by Mike Telin
When Griffin Candey first read an English translation of Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca’s La Casa de Bernarda Alba, he knew the play had the makings for an opera. “My wife suggested that I read it,” the composer said by telephone from his home in Marquette, Michigan. “She went to school for musical theater as did I, and in one of her classes they read the play and thought it was fantastic. I’m always scouring material for things to do in the future, so when I read it, I immediately leapt on it.”
On Friday, February 8 at 8:00 pm in Baldwin Wallace’s Gamble Auditorium, Cleveland Opera Theater’s {NOW} Festival will present a workshop reading of scenes with piano accompaniment from Acts I and II of Candey’s The House of Bernarda Alba with libretto by Obie Award-winner Caridad Svich. The opera is a co-commission between Cleveland Opera Theater and the BW Conservatory.
After a week of intense master classes, a lecture, and a pair of recitals by soprano Joan Rodgers with pianist Roger Vignoles, and baritone Andrew Garland with pianist Warren Jones, the ten singer-pianist teams for whom the twenty-second Baldwin Wallace Art Song Festival was designed got the opportunity to show off their vocal and pianistic wares — and presumably some newly-acquired skills — in a free recital in Gamble Auditorium on Saturday evening, May 24.
The twenty-second Art Song Festival, now firmly established at Baldwin Wallace University, got down to business on Monday, May 19 and will culminate in a free recital by ten singer-pianist