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The Puppy Episode: Oberlin premieres new chamber opera on Feb. 16 and 17

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Puppy Episode, the second in a series of three-year opera projects, will be premiered in Warner Concert Hall on February 16 and 17 (click here for tickets). The performance on the 16th will be live streamed.

“It takes so many people to put on a production, especially a new one,” Oberlin Opera professor and director Christopher Mirto said in a recent Zoom call. And most of them join the process like hopping onto a moving train.

In the case of The Puppy Episode, librettist Royce Vavrek and composer Matthew Recio were present from the first spark of an idea. “I was courting Royce as a collaborator,” said Recio, who was also on the call. “I finished the Vanguard program at Chicago Opera Theater in June, and Lydia, the conductor, gave me a list of librettists. I got to do some speed dating in three or four calls with each candidate.” [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera to present Handel’s Acis and Galatea

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by Mike Telin

In Book XIII of Ovid’s epic poem Metamorphoses, we encounter the tale of Ajax and Ulysses and the armor of Achilles, the Fall of Troy, and the pilgrimage of Aeneas. Book XIII also contains the story of the lovers Acis, a mortal shepherd, and Galatea, a sea nymph. But when Acis is killed at the hands of Polyphemus, the jealous Cyclops, Galatea transforms her lover into an immortal river spirit. 

This week, Oberlin Opera Theater presents Handel’s Acis and Galatea in Hall Auditorium beginning on Thursday, November 11 at 8:00 pm. Performances continue on Friday and Saturday at 8:00 and on Sunday at 2:00 pm. With a libretto by John Gay, the opera will be sung in its original English. Guest conductor Matilda Hofman leads a cast of seven principal performers, a 16-member chorus, and the Oberlin Orchestra. The opera is presented in two acts with a duration of approximately two hours, including intermission. Click here for tickets.

Originally devised as a one-act masque, Acis and Galatea was premiered in 1718 and by the mid-century, it had been staged more than 70 times. It is also one of the composer’s only staged works to remain popular after his death. In addition to a masque, the work has been described as a serenata, a pastoral opera, and even an oratorio.

[Read more…]

Oberlin Opera Theater:
The Telephone & La voix humaine (Nov. 6)

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by Jarrett Hoffman

It’s not an easy time for opera, to state the obvious — any new production is an achievement in itself. Immense creativity is required to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and as a result, things are bound to look and feel different from the norm.

That was the case with Oberlin Opera Theater’s pre-recorded double-bill of Gian Carlo Menotti’s comedy The Telephone and Francis Poulenc’s tragedy La voix humaine, which brought together impressive performances with sometimes inventive, sometimes puzzling decisions from director Jason Aaron Goldberg. The production, which premiered on November 6 on the Oberlin Stage Left series, remains available to watch through November 13.

[Read more…]

Oberlin Opera Online: Phoning in Menotti & Poulenc 

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by Mike Telin

In 2020, encountering someone engrossed with their phone is hardly an oddity. But even back in the days when phones did two things — make and receive calls — there were those who spent hours on them while ignoring the other people in the room, or who shared their emotional frustrations with any sympathetic ear.

On Friday, November 6 at 7:30 pm, Oberlin Opera Theater will present the double bill of Gian Carlo Menotti’s 1947 comedy The Telephone and Francis Poulenc’s 1958 tragédie lyrique, La voix humaine (“The Human Voice”). Directed by Jason Aaron Goldberg, with music direction by Daniel Michalak, the pre-recorded broadcast will begin with a discussion featuring Goldberg and members of the cast and crew. Presented as part of Oberlin Stage Left, the performance will remain available on demand through November 13. Click here to view.

Goldberg, a 2016 Oberlin alum who is currently in his final year of completing an MFA at the Actor’s Studio Drama School, received the invitation to direct these operas from his former mentor Jonathon Field, the Conservatory’s director of Opera Theater. [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera moves to live stream for second and final Così fan tutte (Mar. 13)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The portents weren’t good for the week of March 8: first the disorienting switch to Daylight time was to click in on Sunday, then a full moon would rise on Tuesday, then the 13th of the month was scheduled to fall on Friday. Midweek, the spread of COVID-19 added a spiraling series of postponements, cancellations, and shut-downs to an already unlucky period. Like other educational institutions, Oberlin College and Conservatory found themselves making decisions about how to proceed, only to change plans several times. [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera: Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Nov. 10)

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by Daniel Hathaway

It takes supreme self-confidence to turn a Shakespeare comedy into an opera, and even more daring to follow up someone else’s iconic music with a score of your own. Benjamin Britten is one of the few composers who could succeed on both counts. His version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, composed in 1960 and produced by Oberlin Opera Theater earlier this month, preserves the magic of Shakespeare’s verse with atmospheric writing that stands up well to Mendelssohn’s wonderful incidental music. Directed by Jonathon Field, with Christopher Larkin and the Oberlin Orchestra in the Hall Auditorium pit, the production, of which I saw the fourth and final performance on Sunday afternoon, November 10, boasted a uniformly superb cast of Athenians, Fairies, and Rude Mechanicals. [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera Theater: 
A Midsummer Night’s Dream

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by Mike Telin

When Oberon and Tytania, the King and Queen of the Fairies, have a public marital spat, Oberon sets his sights on revenge with the help of his mischievous servant Puck. Chaos ensues for everyone involved: the fairies, the royalty, and the rag-tag theater troupe. And like any good fairy tale, everything gets worked out in the end. It all makes you wonder — is this someone’s dream?   

On Wednesday, November 6 at 8:00 pm in Hall Auditorium, Oberlin Opera Theater will present Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Jonathon Field directs, and Christopher Larkin conducts the Oberlin Orchestra. Performances continue November 8 and 9 at 8:00 pm and the 10th at 2:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

“An interesting thing about this piece is the way it’s constructed,” Jonathon Field said during a recent interview. “Shakespeare’s play opens and closes in civilization, so you do feel grounded in our world. But in the opera, it opens and closes in the woods, so the fairies have the first and last word. Britten is almost saying that the irrational and mysterious are going to reign. And that’s where the idea of the dream comes in — that vague difference between reality and illusion.”

[Read more…]

CIM/CWRU, Oberlin, and Baldwin Wallace produce impressive operas during March

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by Daniel Hathaway

CIM/CWRU: Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie

If you were able to shut down your peripheral vision in Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music on March 1 and focus only on the stage, you could imagine yourself sitting in the stalls at the Paris Opéra in 1757, watching the revival of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie. [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera Theater to present Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites

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by Mike Telin

Francis Poulenc’s The Dialogues of the Carmelites recounts a fictionalized version of the story of the Martyrs of Compiègne, Carmelite nuns who, during the closing days of the Reign of Terror, were guillotined in Paris for refusing to renounce their vocation.

Beginning on Wednesday, March 13 at 8:00 pm in Hall Auditorium, Oberlin Opera Theater will present the first of four performances of Poulenc’s haunting opera. Performances continue on Thursday and Friday at 8:00 and on Sunday at 2:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

“It’s a fascinating piece,” director Jonathon Field said during a telephone conversation. “Poulenc’s music is phenomenal and describes the dramatic situation quite well. I think that’s why it keeps getting produced over and over again by opera companies around the world.”

Poulenc’s libretto is based on the play of the same name by Georges Bernanos, based on Gertud von Le Fort’s novella Die Letzte am Schafott (The Last on the Scaffold). [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera Theatre: “A Salute to Leonard Bernstein” (Nov. 7)

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by Daniel Hathaway

On November 7 in Hall Auditorium, Jonathon Field’s Oberlin Opera Theatre celebrated Leonard Bernstein’s centennial year with a professional-quality performance of his one-act opera, Trouble in Tahiti, and a revisiting of some of his Broadway triumphs in excerpts both brilliantly sung and crisply danced. [Read more…]

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