often bloated, over-wrought art form with hammy plots and acting, you would do well to try this one. It is elegant, moving, and, at just 75 minutes, short enough to allow time for dinner afterward.” And Claire Seymour from Opera Today said that Tarik O’Regan’s “fluent melodic idiom…skillfully evoked place and ambience with precision and impact.” And finally we can’t help but repeat that “preliminary development work with American Opera Projects and ROH 2’s OperaGenesis, reaped dividends for the finished article as jointly presented by Opera East Productions and ROH2.” Nice to know we’re doing it right.

Read The Genesis Foundation’s digest of press reviews for HEART OF DARKNESS.

Funny, sexy MODEL LOVE to premiere at Lincoln Center w NORA by its side

J. David Jackson's MODEL LOVE premieres October 2. IMAGE: Erik and Julie, NYC, 2006, Photograph by Skye Parrott

On Sunday, October 2, 4pm and 7:30pm, American Opera Projects will present the world premiere of Model Love, a humorous staged song-cycle about contemporary relationships with jazz and rock elements by composer J. David Jackson based on texts by British comedian Henry Normal, and the one-act opera monodrama Nora, In the Great Outdoors, music by Daniel Felsenfeld and libretto by Will Eno, that continues the final scene of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House moments after Nora abandons her family. The event will be held at Lincoln Center’s Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse. Tickets are $25, $50 for VIP reserve seating, available at www.operaprojects.org.

“Fun, energetic and curious song cycle interested in M-M-W threesome. R U what I M looking 4?” Model Love is a 30-minute song cycle fusing contemporary art song with blues, jazz ,and rock set for three singers (mezzo-soprano Rosalie Sullivan, baritone Gregory Gerbrandt, and tenor Jeremy Little) chamber orchestra and rock band. Based on texts from Nude Modelling for the Afterlife by BAFTA award winning poet/comedian Henry Normal with music by J. David Jackson, Model Love mixes musical styles and genres in a way that humorously (and accurately) represents the variegated emotions and situations of contemporary love affairs. J. David Jackson conducts.

Kirsten Chambers will sing the title role in the Felsenfeld/Eno monodrama

Using an icy climate crossed with a fragile-yet-eruptive emotional state of mind as musical grist, Nora, In the Great Outdoors is a take on the ending of Ibsen’s seminal “A Doll’s House,” especially its famous final stage direction, the first collaboration between composer Daniel Felsenfeld and playwright Will Eno. The monodrama takes over immediately where Ibsen leaves off, when the heroine abandons her family, her marriage her security, and perhaps the most famous slammed door in the history of drama. Commissioned by American Opera Projects, Nora, In the Great Outdoors, is a monodrama for soprano and piano trio and will star Kirsten Chambers in the title role. Keith Chambers conducts.

More Praise for “Before Night Falls”

Charles Jarden, Executive Director of AOP, with Gloria Koch (daughter of the late Dolores Koch, co-librettist of Before Night Falls and friend of Reinaldo Arenas) and her daughter.

A full month after it’s world premiere with Fort Worth Opera, Before Night Falls, a new opera by Jorge Martín, is still receiving rave reviews. Before Night Falls tells the compelling story of gay Cuban counterrevolutionary Reinaldo Arenas and his struggles as a political dissident and homosexual in both Cuba and America.

“Vibrant, musically substantive, and very touching… One of the most admirable American operas of recent years.”

- David Shengold, Gay City News

Read full review…

“Although Martín’s score is eclectic, it is not annoyingly pastiche-like. It is nicely shape-shifting. And it all coheres. The orchestration often has a beautiful sheen: transparent but not thin or barren. And I will tell you something extraordinary: Before Night Falls is full of arias, duets, trios, and choruses. There are real, unabashed melodies and tunes. That is old-fashioned; indeed, it is well-nigh counterrevolutionary.”

- Jay Nordlinger, National Review

Read full review…

“…powerfully moving.”

- Anne Midgette, Washington Post

Read full review…

Make sure to check out AOP’s earlier blog post about the Fort Worth performance of Before Night Falls here.