Catalog

The opera, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is based entirely on the very ironic, humorous short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The libretto was written by Estela Eaton, the composer's daughter. Composer John Eaton was called " the most interesting opera composer writing in America today" by Andrew Porter. He has also received international recognition as a composer of electronic and microtonal music. Of his more than 20 operas, perhaps the best known is The Cry of Clytaemnestra. A recipient of the "genius" award from the MacArthur Foundation, he has also received an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. This DVD was filmed at live performances sponsored by the Center for Contemporary Opera and presented as the opening event of the ACA's Festival of American Music in 2010.

This new American opera by Evan Mack had its genesis in a lecture in Cincinnati, Ohio, where Mack heard the story of the murdered nun, Dorothy Stang. His research led him to the Ohio Province of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur where he was given access to Stang's letters from 1969 until the week before her death. In five years time, the opera went from page to stage and won the Boston Metro Opera Main Stage Award. This recording is of the original New York City production. Evan Mack, a noted composer and pianist, has composed five musicals as well as numerous popular songs and classical works. He received his DMA from the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music.

"...Melodious and engaging..." "...a musically vivid theatrical debut..." "...the score is continually inventive..." These were some of the comments from the press on the world premiere production of Bruno Skulte's masterpiece, The Heiress of Vilkaci. This DVD is of the world premiere, June 23, 2011 and compliments the recording of the opera previously released by Albany Records (TROY944/45). Devoted to Latvian music, Bruno Skulte was one of the most prominent Latvian composers to flee Latvia and find refuge in exile. Born in 1905, Skulte studied at the Latvian Conservatory and worked as an organist, composer and artistic director of the Latvian Radio and the Liepaja Opera. He came to New York in 1949 and became organist for the Latvian congregation in New York. His 25 year tenure with the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church in New York boasts many achievements with his activities promoting Latvian music. The Heiress of Vilkaci is possibly his crowning achievement and offers a delightful listening and visual treat with this DVD. Sung in Latvian with English surtitles.

As Susan Hawkshaw points out in her notes, Jack Beeson is primarily known for his large scale opera, Lizzy Borden, premiered and revived by the New York City Opera. But actually five of Beeson's ten operas are chamber operas because of the scale of the story. The two operas on this recording fall into this category. They are gems of vocal beauty, formal construction and evocative musical writing that deserve wider recognition and a fresh performance. They stand as major contributions to the corpus of 20th century American opera. More than 30 years separate these two operas: Hello Out There, written when Beeson was 32, was premiered in 1954 and Dr. Heidegger's Fountain of Youth, written with librettist Sheldon Harnick, was premiered in 1978.

Before departing for New York to conduct the premier of Pirates on New Year's Eve, 1879, Sullivan had completed sketches for the first act, intending to finish the opera after his voyage. Upon arrival, he discovered he'd left the first act at home. Following an all-night reconstruction, the New York rehearsals began while the composer hastily created the second act, finishing everything only hours before the premiere. The show as a success and ran for more than three months. The Pirates of Penzance remains popular today, taking its place along with The Mikado and H.M.S. Pinafore as one of the most frequently played Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

Victor Herbert's exotic 1898 three-act operetta score abounds with Hussar marches, gypsy love songs, comic numbers, romantic duets and brilliant finales. The eighth of more than 50 Herbert stage works, The Fortune Teller was presented in London in 1901 with its star from New York, Alice Nielsen. The cast, orchestra and chorus of the Ohio Light Opera bring this delightful work back to life.

The creation of Darkling, an opera with music by Stefan Weisman and libretto by Anna Rabinowitz, is a story of transformations. It is a story that maps the trajectory of bits of memorabilia found in a shoebox to publication of a book-length poem to production of a multi-media experimental opera performed in fully staged and concert versions to its current incarnation as a CD. The faceless, mainly nameless voices of Darkling emerge from a world that is lost to us: that of Eastern European Jewry destroyed in the Holocaust. Darkling spans the period between the two World Wars, interweaving the phenomenal and emotional lives of its characters with the catastrophic events of history. Darkling shows what is possible for music and poetry now and in the years to come.

Cruzar La Cara de la Luna/To Cross the Face of the Moon is the world's first opera composed for mariachi. Exploring the fusion of opera and mariachi has taken both art forms in new directions. Commissioned in celebration of the Mexican anniversaries of independence and revolution, Cruzar brought together composer José "Pepe" Martinez, the music director of the storied Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, and eminent Broadway stage director and writer Leonard Foglia. Together they have created an emotional and compelling work that remains true to its Mariachi culture and tells a story that resonates with all. This is a recording of the world premiere performance, which brought this glorious new piece of music theater to life with unforgettable virtuosity, energy and passion.

This world premiere recording of Río de Sangre, a new opera by composer Don Davis and librettist Kate Gale, presents fictional characters and situations that offer a more general comment on political and historical events, aiming for a degree of universality. The action takes place in an unnamed country in the "Southern hemisphere" and the text is sung in Spanish, but the characters and events clearly echo conditions and crises from any place and any time. Commissioned by the Florentine Opera Company, Río de Sangre received its world premiere performance by the company in 2010. Composer Don Davis has enjoyed a successful and widely varied musical career, not only as a seminal and prolific composer of contemporary orchestral and chamber works for the concert stage, but also as a versatile dramatic composer and conductor of film and television music, including the feature film trilogy The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions.

Confession, Raphaël Lucas' award-winning opera, libretto by Jacque Trussel and Margaret Vignola, was created as a "prequel" to Puccini's beloved Suor Angelica. The evocative one-act work came about as Jacque Trussel, stage director for Purchase Opera, began to muse on the possible circumstances behind Suor Angelica's becoming a nun. He realized there was a story waiting to be told and came up with the essence of the libretto that was to become Confession. The music was written by the young French composer Raphaël Lucas and was awarded the National Opera Association Prize as best contemporary opera of 2010-12 and will be staged at their 2012 convention. This is a world premiere recording.

This is a world premiere recording of Lee Hoiby's 1971 two-act opera, with libretto by Lanford Wilson, based on the play by Tennessee Williams. Lee Hoiby, who died on April 8, 2011, was best known as a composer of operas and songs, although he was a child prodigy as a pianist, studying at the University of Wisconsin with Gunnar Johansen and Egon Petri. But on the verge of a career as a concert pianist, he received a scholarship to study composition with Gian Carlo Menotti. His immense contribution to American music, particularly opera and song repertoire is recognized by American singers everywhere. His style is an elegant and unobvious bridging of the lyrical works of Verdi and Gershwin.

Commissioned by Dicapo Opera Theatre, Thomas Pasatieri's charge for God Bless Us, Every One! was to bring the cast of characters to the shores of America. God Bless Us, Every One! suggests what might have happened 20 years after the famous final line of Dickens' original tale. The libretto combines the characters from A Christmas Carol with the plot of another Dickens' story, Doubledick, and mixes them all into the turbulent years during the American Civil War.

As the world is turning from the 19th to the 20th century, Hudson, New York, on the Hudson River, in the Hudson Valley, was a little town with a big red light district centered on Diamond Street. Harold Farberman has written a comic opera (libretto by Andrew Joffe) that involves politicians, a heroine forced to work in the red light district and a hero, who rescues her. Harold Farberman is a distinguished composer, conductor and pedagogue. He has conducted many of the world's leading orchestras and his accomplishments as a recording artist have been widely recognized. A prolific composer, he counts orchestral works, chamber music, concertos, ballet music, film scores, song cycles and operas among his compositions. He is founder and director of the Conductors Institute.

Gilbert & Sullivan's hilarious and tuneful 1881 spoof of Oscar Wilde and the Pre-Raphaelite movement is presented with complete music and dialog by the Ohio Light Opera. Patience was the sixth of the 14 Gilbert & Sullivan collaborations. It played for 850 performances, moving to the Savoy Theatre, where it was hailed as the first theatrical production to be lit entirely by electric light.

The lure of the operetta stage proved as irresistible to America's "March King," John Philip Sousa, as it had a decade earlier to Vienna's "Waltz King," Johann Strauss. Sousa played under the baton of Jacques Offenbach as a teenaged violinist and was aware of the unprecedented success of Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore on Broadway. El Capitan can lay claim to be the most enduring American comic opera of the 19th century. It was premiered in Boston in 1896, transferred to Broadway a week later and for the next four years played continuously across the U.S. and Canada and even had a five month run in London. This recording, with complete music and dialogue, was recorded at the 2010 Ohio Light Opera Festival.

Jorge Martín's dramatic two-act opera, based on the writings of Cuban dissident and poet Reinaldo Arenas is giving its world premiere recording. In creating an opera from the memoir of Reinaldo Arenas, composer Jorge Martín with the help of Dolores Koch, took every step to insure accuracy, calling upon Cuban émigrés for advice, particularly for the prison and interrogation scenes. Before Night Falls transcends a specific time and place, however, capturing universal themes and Martín has woven these themes into a vibrant music drama.

The only opera composed by Edward Joseph Collins, Daughter of the South, is set on a plantation on the Potomac River, near Leesburg, Virginia. The composer also wrote the libretto, the dramatic action commencing on the day the Civil War began and ending when peace was declared. Pondering what would be an appropriate opera for an American composer, Collins drew on his life-long interest in the Civil War and created an opera using the love story of a Southern beauty with a Northern boy as the basis of the libretto. The music shares many identifiable qualities with Collins’ other compositions for large ensembles, yet also makes more direct use of music styles from the popular culture of the 1920s and 30s, especially jazz and blues.

Johann Strauss II's delicious 1874 operetta, set in turn-of-the-century Vienna, is performed in an English adaptation by Richard Kagey by a stellar cast of young singers who are sure to make their mark. The story is fun and familiar but it is the score that really makes the work timeless.

So, what is Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines? Is it an opera? Yes, it is, but more specifically it is "A Romantic Comedy in Music." Based on the play by Clyde Fitch, Sheldon Harnick wrote the libretto for this opera that was first performed in 1975 by the Kansas City Lyric Theatre. Born in 1921, Jack Beeson became interested in opera after listening to the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts and as a teenager wrote a five-act libretto. His interest in opera revived while teaching at Columbia University and he has gone on to write 11 operas as well as works for orchestra, concert band, vocal and choral groups and solo and chamber music. He is the MacDowell Professor Emeritus of Music at Columbia. This recording, originally issued on Columbia and long out of print, brings this delightful opera back to the catalog.

Gilbert & Sullivan's hilarious 1887 Gothic comic opera, complete with dialogue and music, was recorded at the 2009 Festival of the Ohio Light Opera. Originally titled Ruddygore, the name, which meant bloody gore, gave offense at the premiere and the more acceptable Ruddigore was substituted. Cat-calls sayings "Give us back the Mikado" during the bows prompted a substantial reworking of the action. Despite the initial reception, the show ran for almost 300 performances. The score, full of ingratiating melodies, also boasts some novel touches as well as the usual comic patter songs and tuneful ballads. The extraordinary music for the ghosts in Act II represents Sullivan at his most inspired.

By the time composer Victor Herbert began work in 1905 on his comic opera Mlle. Modiste, he already had 14 Broadway shows to his credit and a reputation as America's most prominent composer of stage music. With Metropolitan Opera star Fritzi Scheff in the title role of Fifi, the hatgirl with dreams of a stage career, Mlle. Modiste opened on Christmas Day of 1905 and ran for 202 performances. Herbert's musical score remains one of the supreme gems in the American operetta canon and it is fitting that the Ohio Light Opera celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth with this delightful operetta.

Composer Michael Dellaira and librettist Susan Yankowitz have written Chéri, a musical drama based on the novel by Colette. This recording consists of selections from The Actors Studio Workshop production in 2005. Dellaira chose his favorite musical passages without regard to whether they tell an abridged version of the story but listening to the selections gives one an accurate picture. Dellaira is currently composer-in-residence at The Center for Contemporary Opera and is at work on an opera based on Joseph Conrad's novel, The Secret Agent, with a libretto by J.D. McClatchy.

John Musto's one-act opera, Later The Same Evening is set in Manhattan in the 1950s and was inspired by a series of paintings by Edward Hopper. Later the Same Evening enjoyed a New York premiere at the Manhattan School of Music. The New York Times lauded "Mr. Musto's musical-theater-like score, which features recurring marimba riffs, chromatic interludes, fugal passages and hints of blues and jazz." Musto's music displays a rare and creative integration of all the idioms available to the 21st century composer.

First performed in 1986 by the Des Moines Opera with Jacque Trussel as Caliban, the opera has come full circle with this recording of the Purchase Opera where Jacque Trussel served as director. Hoiby, born in Wisconsin in 1926, was infused with operatic ambitions during his studies at Curtis with Gian Carlo Menotti. He has written a number of operas, including several on Albany Records (A Month in the Country, Bon Appetit!, and This Is the Rill Speaking).

Dominick Argento, considered by many to be America's pre-eminent composer of lyric opera, was born in 1927. He studied at Peabody and the Eastman School of Music. He is professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota, where he taught for 40 years. Although Argento's instrumental works have received consistent praise, the great majority of his music is vocal. This emphasis on the human voice is a facet of the powerful dramatic impulse that drives nearly all of his music.

Jerome Kern wrote The Cabaret Girl at the suggestion of London producer George Grossmith who, teaming with famed literary figure P.G. Wodehouse, provided the book and lyrics. The show opened at London's Winter Garden theater on September 18, 1922. The show ran for 361 performances and showcases both the unparalleled wit and sentimentality of Wodehouse and the inexhaustible melodic genius of Jerome Kern.

Efra'n Amaya was born in Venezuela. He studied composition and piano at the University of Indiana and conducting at Rice University. He is on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University and founder and conductor of the Point Chamber Orchestra. His children's opera, featured on this recording, was first performed by the Opera Theater of Pittsburgh. The other work, Clepsydra premiered as part of the First Night celebrations in Pittsburgh as a collaborative multimedia performance.

Jake Heggie composed this musical play in three acts for Frederica von Stade, who has had a large influence on his composing career. Heggie was working in the press office of the San Francisco Opera when he first met von Stade. She listened to some of his songs and became so enthused that Heggie received a commission for his first opera. Three Decembers is taken from a play titled Some Christmas Letters and tells the story of the emotional lives of three people: mother, adult daughter and son through letters and phone calls during three Decembers in three different decades of their lives.

For a century and a quarter Gilbert and Sullivan's hilarious 1885 comic opera, The Mikado, has elicited joyous shouts and cheers from audiences the world over--and it has survived triumphant, even in the face of controversial productions and oddball casting. This recording, taken from the Ohio Light Opera's 2008 Festival performances, includes all the music as well as the complete dialogue.

Two one-act operas by the incomparable Lee Hoiby: Bon Appétit! was written for Jean Stapleton in her late career with music draped over the words and gestures of Julia Child, the mother-of-all foodies. This is the Rill Speaking, with libretto by Mark Shulgasser, is based on a seminal early work by playwright Lanford Wilson, first produced in 1965. It is of the genre of plotless, multivocal evocations of the 20th century small town. Into this theme Wilson introduced that of the birth of the writer, and his short play observes the seed of creativity. Hoiby's musical setting is water to that seed, bringing forth new branches, leaves and berries.

The Refuge is the fruition of the Houston Grand Opera's commitment to connect with its community. The brainchild of General Director Anthony Freud, the idea was to commission an opera based on the experiences of the ethnically-varied immigrants who make Houston their home. The libretto, written by Leah Lax, is based on the oral histories of families from Africa, Central America, Vietnam, Pakistan and India who have made their way to Houston and made it their home. Their courageous journeys make this an American opera in the truest sense. Their stores are eloquently captured in music by the Houston-native, Christopher Theofanidis.

Practice in the Art of Elocution, An operina for soprano and piano was adapted by the composer-librettist from The Standard American Speaker and Entertainer published in 1901, while Sorry, Wrong Number was adapted from the play by that name by Lucille Fletcher. Both of these witty one-act operas are given delightful performances by the cast and orchestra of the Center for Contemporary Opera. Beeson, inspired to write operas while still a teenager, has 10 operas to his credit, as well as music for orchestra, concert band, vocal and choral groups. In addition to composing, Beeson has had a distinguished career at Columbia University where he is the MacDowell Professor Emeritus of Music.