Conrad Cummings’s fourth opera is “The Golden Gate” based on the best selling “novel in verse” by his old friend Vikram Seth.  The action takes place in the early ’80s in San Francisco, which is where the composer and novelist first became acquainted.  Set in two acts with a libretto by the composer, the opera has been in the works since 2006 and, as Conrad discusses on his web site,...

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Last Tuesday night in New York I was the guest at a lovely little dinner party at the home of Denes Striny.  He’s a tenor and voice teacher and later that evening his most famous student, soprano Lauren Flanigan, would be starring in a revival of Hugo Weisgall’s “Esther” at the New York City Opera.  We’ve become friends because we are both former students of Michael Cordovana, a retired assistant conductor from...

Though located in Cooperstown, New York, Glimmerglass Opera knows where the money is and therefore throws its best parties in Manhattan. The company’s fall benefit is a celebration of the artistic kinship of Copland and Bernstein.  ”Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein: Their Words, Music and REminiscenes” features Jamie Bernstein and Rosamond Bernier and other guests and takes place Thursday November...

Twenty years before actress Meryl Streep and author/director Nora Ephron brought Julia Child to the silver screen with “Julie & Julia,” composer Lee Hoiby put the famous chef on the operatic stage.  His operetta “Bon Appetit!” starred Jean Stapleton (Edith Bunker) and debuted at the Kennedy Center in 1989 before going on to a successful run Off Broadway. Like many of Hoiby’s other theatrical works, “Bon Appetit!”...

The San Francisco Opera has announced commissions of new operas from Mark Adamo and Jennifer Higdon.  Adamo’s third opera, The Gospel of Mary Magdelene, is slated for June 2013 premiere and will feature the composer’s own libretto.  Higdon will collaborate with writer Gene Scheer for a piece to premiere in fall 2013, though no theme or topic is yet announced.

Composers keep score. That’s actually a pun, because “score” is a term for a piece of music when it’s written-out on paper. But composers do keep count and not just of beats. More often than not, they also keep a tally on how many times their music gets played each year.  That’s especially the case when it comes to orchestral performances, because if a conductor leads a full orchestra in your music then it means...

In 1980 Darren K. Woods was a tenor in the chorus of the Houston Grand Opera with visions of heading to Broadway before starring in his own television sitcom. Fate and the music world had other things in store. Following recommendations of friends, he spent that summer in the young artists program at the Seagle Music Colony outside the little Adirondack village of Schroon Lake in Essex County about 90 miles north of Albany. ...

COOPERSTOWN – When the Italian American composer Gian Carlo Menotti died in 2007 at age 94, Michael MacLeod of Glimmerglass Opera was amazed at how little notice was given to the passing of such an important figure in 20th century opera. He responded by programming for the 2009 season Menotti’s “The Consul,” which opened Saturday night. MacLeod chose well.  A dark and gripping piece dating from 1950, “The...

“Those gay composers sure write beautiful music.” Those were a friend’s first words to me during an intermission at a concert late this past spring at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall.  He could have been speaking of so many different folks, such as the Americans Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, or Leonard Bernstein, to name just a few. Or from the classics there’s Tchaikovsky or Handel, for that matter.  But on this...