CENTRAL OPERA SERVICE BULLETIN VOLUME 29, NUMBERS 1 & 2 CONTENTS CONT.) Sponsored by the Metropolitan Opera National Council Sponsored by the IVlstr'Opotsfan Op&ts NSISCMI&I Volume 29, Numbers 1 & 2 Fall/Winter 1988-89 CONTENTS New Operas and Premieres 1 News from Opera Companies 16 Conferences 22 Government and National Organizations 23 New and Renovated Theaters 27 Forecast 29 Attention Composers, Librettists, Playwrights 34 Music Publishers 36 Editions and Adaptations 37 Archives and Exhibitions 38 Education 41 Appointments and Resignations 43 COS Opera Survey USA 1987-88 50 COS Tnside Information 51 COS Salutes. 54 Winners 56 Career Guide Supplement 58 New Sets and Costumes for Rent 69 New English Captions in Projection 78 New English Opera Translations 80 Book Corner 81 Periodicals 87 Opera Has Lost. 88 Performance Listing, 1988-89 Season (cont.) 97 CENTRAL OPERA SERVICE COMMITTEE Founder MRS. AUGUST BELMONT (1879-1979) Honorary National Chairman ROBERT L.B. TOBIN National Chairman MRS. MARGO H. BTNDHARDT Please note: Next COS National Conference October 18-21, 1989 The Essex House - New York City In preparation (see p. 36): DIRECTORY American and Foreign Contemporary Operas & Music Theater Works 1980-1989 Central Opera Service Bulletin • Volume 29, Numbers 1 & 2 » Winter 1988/1989 Editor: MARIA F. RICH Assistant Editors: CHERYL KEMPLER JOHN W.N. FRANCIS Editorial Assistants: FRITZI BICKHARDT NORMA UTTON SUSAN FELIX Copyright 1989 Central Opera Service. All rights reserved. Permission to quote need not be requested, but source acknowledgment should be made. The COS Bulletin is published quarterly for its members by Central Opera Service. For membership information see back cover. Please send any news items suitable for mention in the COS Bulletin as well as perfor- mance information to The Editor, Central Opera Service Bulletin, Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center, New York, NY 10023. This issue: $8.00 ISSN 0008-9508 NEW OPERAS AND PREMIERES Edward Thomas's DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS, with a libretto by Sam NEW AMERICAN Masteroff after Eugene O'Neill's play, was originally commissioned by the OPERAS Lake George Opera Festival and was among the first works tried out at the Composer/Librettist Conference of the O'Neill Theater Center in Connecticut in 1978. Further workshop and in-progress readings were held by the Central City Opera in 1980, the National Music Theater Network in New York in 1986, and the New York Opera Repertory Theater at Merkin Hall the same year. The latter company will present the world premiere under Leigh Gibbs Gore at the City Center in January '89. Next season the Minnesota Opera will give formal premieres of two new operas, one a commissioned work and the other tried in several workshop sessions by the company's New Music-Theater Ensemble. Libby Larsen's FRANKENSTEIN: THE MODERN PROMETHEUS (Vol. 27, No. 3) will have its world premiere in St. Paul in May 1990 and will be the fourth and last work in that season's subscription series. It is Ms. Larsen's seventh opera, and here, as in some of her other works, she has been her own librettist. Arthur Masella will direct, Ouane Schuller will be the lighting designer, and KTCA-TV will assist with the extensive video component of the opera. — Over the last two years composer William Harper, librettist Roger Nieboer, and director Rhoda Levine have benefitted from several readings and workshops devoted to SNOW LEOPARD in Minneapolis, as well as in Chicago by the American Ritual Theater Company. The Minne- sota Opera's New Music-Theater Ensemble will stage the premiere in November '89. Stewart Copeland's HOLY BLOOD AND CRESCENT MOON (see Vol. 27, No. 4), commissioned by the Cleveland Opera which had workshopped scenes in September '86, has now been scheduled for its premiere for October 13, 1989. The popular percussionist and composer, who has written music for several films and TV shows including The Equalizer, has created a "dramatic, swash-buckling tale set in the time of the Crusades". Following three performances in Cleveland, the production will travel to Texas where it will be presented by the Fort Worth Opera in April. William Schuman has written a companion piece to his baseball opera, The Mighty Casey. The new work, also a one-act opera, is entitled A QUESTION OF TASTE, and has a libretto by J.D. McClatchy. It was taken through a staged workshop performance by Glimmerglass Opera's apprentice artists last summer and at the Juilliard School in September, and will be premiered on June 24, 1989 by Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, New York on the opening date of its summer season. The Mighty Casey will share the program. As the result of the Southwest Virginia Opera Society's first competition for a one-act opera, the Mill Mountain Theatre in Roanoke mounted the premiere of the winning work, Christopher Yavelow's COUNTDOWN; it was presented on a double bill with Milton Granger's The Proposal. Performances took place November 2-5 within the theatre company's Fall Festival of New Works. In December the Mill Mountain Theatre will stage the world premiere of a new Christmas opera by Milton Granger. O. HENRY'S CHRISTMAS CAROL, based on several stories by the American author, will open on the company's main stage on December 9. For March the company, together with the local Junior League, has scheduled four performances of yet another musical version of THE PIED PIPER, A Children's Musical. -1- NEW OPERAS AND PREMIERES A musical drama based on North Dakota history and planned for a premiere production during the state's centennial celebration is currently in preparation. SAKAKAWEA: The Woman with Many Names has an award- winning libretto by Bill Borden and music by Tom Peterson; the first performance is planned for September 1989 in Grand Forks. It will be a ooproduction with the University of North Dakota, where Mr. Borden is Professor of English, and will receive some financial assistance from the North Dakota Council on the Arts. Stewart Wallace's WHERE'S DICK?, originally workshopped by Opera/ Omaha last September (see Vol. 27, No. 4), will now receive its premiere by the Texas Opera Theater in Houston. Scheduled as the Houston Grand Opera's Spring Festival, the eight performances will open May 24 at the Miller Outdoor Theatre in Hermann Park. Michael Korie is the librettist; Richard Foreman will be the director and designer, and John DeMain the conductor. The score calls for both opera and rock singers, and the story tells of a bumbling detective looking for an old-fashioned hero. Louise LaBruyere has converted the medieval morality play EVERYMAN into an opera. Her company, the New Opera Theatre in New Orleans, has scheduled the premiere for May 1989. (See also "New Operas in Academe.") George Eliot's last novel Daniel Deronda was the inspiration for composer Morris Moshe Cotel to write DERONDA, an opera about Jews in Victorian England. Cotel's first opera Dreyfus was performed in 1985 at the Brook- lyn Academy of Music. The new opera has six main roles and several smaller ones, a chorus, and a traditional-size orchestra. COMMISSIONS Among the projects and companies approved for funding within NEA's 1988 Inter-Arts Program were PLAGE CONCRETE, a performance event by Ping Chong's Fiji Company; the Illusion Theatre's interdisciplinary production of SNOW, in Minneapolis; and New York's Wooster Group's creation of a new collaborative project by composer Butch Morris, writer Elizabeth LeCompte, designer Richard Foreman, and filmmaker Ken Kobland. The Meet the Composer/Reader's Digest Commissioning Program for New American Music (see Vol. 28, No. 1) has announced its first round of grants. Included in the opera/music theater field are the composers Max Roach, writing for the Berkeley and San Diego Repertory Theaters; John Adams, for the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Los Angeles Festival; and Bernard Rands, Peter Schickele, and Anthony Davis, for the San Fran- cisco Chanticleer collaborating with the Dale Warland Singers and Musica Sacra. In all, twenty joint programs were approved for commissions and a total of $400,000 was committed. The next round of applications is now being accepted from performing organizations and must reach Meet the Composer, 2112 Broadway, #505, New York, NY 10025, before March 15, 1989. The previously announced commission by the Metropolitan Opera to Philip Glass (see Vol. 28, No. 4) has now been expanded to include playwright David Henry Hwang as his librettist. This will be the second time the two artists will have worked together; their first joint opera was 1,000 Airplanes on the Roof. Mr. Hwang's other credits include M. Butterfly, which won a Tony Award as best play last season. The new opera, THE VOYAGE, planned for a premiere in 1992, is to commemorate Christopher Columbus' discovery of America. -2- NEW OPERAS AND PREMIERES Bern Herbolsheimer has been commissioned to write the music for DA CAPO, to a libretto by tenor and impresario William Lewis. The work is to be premiered next summer by the American Opera Festival of the Sierra on Lake Tahoe in Nevada, where Mr. Lewis is artistic director. The American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia has just announced HUSIC its spring season (March 25 to May 20), when it will mount three world THEATER premieres. Composer Baikida Carroll and librettist Ntozake Shange, who WORKS wrote the award-winning For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, have collaborated with Emily Mann on BETSY BROWN, the story of a teenage black girl in St. Louis in the 1950s. The second work is POWER FAILURE with (mostly electronic) music by Paul Dresher (Slow Fire) and libretto by Rinde Eckert, coproduced with Minnea- polis' Walker Arts Center.