Hudson Chamber Opera Festival
Schedule:
Friday, Oct 7, 2005 at 8:00pm - The Medium
Saturday, Oct 8, 2005 at 4:00pm - Two Tiny Operas and Some Songs
Saturday, Oct 8, 2005 at 8:00pm - The Medium
Sunday, Oct 9, 2005 at 4:00pm - Two Tiny Operas and Some Songs
All performances take place at
Basilica Industria
110 South Front Street
(south of Amtrak Station)
Hudson, NY
PRESS RELEASE
Something new at ArtsWalk!: the First Hudson Chamber Opera Festival will debut at Basilica Industria at 110 South Front Street in Hudson, Friday through Sunday, October 7-9, 2005. Tickets to all performances are $20. For more information about ArtsWalk 2005, click here.
HUDSON CHAMBER OPERA, a new professional opera company based in Hudson, will present its first production, Gian Carlo Menotti's The Medium Friday and Saturday, October 7 & 8 at 8:00 pm. Gwen Gould and Mary Hack, Co-Artistic Directors have announced that Dean Anthony will direct the opera. Mr. Anthony, a tenor and emerging director, is the creator of over 70 roles and has been highly praised for his vocal and dramatic abilities. He served as Assistant Director and Assistant Choreographer for Die Fledermaus at Grand Rapids Opera and directed The Merry Widow at the University of Texas. A resident of Germantown, Mr. Anthony’s PBS television appearances include broadcasts of An Evening of Gilbert and Sullivan with the Boston Pops and the world premiere of Robert Greenleaf's Under the Arbor.
Menotti's spooky opera noir, The Medium blends murder and the supernatural. Three main characters, Madame Flora, the clairvoyant, her daughter, Monica, and a mute boy, Toby, lose track of reality as they perform a two-act danse macabre. When, during a seance, Madame Flora feels a spectral hand trying to choke her, she begins a demented descent into violence. ...more
Two Tiny Operas and Some Songs presents music of Columbia County composer Jeffrey Lependorf. The program, being performed on Saturday and Sunday, October 8 & 9 at 4:00pm, is sponsored by the Columbia County Council on the Arts and features the miniature chamber opera The Shari Lewis Show, for soprano, rubber dishwashing gloves and electronic sound, and the chamber opera If I Could Sit, If I Could Stand, or Oh, Bill, Oh, Susan, for a soprano and a baritone who have only one chair. The program will also include the song cycle Rose is Rose, which has Gertrude Stein’s wonderful words sung by twin sopranos (with a piano), and a set of songs setting the exquisite poetry of Ann Lauterbach. The performers include San Francisco Bay Area techno-diva Amy X Neuburg and soprano Elizabeth Eakin, baritone John Schenkel (featured in The Art of Eating, Jeffrey Lependorf's chamber opera offering for last year’s ArtsWalk), and Columbia County's own Eribeth Chamber Players, conducted by Glimmerglass Assistant Conductor Zachary Schwartzman.
Jeffrey Lependorf, also the Director of the Art Omi International Musicians Residency Program in Ghent, has performed and had works performed around the globe (literally: a recording of his Night Pond; was launched into the stratosphere when the shuttle Atlantis took off, and remained for a year aboard the Russian space station Mir). His works include operas, chamber works, songs, film scores and sound installations. His Masterpieces of Western Music audio course is now available at www.barnesandnoble.com as part of Barnes and Noble’s Portable Professor series.