Sarasota Opera Commissions Ned Rorem to Write Work for Sarasota Youth Opera
Pulitzer Prize winning composer Ned Rorem and librettist and poet J.D. McClatchy have been commissioned by Sarasota Opera to write a full-length opera for the Sarasota Youth Opera program. The work will premiere in May 2009 at the Sarasota Opera House.
Sarasota, FL, November 21, 2007 --(PR.com)-- The opera will be based on Winsor McCay's seminal comic strip "Little Nemo in Slumberland" which ran in the New York Herald and New York American newspapers from 1905 through 1913.
The new commission is part of Sarasota Opera's ongoing effort to expand the repertoire of works written for young voices. One of only a handful of organizations in the country that perform works designed especially for young people, this is the fifth opera commissioned by Sarasota Opera.
Sarasota Youth Opera, founded in 1985, is the most comprehensive program in the U.S. to introduce and involve young people in the performance of opera. Youth Opera members participate in a year-round program which includes vocal instruction, performance in choral groups, and involvement in the Sarasota Opera main stage season. The program culminates in the production of an operatic work which was written to be sung by young people. The fully-staged Sarasota Youth Opera performances are under direction of the Sarasota Opera professional music and production staff and take place on the main stage of the historic Sarasota Opera House.
About the Composer
Words and music are inextricably linked for Ned Rorem. Time Magazine has called him "the world's best composer of art songs," yet his musical and literary ventures extend far beyond this specialized field. Ned Rorem is one of America's most honored composers. In addition to a Pulitzer Prize, awarded in 1976 for his suite Air Music, Rorem has been the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship (1951), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1957), and an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1968). He is a three-time winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award; in 1998 he was chosen Composer of the Year by Musical America.
Among his many commissions for new works are those from the Ford Foundation (for Poems of Love and the Rain, 1962), the Lincoln Center Foundation (for Sun, 1965); the Koussevitzky Foundation (for Letters from Paris, 1966); the Atlanta Symphony (String Symphony, 1985); the Chicago Symphony (Goodbye My Fancy, 1990); Carnegie Hall (Spring Music, 1991), and the New York Philharmonic (Concerto for English Horn and Orchestra, 1993). Among the distinguished conductors who have performed his music are Bernstein, Masur, Mehta, Mitropoulos, Ormandy, Previn, Reiner, Slatkin, Steinberg, and Stokowski.
Rorem's most recent opera, Our Town, which he completed with librettist J.D. McClatchy, is a setting of the acclaimed Thorton Wilder play of the same name. It premiered at Indiana University Jacob's School of Music in February 2006 and has enjoyed subsequent performances with the Lake George Opera, Aspen Music Theater Center, North Carolina School of the Arts, and Festival Opera in Walnut Creek, CA.
About the Librettist
Librettist J.D. McClatchy
Photo credit: James Hamilton
Print quality photo
J.D. McClatchy is the author of five collections of poems, the most recent of which is Hazmat, a finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize. He has also written three volumes of essays and edited a dozen other books and the acclaimed series "The Voice of the Poet" for Random House Audiobooks. His work appears regularly in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review and The New Republic, among other publications.
McClatchy has taught at Princeton, Columbia, UCLA and Johns Hopkins, and he is currently a professor of English at Yale University. Since 1991, he has served as editor of The Yale Review. McClatchy has risen to an increasingly prominent role in the opera house as a librettist; writing for William Schuman's A Question of Taste, Francis Thorne's Mario and the Magician, Bruce Saylor's Orpheus Descending, Tobias Picker's Emmeline, Loren Maazel's 1984 (with Thomas Meehan), Lowell Liebermann's Miss Lonelyhearts, Elliot Goldenthal's Grendel (with Julie Taymor), and Ned Rorem's Our Town.
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The new commission is part of Sarasota Opera's ongoing effort to expand the repertoire of works written for young voices. One of only a handful of organizations in the country that perform works designed especially for young people, this is the fifth opera commissioned by Sarasota Opera.
Sarasota Youth Opera, founded in 1985, is the most comprehensive program in the U.S. to introduce and involve young people in the performance of opera. Youth Opera members participate in a year-round program which includes vocal instruction, performance in choral groups, and involvement in the Sarasota Opera main stage season. The program culminates in the production of an operatic work which was written to be sung by young people. The fully-staged Sarasota Youth Opera performances are under direction of the Sarasota Opera professional music and production staff and take place on the main stage of the historic Sarasota Opera House.
About the Composer
Words and music are inextricably linked for Ned Rorem. Time Magazine has called him "the world's best composer of art songs," yet his musical and literary ventures extend far beyond this specialized field. Ned Rorem is one of America's most honored composers. In addition to a Pulitzer Prize, awarded in 1976 for his suite Air Music, Rorem has been the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship (1951), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1957), and an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1968). He is a three-time winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award; in 1998 he was chosen Composer of the Year by Musical America.
Among his many commissions for new works are those from the Ford Foundation (for Poems of Love and the Rain, 1962), the Lincoln Center Foundation (for Sun, 1965); the Koussevitzky Foundation (for Letters from Paris, 1966); the Atlanta Symphony (String Symphony, 1985); the Chicago Symphony (Goodbye My Fancy, 1990); Carnegie Hall (Spring Music, 1991), and the New York Philharmonic (Concerto for English Horn and Orchestra, 1993). Among the distinguished conductors who have performed his music are Bernstein, Masur, Mehta, Mitropoulos, Ormandy, Previn, Reiner, Slatkin, Steinberg, and Stokowski.
Rorem's most recent opera, Our Town, which he completed with librettist J.D. McClatchy, is a setting of the acclaimed Thorton Wilder play of the same name. It premiered at Indiana University Jacob's School of Music in February 2006 and has enjoyed subsequent performances with the Lake George Opera, Aspen Music Theater Center, North Carolina School of the Arts, and Festival Opera in Walnut Creek, CA.
About the Librettist
Librettist J.D. McClatchy
Photo credit: James Hamilton
Print quality photo
J.D. McClatchy is the author of five collections of poems, the most recent of which is Hazmat, a finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize. He has also written three volumes of essays and edited a dozen other books and the acclaimed series "The Voice of the Poet" for Random House Audiobooks. His work appears regularly in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review and The New Republic, among other publications.
McClatchy has taught at Princeton, Columbia, UCLA and Johns Hopkins, and he is currently a professor of English at Yale University. Since 1991, he has served as editor of The Yale Review. McClatchy has risen to an increasingly prominent role in the opera house as a librettist; writing for William Schuman's A Question of Taste, Francis Thorne's Mario and the Magician, Bruce Saylor's Orpheus Descending, Tobias Picker's Emmeline, Loren Maazel's 1984 (with Thomas Meehan), Lowell Liebermann's Miss Lonelyhearts, Elliot Goldenthal's Grendel (with Julie Taymor), and Ned Rorem's Our Town.
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Contact
Sarasota Opera
Patricia Horwell
(941) 366-8450, ext. 332
www.sarasotaopera.org
Patricia Horwell
(941) 366-8450, ext. 332
www.sarasotaopera.org
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