AOP Board Member News: Performances, Accolades, and the Passing of a Leader

It has been a busy fall for AOP. Our Composers & The Voice fellows delivered a successful “Six Scenes” concert and our latest NYC premiere, “Savage Winter” has entered production for its November 7th unveiling at BAM. At this prolific time in our 30th season, we feel we must take a breath to acknowledge news about the achievements and influence of our effervescent Board members.

Anna Rabinowitz. photo © Elena Seibert

Anna Rabinowitz, poet, librettist, and National Endowment for the Arts fellow, has extrapolated her poetry collection, Words on the Street into a “multimedia hybrid performance” in collaboration with director Kristin Marting, video designer Lianne Arnold (As One), and composer Matt Marks. Staged at Baruch College’s Rose Naglebaum Theater from October 26th to November 4th, Words on the Street is a humanity-spanning mystery story; a “what-done-it” if you will, surrounding the abduction of a baby in a dystopian world. Anna Rabinowitz has served on AOP’s board of directors since 2006 and has collaborated on AOP-commissioned adaptations of her poetry books, Darkling (music by Stefan Weisman) and The Wanton Sublime (music by Tarik O’Regan).

Anna Rabinowitz and the Berlin cast of AOP’s 2007 tour of Darkling.

In addition to this new production, Ms. Rabinowitz has also been honored by the Poetry Society of America, with a new prize conferred in her name. The Anna Rabinowitz Prize will be awarded in recognition of collaborative endeavors in the field of poetry that unify the art-form with typically related media such as music and visual art, or venture into more esoteric collaborative territory, such as science or mathematics. The award was established to honor Ms. Rabinowitz’s “boundless curiosity, creativity, and artistic accomplishments”, qualities she has shown no shortage of in her multifarious efforts with AOP.

Anthony Roth Costanzo, has been declared Musical America’s “Vocalist of the Year” for his courage, curiosity and passion in challenging notions of a counter-tenor’s role in contemporary opera, and his willingness to identify and combat issues faced by opera creatives in a relentlessly evolving artistic landscape. Celebrated for the “brilliant, piercing clarity of his voice” that can “blaze with passion” Costanzo has performed with The Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Glimmerglass Festival, New York Philharmonic, and National Symphony Orchestra. With AOP, he was instrumental in AOP’s development of Wolf-In-Skins by composer Gregory Spears and librettist/choreographer Christopher Williams, and has been a member of the our board since 2013.

Anthony Roth Costanzo in the 2017 AOP workshop of Wolf-in-Skins. Photo: Steven Pisano.

Costanzo recently released his debut recording ARC, a collection that alternates between Arias by Handel and Glass, two composers who the singer views as integral to his development. The album was the basis for a large-scale, live cross-pollination of art-forms entitled “Glass Handel”. Art, dance, film, fashion, and theatre practitioners came together in a multimedia event intended to “appeal to an audience that is primed to appreciate aesthetic things but doesn’t really have an ‘in’ with opera”. Our heartiest congratulations to you in your multi-faceted endeavors, Anthony!

Anthony Roth Costanzo and Dr. Coco Lazaroff at AOP’s 25th Anniversary Gala at the Player’s Club. Photo by Richard Termine.

Finally, it is with heavy hearts that we acknowledge the passing of Dr. Coco Lazaroff, who has been Chair of the AOP Board since 2015. Dr. Lazaroff was a spirited and avid consumer of new opera, who challenged AOP to venture beyond traditional boundaries in the kinds of operas we develop. At the same time she adored the classic operas, and served on the board of the Metropolitan Opera.  She was a recognizable figure and always sat in the front row of theaters.  We imagine she now has the very best seat.  We miss you, Coco!

 

AOP showcases six new operas by emerging composers and librettists

On Friday, September 28, and Saturday, September 29, audiences will get a first look at six wildly different new operas invoking diverse settings such as the Arab Spring in Tunisia, a post-apocalyptic future, and a modern college campus and exploring a multitude of themes and concepts, including the emotional minefield of solar flares, the dissonance of fundamentalism in urban and regional communities, and the nature and validity of Opera itself. COMPOSERS & THE VOICE: SIX SCENES 2018 showcases opera scenes from nine artists emerging in the world of contemporary opera. The composers Matt Browne, Scott Ordway, Frances Pollock, Pamela Stein Lynde, Amber Vistein and Alex Weiser, and librettists Laura Barati, Kim Davies, and Sokunthary Svay, were chosen by AOP to spend a year creating new works in its bi-annual fellowship program Composers & the Voice (C&V). The evening will be hosted by C&V Artistic Director Steven Osgood.

The performances will be held at 7:30pm at South Oxford Space (138 S. Oxford St.) in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, the home of AOP. Tickets range from $10-$20 general admission and are available at https://6scenes2018.eventbrite.com.

Six Scenes 2018 will be performed by the AOP Resident Ensemble of Singers: lyric soprano Jennifer Goode Cooper (NYCO, Glimmerglass), tenor Blake Friedman (BAM, Dallas Opera), coloratura soprano Tookah Sapper (Chautauqua Opera), mezzo-soprano Blythe Gaissert (Metropolitan Opera, LA Opera), baritone Mario Diaz-Moresco (Central City Opera, Glimmerglass), and bass-baritone Adrian Rosas (Seattle Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis). Each of the scenes were composed specifically for the singers’ voices, after months of study and experimentation during the C&V program. Supporting on piano will be C&V Music Directors Mila Henry and Kelly Horsted.

Previous Six Scenes concerts have given audiences their first look at operas that went on to fully-produced world premieres including Gregory Spears‘ Paul’s Case (UrbanArias and Prototype Festival), The Summer King by Daniel Sonenberg (Pittsburgh Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre), Jack Perla‘s Love/Hate (ODC/San Francisco Opera), and Three Way by Robert Paterson (Nashville Opera), and more.

Six Scenes includes the following works:

Dark Exhalation (By Amber Vistein)
“Dark Exhalation” is a meditative, experimental piece exploring our very human tendency to attach cosmic significance to the personal connections we forge. A woman in a nameless city conflates the turmoil of an impending Summer storm with the emotional unrest of her departed lover in this resonant contemporary opera.

Spring (Score by Scott Ordway; Libretto by Meryem Belkaid)
“Spring” takes a frank, empathic close-up view of the moments, mentalities and malaise immediately before and after a revolution overthrows a dictatorial regime. Four personified winds leave politics to the background as they paint intimate portraits of the people who endure these volatile times.

Better Than It Sounds (By Matt Browne)
A comedic assessment of the value of opera as an artform, “Better Than It Sounds” is an absurd, yet articulate debate on the importance of song. When Samuel Clemens is outraged by an operatic interpretation of “Tom Sawyer”; composers and actors, William and Emma must go to the heart of the artform to convince him that he should allow them to produce their show.

The Interaction Effect (Score by Pamela Stein Lynde; Libretto by Laura Barati)
Mikaela, a statistics major at a liberal arts college, just wants to forget the night her friend Adam raped her-instead, she is forced to contend with the aftermath of her community and school administration’s painful mishandling of her assault. “The Interaction Effect” boldly exposes the weaknesses in a justice system governed by institutionalized misogyny.

Salt (Score by Frances Pollock; Libretto by Emily Roller & Frances Pollock)
A contemporary adaptation of the tale of Sodom and Gamora, “Salt” explores the escalating tension between urban and rural communities. When Lot and his two daughters flee their home after a terrorist attack, they must contend with the notion that their flight could lead to further persecution at the hands of a different kind of fundamentalism.

State of the Jews (Score by Alex Weiser; Libretto by Ben Kaplan)
How much must one sacrifice to change the world? “State of the Jews” is a non-linear historical drama chronicling the struggle of Austro-Hungarian writer Theodor Herzl to campaign for the establishment of a Jewish homeland, and the breakdown of his marriage as a result of his slavish dedication to his cause.

The Composers & the Voice 2017-19 fellows. (l. to r.) Laura Barati, Kim Davies, Alex Weiser, Sokunthary Svay, Scott Ordway, Pamela Stein Lynde, Amber Visteein, Matt Browne, Frances Pollock. Photo by Steven Pisano.

Are you full?

Nathaniel Sullivan, Yoojin Lee, and Jordan Rutter in “A Drop in the Ocean” Photo by Steven Pisano Photography

If you had a chance to see the Dinner Party Operas recently presented by AOP, the Brooklyn Museum, and NYU Tisch’s Opera Writing Workshop, we hope you are! (And if you didn’t, all of the operas are available on AOP’s YouTube page in their entirety here!)

The two performances were the culmination of the 2017-2018 session of the NYU Tisch Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program’s Opera Lab. Collectively they featured eleven short operas written and composed by NYU graduate students and performed by AOP’s professional opera singers Keith Browning, Alexa Jarvis, Kathryn Krasovec, Yoojin Lee, Nicole Mitchell, Jordan Rutter, Nathaniel Sullivan, and Amelia Watkins, who additionally acted as mentors through the duration of the program. The operas themselves were inspired by The Dinner Party, an installation of feminist artwork by Judy Chicago currently housed at Brooklyn Museum.

The Dinner Party, an important icon of 1970s feminist art and a milestone in twentieth-century art, is presented as the centerpiece around which the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art is organized. The Dinner Party comprises a massive ceremonial banquet, arranged on a triangular table with a total of thirty-nine place settings, each commemorating an important woman from history. The settings consist of embroidered runners, gold chalices and utensils, and china-painted porcelain plates with raised central motifs that are based on vulvar and butterfly forms and rendered in styles appropriate to the individual women being honored. The names of another 999 women are inscribed in gold on the white tile floor below the triangular table. This permanent installation is enhanced by rotating Herstory Gallery exhibitions relating to the 1,038 women honored at the table.

Judy Chicago (American, born 1939). The Dinner Party, 1974–79. Ceramic, porcelain, textile, 576 × 576 in. (1463 × 1463 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation, 2002.10. © Judy Chicago. (Photo: Donald Woodman)

Some students chose to interpret the mythos of these women literally, while others reimagined their lives or simply drew inspiration. The historic pieces included “Master” in which Emily Dickinson reckons with the life of her poetry in the aftermath of her death. It featured music by Jacinth Greywoode and libretto by Deepali Gupta. In “A Drop in the Ocean” (music by Bryan Blaskie and libretto by Christine Claudel Filimonova), Christine de Pizan, the first women to earn a living wage as a writer, interviewed for her first job after the death of her husband. Spencer Robelen and Seth Christenfeld’s “An Unbroken Line” took place in Egypt, 1458 BC when the pharaoh Hatshepsut, in the twilight of her reign, is beset by palace intrigue orchestrated by her sister and carried out by her heir. “Waiting for the Rain” built from the legacy of Hildegard von Bingen, a medieval nun, composer, scientist, and prophetess, with music by Kevin Cummines and a libretto by Clara Luthas. “Judith and Holofernes” (music by Mehmet Salih Yildirim and libretto by Lily Dwoskin) depicted the Biblical heroine, Judith, and her slaughter of the infamous General Holofernes.

Other operas took a more varied approach, some reinventing the mythos of the women and some using them in a contemporary context. “Petronilla” (Music by Kent Jeong-Eun Kim and libretto by Zach Childers) imagined a scene between Lady Alice and her maid Petronilla de Meath, the first Irish woman to be burned at the stake for witchcraft during the Middle Ages, as a playful comedy; “Ár n-Athair” (music by Benedict Braxton-Smith and libretto by Nick Stephens) also took on the subject of a woman accused of witchcraft, this time revolving around the alliance between Goodwife “Goody” Ann Glover and a pirate when they are both imprisoned by the powerful Cotton Mather; “President Joan (Or the Unexpected Virtue of Sandwiches)” retold the myth of Pope Joan, but set it in the farce that is modern U.S. politics. Music by Boram Han and libretto by Cal Silberstein; The Byzantine Empress “Theodora” helped a young modern professional stuck in a dead-end job surrounded by misogynistic co-workers in the opera with music by Minhui Lee and libretto by Benji Goldsmith; “Women’s Work” (Music by Benji Goldsmith and libretto by Seth Christenfeld) also featured a modern setting for its story of an artist forced to reckon with her white privilege after a black friend confronts her over her work – a scultural bust of Sojourner Truth. And “Avery and Ainsley” took The Dinner Party as a whole for inspiration, exploring not one of the women represented, but the piece itself and its perceived role in the surreal opera by Jonathan Fadner and Scott R. Ritter.

Alexa Jarvis, Amelia Watkins, and Nicole Mitchell in “President Joan (Or the Unexpected Virtue of Sandwiches)” Photo by Matt Gray.

The operas were split between two performances. The full house at the Wednesday, May 23 performance at NYU Tisch’s Black Box Theatre saw six operas with music direction by Mila Henry, directed by students from The New School, and designed by students from the NYU Tisch Department of Design. On Sunday, May 27 at the Brooklyn Museum the remaining five operas were presented under the stage direction of Luke Leonard and music direction of James Lowe to an equally large audience who were able to then visit the installation after the performance.

The Opera Lab was led by Professors Randall Eng of Tisch’s Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program and Sam Helfrich of the Tisch Department of Design, in partnership with American Opera Projects.

More about NYU Tisch:

For over 50 years, the NYU Tisch School of the Arts has drawn on the vast artistic and cultural resources of New York City and New York University to create an extraordinary training ground for the individual artist and scholar of the arts. Today, students learn their craft in a spirited, risk-taking environment that combines the professional training of a conservatory with the liberal arts education of a premier global university with campuses in New York, Abu Dhabi, Shanghai, and 11 academic centers around the world. Learn more at www.tisch.nyu.edu.

More about Brooklyn Museum:

The Brooklyn Museum presents important art in eye-opening ways, and has long been at the forefront of engagement with underserved and younger audiences, from its widely popular Target First Saturdays program and creative reinstallations of its permanent collection, to its pioneering online presence and inventive use of technology in reimagining the visitor experience. A driving force behind the massive growth and energy of the Borough of Brooklyn and of its diverse cultural community, the Brooklyn Museum annually welcomes more than half a million visitors who represent one of New York’s most diverse museum-going audiences.

With roots dating back to 1823, the Brooklyn Museum is one of the oldest and largest museums in the United States, with a collection representing nearly every culture, ranging from some of the most important ancient Egyptian works in the nation; to the arts of the Pacific Islands, Asia, Africa, and the Islamic world; to American and European art; to international contemporary work. The Brooklyn Museum is home to the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, the only facility of its kind in the country. For more information, visit www.brooklynmuseum.org

 

NYU Tisch, the Brooklyn Museum, and American Opera Projects to present 11 Mini-Operas based on Judy Chicago’s iconic feminist artwork The Dinner Party

Judy Chicago (American, born 1939). The Dinner Party, 1974–79. Ceramic, porcelain, textile, 576 × 576 in. (1463 × 1463 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation, 2002.10. © Judy Chicago. (Photo: Donald Woodman)

The Dinner Party Operas
Short operas inspired by Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party
A collaboration between NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, American Opera Projects, and the Brooklyn Museum

Wednesday, May 23 | 7:30 PM – Program A
GMTWP Black Box Theatre, NYU Tisch
715 Broadway, 2nd Floor, NY, NY 10003

Sunday, May 27 | 2:00 PM – Program B
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium at the Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238

 

February 28, 2017

NEW YORK, NY – The Dinner Party Operas, a showcase of eleven original mini-operas inspired by Judy Chicago’s iconic feminist installation The Dinner Party, a multi-media work housed in the Brooklyn Museum, will be presented this May in New York City by the NYU Tisch Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program (GMTWP), the Brooklyn Museum, the NYU Tisch Department of Design for Stage & Film and American Opera Projects (AOP). Six of the operas will be performed on Wednesday, May 23 at 7:30 p.m. at NYU Tisch’s GMTWP Black Box Theatre, located in Manhattan at 715 Broadway, between Washington and Waverly places, on the second floor. The remaining five operas will be performed on Sunday, May 27 at 2:00 p.m. at the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium at the Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238. Each under 15-minutes long, the operas were written and composed by students in the NYU Tisch GMTWP Opera Lab and will be performed by professional opera singers with piano accompaniment. The Dinner Party Operas is free with advance registration (May 23) or museum admission (May 27) and open to the public. To reserve tickets for the May 23 performance at NYU, email tisch.ipa@nyu.edu. Complete info at www.aopopera.org.

The Dinner Party Operas is the most recent production of Tisch GMTWP’s Opera Lab program, through which students write, compose, develop, and design original operas performed by professional opera singers. Opera Lab was started in 2015 by GMTWP professor Randall Eng with Design Dept. professor Sam Helfrich, and is open to both students and alumni. In previous years, the program’s mini-operas were created on the subjects of Brooklyn’s historic Fort Greene Park and New York City’s International House, which houses and supports international students and entrepreneurs from around the world.

The Dinner Party, an important icon of 1970s feminist art and a milestone in twentieth-century art, is presented as the centerpiece around which the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art is organized. The Dinner Party comprises a massive ceremonial banquet, arranged on a triangular table with a total of thirty-nine place settings, each commemorating an important woman from history. The settings consist of embroidered runners, gold chalices and utensils, and china-painted porcelain plates with raised central motifs that are based on vulvar and butterfly forms and rendered in styles appropriate to the individual women being honored. The names of another 999 women are inscribed in gold on the white tile floor below the triangular table. This permanent installation is enhanced by rotating Herstory Gallery exhibitions relating to the 1,038 women honored at the table. The pharaoh Hatshepsut; the medieval nun, composer, scientist, and prophetess Hildegard von Bingen; and writer Emily Dickinson are just three of the famous women from Judy Chicago’s art installation who serve as muses for this year’s operas.

“The Dinner Party contains a multitude of stories, and was created in part to encourage viewers to investigate those stories,” said Eng. “In these operas, the students have done exactly that, as they transform the visual and historic into music and theatre. Some of the operas celebrate moments in the lives of specific women, while others confront the work as a whole, and it’s been a joy to see the range of operatic responses—from comic farce to meditative reflection to heightened tragedy to impassioned critique.”

In addition to Profs. Eng and Helfrich, NYU Tisch’s GMTWP Opera Lab is led by Music Directors Mila Henry and James Lowe, who will provide piano accompaniment for the performances. Stage directors and designers from the NYU Tisch Graduate Department of Design for Stage and Film will stage the works in Program A under the guidance of Prof. Helfrich. Luke Leonard will direct the Program B operas.

AOP receives OPERA America Innovation grant to expand composer and librettist training programs

American Opera Projects is pleased to announce that it has received one of the twenty OPERA America Innovation grants awarded this cycle. The grants are given to OPERA America’s Professional Company Members to support “exceptional projects that have the capacity to strengthen the field’s most important areas of practice, including artistic vitality, audience experience, organizational effectiveness and community connections.” With this grant AOP will continue to extend our training program for emerging composers and librettists into conservatories and universities to teach students the mechanics and artistry of creating new operas.

This grant is for the second phase in continuing to develop our training program for music theater graduate students. In collaboration with AOP’s Composers & the Voice alum and NYU Tisch program professor Randall Eng, AOP created the “Opera Writing Workshop,” a streamlined version of C&V tailored for the music theater graduate students of the Tisch School of the Arts. With the help of the Innovation Grant, AOP will create a curriculum that can be replicated at other music schools that includes mentoring with by renowned composers and creating site specific performances for new, diverse audiences.

NYU/AOP Opera Writing Workshop “Final Round”. International House, NYC, May 13, 2017. Photo by Steven Pisano.

Funded generously by the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, the OPERA America Innovation Grants project was launched in 2016 with the intent to enable organizations within the OPERA America community to increase their commitment experimentation, innovation, and contribute to fieldwide learning. This cycle of grants will help fund a variety of innovations in the field, including fusing technology with live opera performance, partnerships with arts and non-arts organizations, as well as career-development programs, such as AOP’s. The Innovation Grants program additionally provides infrastructure as well as administrative and technical support.