CENTRAL OPERA SERVICE BULLETIN SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER, 1969 Sponsored by the Metropolitan Opera National Council Central Opera Service • Lincoln Center Plaza • Metropolitan Opera • New York, N.Y. 10023 * 799-3467 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER, 1969 Sponsored by the Metropolitan Opera National Council CENTRAL OPERA SERVICE COMMITTEE ROBERT L. B. TOBIN, National Chairman GEORGE HOWERTON, National Vice-Chairman National Council Directors MRS. AUGUST BELMONT MRS. FRANK W. BOWMAN MRS. LYLE H. FISHER E. H. CORR1GAN, JR. HOWARD J. HOOK, JR. MRS. NORRIS DARRELL ELIHU M. HYNDMAN Professional Committee JULIUS RUDEL, Chairman New York City Opera MAURICE ABRAVANEL RICHARD KARP San Francisco Opera University of Minnesota VICTOR ALESSANDRO GLADYS MATHEW San Antonio Symphony Community Opera ROBERT G. ANDERSON MRS. LOUDON MELLEN Tulsa Opera Opera Soc. of Wash., D.C. WILFRED C. BAIN ELEMER NAGY Indiana University Hartt College of Music ROBERT BAUSTIAN MME. ROSE PALMAI-TENSER Santa Fe Opera Mobile Opera Guild MORITZ BOMHARD RUSSELL D. PATTERSON Kentucky Opera Kansas City Lyric Theater JOHN BROWNLEE MRS. JOHN DEWITT PELTZ Manhattan School of Music Metropolitan Opera STANLEY CHAPPLE GEORGE SCHICK University of Washington Metropolitan Opera EUGENE CONLEY MARK SCHUBART No. Texas State Univ. Lincoln Center WALTER DUCLOUX MRS. L. S. STEMMONS University of Texas Dallas Civic Opera PETER PAUL FUCHS LEONARD TREASH Louisiana State University Eastman School of Music ROBERT GAY LUCAS UNDERWOOD Northwestern University University of the Pacific BORIS GOLDOVSKY GIDEON WALDROP Goldovsky Opera Theatre Juilliard School of Music WALTER HERBERT MRS. J. P. WALLACE Houston Grand Opera Shreveport Civic Opera LUDWIG ZIRNER University of Illinois Do not rriiss the SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS on page 16. The Central Opera Service Bulletin is published bi-monthly for its members by Central Opera Service. Permission to quote is not necessary but kindly note source. We would appreciate receiving any information pertaining to opera and operatic production in your region; please address inquiries or material to: Mrs. Maria F. Rich, Editor Central Opera Service Bulletin Lincoln Center Plaza New York, N.Y. 10023 Single copies of this issue: $1.00 CENTRAL OPERA SERVICE BULLETIN Volume 12, Number 1 September-October, 1969 NEW OPERAS AND PREMIERES AMERICAN OPERAS As part of a totally contemporary season, the Center Opera Company of Minne- apolis has commissioned two American operas. OEDIPUS AND THE SPHINX by Yale Marshall with words by Wesley Balk will be premiered on November 29. It is written in two parts, the first one tragic, the second one a bawdy comedy. — The other new opera is THE WANDERER: A BALLAD OF NOW combining the talents of Paul and Martha Boesing. This "folk opera with commentary on contemporary social issues" will have its first performance on February 28. Both operas will be produced at the Cedar Village Theatre utilizing contemporary theatre techniques and each work will be repeated six more times. (For the Center Opera Company's remaining program see American Premieres.) A new opera by John Eccles will be performed by the Brooklyn College Opera Theatre on December 12 and 13. Named after its main character SEMELE it will be heard at the college's Gershwin Theatre under the direction of Karoly Kope. Another Malade Imaginaire is turning up on the operatic stage. This IMAGINARY INVALID in three acts is by Lewis Miller; the libretto is by Patrick Goeser, pro- fessor at Fort Hayes Kansas State College, where the opera will be premiered next February. Gregory Kosteck has written a one-act opera, THE STRONGER, also based on the Strindberg play as is Hugo WeisgalFs opera by the same name. The new work will be performed at the East Carolina Opera Theatre in Greenville, N. C, on April 30 for the first time. The late Robinson Jeffer's Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatic poem TAMAR is being adapted by Dr. William J. Adams for an opera libretto which David Ward- Steinman will set to music. The librettist is stage director at the San Diego Opera Co., the composer professor of music at San Diego State College. SHORT NIGHT'S JOURNEY INTO DAY is the title of a one-act opera written by students at the Tulsa University Opera Theatre. It is scheduled for over thirty performances at Tulsa public schools in January '70, sponsored by "Destination Discovery" a Title III program in Tulsa under the HEW act. Ethel Leginska, whose Joan of Arc was first performed last season in Los Angeles, will have her second opera heard in that city in December when the Los Angeles Lyric Opera will perform GALE THE HAUNTING. Accompaniment will be provided by members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Martin Kalmanoff, the ever-producing opera composer, informs us of his latest opera KING DAVID & DAVID KING which will be heard for the first time at New York's Temple Ansche Chesed on October 12. His Aesop, The Fabulous Fabulist was performed at Camp Pemigewasset in New Hampshire last summer. — Composer Al Barr collaborated with his brother Martin (lyrics) in writing THE COAT OF MANY COLORS, an opera on a biblical subject. It is scored for full orchestra; a reduced orchestration is also available. — 1 — American operas premiered last season but not previously reported in the COS Bulletin include: ARIA DA CAPO by Robert Baksa, based on Edna St. Vincent Millay's play, on August 12 by the Lake George Opera Festival in Glens Falls, N.Y. (one scene was performed by the Metropolitan Opera Studio last season); — Leslie Kondorossy's children opera-oratorio SHIZUKA'S DANCE in April over Cleve- land radio station WBOE and in June on local TV; — THE RITES OF MAN by Alfred Neumann on May 18 at Christ Congregational Church in Silver Springs, Md., where his other two operas, An Opera For Easter and An Opera For Every- man, were previously performed; — Theo Goldberg's one-act GALATEA ELET- TRONICA on May 14 at Western Washington State College in Bellingham, Wash., featuring four soloists, chorus, piano, percussion, electric organ and DYCK Synthesizer. The story relates a feud between the inventor and the sponsors of Galatea, an electronic prima donna; — Richard ArnelFs multi-media work COM- BAT ZONE for narrator, soprano, baritone and chorus, employing electric guitars, film and tape, at Hofstra College, Hempstead, N. Y. on April 27; — LET'S BUILD A NUT HOUSE, a chamber-opera by Robert Moran, in April during the Festival of the Avant-Garde at the San Jose State College; — Bruce Laird's THE PARTISANS in February by the Wilmington (Del.) Opera Society;—Newton Miller's one-act THE FLYING MACHINE at the University of Redlands in California; — Edmund Najern's one-act THE FREEWAY OPERA at the Im- maculate Heart College in Los Angeles. AMERICAN PREMIERES In addition to the previously mentioned new American operas at the Center Opera Company in Minneapolis this season, there will be two successful European works in American premieres: British Harrison Birtwistle's PUNCH AND JUDY An Opera of Cruelty first heard at the Aldeburgh Festival in the Summer of '68, featuring a chamber orchestra, mime and dance groups, and Werner Egk's SEVENTEEN DAYS AND FOUR MINUTES first heard in 1966 in Stuttgart, Germany. Four performances of each work will be presented at the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis in January and February 1970. From Sweden comes the first space opera ANIARA by Karl-Birger Blomdahl to be premiered in our moon-faring nation this season. It was first performed in 1959 by the Stockholm Royal Opera who brought it to Montreal's Expo '67. The first United States performance is scheduled for April 25, 1970 by Indiana University's Opera Theatre with three more performances programmed for May in Bloom- ington. The Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore will offer the American premiere of Hans Werner Henze's DAS ENDE EINER WELT. It will be performed in English on March 13 on a double-bill with La Vida breve. In Spring the Opera Theatre of Southern Methodist University in Dallas will give the American premiere of Gordon Crosse's PURGATORY under the direction of Thomas Hayward. The opera was first heard on June 7 at the Aldeburgh Festival together with the same composer's The Grace of Todd. American premieres of foreign operas that took place last season and are yet un- reported are: Albert Lortzing's DIE OPERNPROBE in April at the San Francisco Conservatory Opera Theatre; — Offenbach's one-act BA-TA-CLAN in English at the New England Conservatory in May; — Alexander Goehr's NABOTH'S VINEYARD, first heard in London last summer, in a concert reading at Canada's Stratford Festival hi the New Music at Midnight Series on July 25. (The composer is presently on the music faculty of Yale University). First hearings of American operas in foreign countries last season included six performances of Samuel Barber's HAND OF BRIDGE at the University of Cape- town in South Africa, and one at the American Opera Workshop hi Vienna, together with Bernstein's TROUBLE IN TAHITI. EUROPEAN OPERATIC PREMIERES Next season London audiences will be treated to a new opera by Sir Michael Tippett (Midsummer Marriage, King Priam) when The Royal Opera will offer his KNOT GARDEN. — London's Cambridge University Opera Society will premiere David Johnson's one-act ALL THERE WAS BETWEEN THEM with a libretto by Jack Ronder. — In December '69 Sadler's Wells will offer the first performance of Malcolm Williamson's LUCKY PETER after Strindberg's Dream Play, adapted by Edmund Tracey. — The same composer has written another children's opera (Julius Caesar Jones, Happy Prince) called THE MOONRAKERS. It is an "ephem- eral product" for performance by untrained primary children and Mr. Williamson led a performance of his work on a children's playground during his recent visit to New York.