Most music lovers are interested in composers’ notes, but Vivian Perlis is obsessed with their words.  Interviewing all manner of figures in American music over the past forty years, she’s been a leader in the once emerging, now established field of “oral history.” Perlis’ ten-year association with the late Aaron Copland resulted in their co-authoring his two-volume autobiography.  She’ll give a talk about the...

The name of the opera is “The Distant Sound.”  Yet the new production at Bard College’s SummerScape, which opens Friday night, will probably focus on plenty more than just sound.  If it holds true to the festival’s recent track record, it will also be spectacular to look at. Last year’s staging of “The Huguenots” was a feast of visual wonder with enormous set pieces, imaginative costumes and, most memorably,...

The late composer Aaron Copland created a signature American sound in just a few distinctive orchestral works, including Appalachian Spring, Rodeo and Fanfare for the Common Man.  Pungent excerpts from these pieces are a part of every presidential inauguration. But his catalog is deep and not everything in it was one for the ages.  His only full length opera “The Tender Land,” which is currently playing at Glimmerglass...

GLIMMERGLASS OPERA Cooperstown, New York PUCCINI: TOSCA Friday, July 9, 2010 (opening night) Big changes are underway at Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, with a new general and artistic director waiting in the wings to take over in the fall.  The internationally known stage director Francesca Zambello plans an expanded array of events for next year when the whole enterprise will become known as The Glimmerglass Festival. Yet...

“The Golden Gate” is the latest opera from San Francisco native and Manhattan resident Conrad Cummings. It’s based on the novel by Vikram Seth and was most recently given a staged workshop at Lincoln Center’s Rose Studio. This here new website presents excerpts, synopsis and more.

Last month composer SCOTT PENDER attended a two-week summer music intensive known as the John Duffy Composers Institute, part of the Virginia Arts Festival. But it may as well be called Opera Camp. According to Pender, the sessions are for composers of opera and musical theatre to bring alive their works and get feedback from the collaborating artists and senior composers.  The musical staff consisted of founder John Duffy...

For 35 years, Peter Haley has been the Pied Piper of opera in the Capital Region.  As founder of the 400-member Siena Opera Club, he teaches classes on the art form, leads dozens of bus trips every year to performances across the east coast, and organizes European tours. Preparing for it all means long days immersed in music and logistical details. And Haley doesn’t even get to take the summers off. That’s because the...

Within moments after the curtain rises on Jorge Martin’s “Before Night Falls,” the hero collapses into his deathbed.  It’s an obvious allusion to all those consumptive operatic heroines of the romantic era and reinforces why the memoir of Cuban writer Renaldo Arenas was such a good choice for a staged adaptation. The Fort Worth Opera premiered the work in two performances at Bass Hall, as part of an early summer...

Fort Worth Texas might be the most conservative area of the country after Orange County California. Last June one of its few gay bars, the Rainbow Lounge, was raided by members of the Fort Worth Police Department and Texas Alcoholic Beverages Commission. Seven people were arrested for drunkenness, though numerous reports say that the individuals were pulled from the crowd randomly and violently.  A 26-year old man was hospitalized...

With its ever growing arts district, the City of Dallas continues to think big. The same can be said for the Dallas Opera and its new Winspear Opera House. For the second half of its first season in the new house, the company commissioned and premiered Jack Heggie’s “Moby-Dick.” I attended the performance on Saturday May 8. The massive scale and varied themes of Melville’s classic novel have flummoxed many who’ve...