Central Opera Service Bulletin

CENTRAL OPERA SERVICE BULLETIN JANUARY-FEBRUARY, 1970 Sponsored by the Metropolitan Opera National Council Central Opera Service • Lincoln Center Plaza • Metropolitan Opera • New York, N.Y. 10023 • 799-3467 CENTRAL OPERA SERVICE COMMITTEE ROBERT L. B. TOBIN, National Chairman GEORGE HOWERTON, National Co-Chairman National Council Directors MRS. AUGUST BELMONT MRS. FRANK W. BOWMAN MRS. TIMOTHY FISKE E. H. CORR1GAN, JR. CARROLL G. HARPER MRS. NORRIS DARRELL EL1HU M. HYNDMAN Professional Committee JULIUS RUDEL, Chairman New York City Opera KURT HERBERT ADLER MRS. LOUDON MELLEN San Francisco Opera Opera Soc. of Wash., D.C. VICTOR ALESSANDRO ELEMER NAGY San Antonio Symphony Hartt College of Music ROBERT G. ANDERSON MME. ROSE PALMAI-TENSER Tulsa Opera Mobile Opera Guild WILFRED C. BAIN RUSSELL D. PATTERSON Indiana University Kansas City Lyric Theater ROBERT BAUSTIAN MRS. JOHN DEWITT PELTZ Santa Fe Opera Metropolitan Opera MORITZ BOMHARD JAN POPPER Kentucky Opera University of California, L.A. STANLEY CHAPPLE GLYNN ROSS University of Washington Seattle Opera EUGENE CONLEY GEORGE SCHICK No. Texas State Univ. Manhattan School of Music WALTER DUCLOUX MARK SCHUBART University of Texas Lincoln Center PETER PAUL FUCHS MRS. L. S. STEMMONS Louisiana State University Dallas Civic Opera ROBERT GAY LEONARD TREASH Northwestern University Eastman School of Music BORIS GOLDOVSKY LUCAS UNDERWOOD Goldovsky Opera Theatre University of the Pacific WALTER HERBERT GIDEON WALDROP Houston & San Diego Opera Juilliard School of Music RICHARD KARP MRS. J. P. WALLACE Pittsburgh Opera Shreveport Civic Opera GLADYS MATHEW LUDWIG ZIRNER Community Opera University of Illinois We are delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Jan Popper (UCLA) and Mr. Glynn Ross (Seattle Opera) to the COS Professional Committee and the replacement by Mrs. Timothy Fiske of Mrs. Lyle H. Fisher who resigned. 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 Copies this issue: $1.00 CENTRAL OPERA SERVICE BULLETIN Volume 12, Number 3 January-February, 1970 NEW OPERAS AND PREMIERES AMERICAN OPERAS Jack Beeson has composed MY HEART'S IN THE HIGHLANDS to a libretto adapted from the Saroyan play by the same title. The opera will be seen for the first time on March 18 over the National Education Television Network. This is Mr. Beeson's second opera based on a Saroyan story, the first being Hello Out There, premiered by Columbia University in 1954. The composer also scored a considerable success with his opera, Lizzie Borden, which was seen on NET last year in a videotaped version of the New York City Opera's 1965 production. Another opera to be premiered on television is Michael Colgrass' NIGHTINGALE, INC., conceived after the composer's own original story. It was commissioned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which will produce the work. Italian-born Luciano Berio, a resident of the U.S. for the last few years, is writing his seventh work for the stage. It was commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera and is significantly named OPERA. Yet, Mr. Berio explained that the title refers to the Italian word meaning "work" or "opus" and that the finished product will not resemble opera in the conventional sense. At a recent interview, the composer explained that Opera will combine performances by eighteen members of the New York Theatre Ensemble and three soloists (singers) "who will perform arias from the standard repertory as their part in a complex, many-faceted score". The or- chestra will be augmented by a number of percussionists. No specific scenery or costumes will be required for this somewhat free-styled happening which will be staged by the composer. The disaster of the Titanic serves as the starting point of the story. American composer Leo Smit and British cosmologist and writer Fred Hoyle have collaborated on THE ALCHEMY OF LOVE. The premiere, originally scheduled for March 20 at the Manhattan School of Music, was recently postponed when rehearsals proved The Alchemy to be in need of some revisions. At present no new date has been set. John La Montaine's ERODE THE GREAT, the last part of a trilogy, had its premiere at Washington (D.C.) Cathedral on December 31, 1969. The other two operas in this cycle, Novellis, Novellis and The Shepardes' Playe, were first performed at the Cathedral in 1961 and 1967 respectively. HERACLES, composed by John Eaton under a Guggenheim grant and first performed by Radio Italiano, will receive its American premiere this summer on the occasion of the opening of Indiana University's new 12 million dollar opera theatre. Marc Lavry's opera TAMAR AND JUDAH will have its first performance at New York City's Rhodeph Sholem Congregation on March 22. The libretto is by Rabbi Newman of the congregation and is based on his play "The Woman at the Wall" which in turn is based on "Genesis" XXXVIII. The latest children's opera is based on Grimm's fairy tale, THE FISHERMAN AND HIS WIFE, and has music by Gunther Schuller and a libretto by John Updike. It was commissioned by the Junior League of Boston for performances by the Boston Opera Company which has scheduled the opening for May 8 and sub- sequent free performances for Boston school children later that month. THE TALE OF ISSOUMBOCHI is a thirty-minute children's opera commissioned by Childhood Education International from composer David Ward-Steinman. The libretto is by Mrs. Steinman and is based on a Japanese fairy tale. The opera is now being recorded on video-film for presentation by the National Education Television. Another husband and wife team, Newell and Eleanor Long, created THE MUSIC HATER, "an instant opera" premiered last October at Northern State College in Aberdeen, S. D. Joyce Barthelson's latest one-act opera, GREENWICH VILLAGE 1910, was performed under her direction at Scarsdale Junior High School on December 20. It was heard on a double-bill with her Chanticleer. With the aid of a Canada Council grant, Canadian composer Vic Davies has completed his jazz-rock opera, LET US PAY TRIBUTE TO LORD GORDON GOR- DON (sic). Goldie Weatherhead is the librettist. A recent concert by the Winnipeg Symphony featured the premiere of Mr. Davies' CELEBRATION, a three-part composition consisting of Song and Dance, A Very Short Opera and Allegory. Stratford Festival in Ontario has commissioned Gait McDermot (Hair) to write incidental music to Richard Sheridan's play, School for Scandal, which the festival company is taking on tour this spring. It will also be performed during the summer in Stratford. Norman Mailer's novel, AN AMERICAN DREAM, is being adapted into an opera libretto by Charles Matz in collaboration with the author. To date no announce- ment on the composer's identity has been made. Kenneth Wright's WING OF EXPECTATION, premiered at the University of Kentucky in 1965, will receive its first professional production in Washington, D.C. this May. It tells the story of Mary Todd Lincoln and will be staged, fittingly, at the restored Ford Theatre. Recordings of three contemporary American operas have recently been released: Douglas Moore's Carry Nation, a three-LP set on Desto label, Thomas Putsche's The Cat and the Moon on CRI-SD and Eric Salzman's Nude Paper Sermon on Nonesuch Records. AMERICAN PREMIERES Korean composer Isang Yun's BUTTERFLY WIDOW, premiered in Germany in February 1969, has been scheduled by the Opera Workshop of Northwestern Uni- versity for its first American performance on February 27. It will be presented in an English translation by Robert Gay on a double-bill with Luciano Berio's Passag- gio, which had its American premiere on January 9, 1967 in New York. Mr. Berio's THIS MEANS THAT (Questo vuol dire), first heard over Italian Television in April 1969, has its American premiere in a concert performance at New York's Carnegie Hall on February 17, 1970. Kurt Weill-Berthold Brecht's DER AUFST1EG UND FALL DER STADT MAHAGONNY will have its U.S. premiere as MAHAGONNY on March 18 at New York's off-Broadway Phyllis Anderson Theatre. Weill's Dreigroschenoper also opened in an off-Broadway theatre in 1956 to a five-year run. Carmen Capalbo will again be the producer. Marc Blitzstein, who so successfully revised The Three Penny Opera, started revisions for the American production of Mahagonny but they were unfinished at the time of his death in 1964. Arnold Weinstein has now 2 completed the scoring and translation. Barbara Harris and Estelle Parson will be featured in the en suite run. The North American premiere took place at the Stratford Festival in Ontario in 1965. American operas to be heard in Europe this season will include Elie Siegmeister's THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS in Bordeaux on March 13, 1970 in its Euro- pean premiere and Leonard Bernstein's TROUBLE IN TAHITI at the West Berlin Deutsche Oper with Christa Ludwig and Walter Berry. The Bernstein opera was performed by the American Opera Workshop in Vienna last season. — The British rock opera, TOMMY, heard in New York earlier this season, will be presented by its originators, The Who, at the Hamburg Opera in a late-evening benefit. Correction The opera, Semele, by John Eccles which was reported as a new opera (wrong) in the 9/69 Bulletin and to have had its world premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on December 13, 1969 (right), was actually composed in 1704 for the opening of the Queen's Theatre in London.

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