FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Sarah Snyder
ssnyder3@umd.edu
(301) 405-8151
February 15, 2012 – College Park, MD – The first-year graduate students in the Maryland Opera Studio will perform highlights of composer Lee Hoiby’s Romeo and Juliet in their annual New Works Reading Series on February 15 at 7:30pm in the Clarice Smith Center’s Gildenhorn Recital Hall. Hoiby, whose death in 2011 was an enormous loss to the music world, left this opera as his final gift.
Hoiby and his librettist, Mark Shulgasser, marry the music of Shakespeare’s words to the poetry of Hoiby’s music in this beautiful revisioning. Maryland Opera Studio’s Director Nick Olcott notes, “It is an irony that the most famous lovers in the English language speak French when they go to the opera. Gounod’s 1867 Roméo et Juliette is by far the most performed of the more than two dozen operas that have been based on Shakespeare’s play. But somehow it just doesn’t seem right to hear Romeo say, ‘Mais quelle soudaine clarté resplendit à cette fenêtre?’ We want to hear him say, ‘But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?’ Finally, we can. The world’s most famous star-crossed lovers sing in English in this production.”
The New Works Reading Series
Thanks to the support of the School of Music and the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, the Maryland Opera Studio has been able to make the exploration of new operas a central part of its curriculum. Over the last ten years, they have offered a dozen readings of new works, as well as full productions of three commissioned operas (Frank Proto/John Chenault’s Shadowboxer, John Musto/Mark Campbell’s Later the Same Evening, and Robert Convery/Kathleen Cahill’s Clara). In the words of the founder of Maryland Opera Studio, Leon Major:
“We have a responsibility in our Opera Studio and training program to prepare our singers to master the standard repertoire. But we also have an obligation to offer our students opportunities to study the contemporary repertoire, to participate in the creation of a new opera and to explore the musical language that our composers are using now. We must never ignore the contemporary and modern repertoire or the emerging young composers. Having live composers and librettists present, of course, give the singers the opportunity to work with living creators and so understand how the operas are constructed. Such insights can only enhance their understanding of the classical repertoire.”
Tickets
More information can be found on our web site. This event is FREE, and tickets are not required.
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The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center is supported by a grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency dedicated to cultivating a vibrant cultural community where the arts thrive. An agency of the Department of Business & Economic Development, the MSAC provides financial support and technical assistance to nonprofit organizations, units of government, colleges and universities for arts activities. Funding for the Maryland State Arts Council is also provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Learn more about the Clarice Smith Center's donor support.